anamatronic help

[puppetise]

ok well i have had a old remote controled car for ages it has suspension an pretty good motor now my plan is to some how make it into a robotic head basicly all it has to do is move the mouth has any one got any ideas on what to do

PS. its its a traxis bandit its got a rechargable battery

 

[RottenPuppets]

steering could be used to move eyes left and right.

gearbox foward/reverse can be used to close/open mouth.

you're going to have to strip as much as you can off the car to start and see exactly how much electronics need to be retained from the original setup, battery, pcb breadboard, etc. the hardest part will probably be to customize it for your app since lots of those parts are generally plastic or thin metal so they're delicate to work with.

good luck.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

Depends on the design of the car, but you might not be able to actually use the motor in it. I started out experimenting with animatronics by taking apart R/C cars as a teenager and found that the controllers could often be used, but you usually had to buy servos separately.

Have you seen Chris Hillman's Animatronics Links site? It's poorly organized and a little overwhelming, but there's tons of great animatronics info to be found there.

 

[puppetise]

well most of its strong metal as it is a offroad car the parts a fairly small and im only making the mouth move

 

[puppetise]

ok im in luck my dad used to build rc cars and he is going to help me on the anamatronic side and im working the puppetry side we have servos and all the suplies we need my bigest question is the structure i have plans ill put a scetch up and maybey you can elaborate and give tips

 

[Buck-Beaver]

If you can find it on Amazon, ebay or elsewhere you might want to pick up the book "No Strings Attached". It's not a how-to book, but you can get a lot of information about constructing animatronics from it.

There are a couple of videos on this page that may be helpful too.