3D Printing + Puppet Building = ?!?!?!?

[WillyThePig]

Okay, here's some food for thought: with all this buzz about 3d printing, I've scraped together some cash and ordered myself one. I was wondering, does anyone have any ideas about how I could combine this with puppetry. Could i make parts for puppets that I can't just buy somewhere? All ideas are welcome!!

 

[Slackbot]

A while back someone here wsa making noises about making custom puppet parts - "bear comedian eyes," "gofer glasses," and the like. Perhaps bits like those would be a good start.

 

[Muppetlab]

Yea eyes, teeth, accessories (jewellery etc) are the parts that initially spring to mind..

 

[WillyThePig]

I was thinking more along the lines of internal parts, mechanisms, etc.. but still great ideas

 

[kumakami]

kind of wanted to figure out how to design a 3d printed blink mechanism....just cause

 

[MelissaY1]

I've read that Jeff Dunham has used these new 3D printers to build some of his characters. I find the whole thing amazing.

 

[BuckyBits]

Looks like someone did some eyes on Shapeways.
https://www.shapeways.com/model/833922/animatronic-puppet-eye-kit.html

Thank you Andrew for the link on Pinterest.

 

[FelixLazara]

The Stan Winston School of Character Arts has a tutorial on building 3D printed remote controlled eyes.

https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/tutorials/how-to-make-an-eye-mechanism-design-3d-printing-assembly

 

[Tioh]

Here are two 3d-printed puppet heads that I made (before the fur is glued on). I made the 3d-models with an old version of Lightwave Modeler (not the best tool for this task, but it does the job). Printed with PLA on my 3d-printer (a Makerbot 1 Dual clone). The parts were glued together with Plaast (http://www.plaast.de/). The inside of the mouth is made of felt and wonderflex.

Each head took about 7 hours to build and weights under 100g.

Some of my simpler models are on Thingiverse:
http://www.thingiverse.com/Tioh/designs

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Very cool! Have you considered using Blender instead of Lightwave? There are a ton of tutorials available for doing 3D printing with Blender and it's free.