⚑ Final Project

Automated Marionette Puppet Show

🕘 Date / Time:

Hey there fellows, Here and now I'm going to introduce you to my Final Project. ^^

Marionette puppets had always been a mystery to me as a kid, I enjoyed watching them _except for the creepy ones :D_ and envied those skillful puppeteers and wished that one day I can hold a marionette puppet, be able to manipulate it such as smooth..

Joining Fab Academy, I thought why can't I give that wish a little boost? ^^
Why can't I have those slight string pulls done by a couple of motors, programmed and synchronized to perform a series of smooth movments that give life to the marionette puppet?
Actually I suppose I can. ^^
And that's what I'm intending to do.

Plan Overview:

1- 3D printing the puppet.
2- Designing the stage.
3- Laser cutting the stage and assembling it.
4- Designing input and output circuits.
5- Manufacturing the circuits.
6- Programming & networking my circuits.
7- Assembly.

Part I: Mechanical Body

There are multiple bodies to be designed and machined: Puppet, Theatre, Spotlight as well as circuits holders.

A.The Puppet:

Prototype no.01:
The puppet was initially designed on the second week of the Academy so fortunately that was work done ahead. Check them out here.
All I had to do was to 3D print its parts and figure out a way to do the flexible joints in between them.

Started 3D printing puppet prototype no. 01. The result was 85% success with a one damaged foot. Now I had to think about the puppet joints.

Puppet assembly smart solution no. 01 :D. The method I created to add join the parts was that I used flat head sewing pins. (Connected pelvis to trunk.)

I punched pin size holes into each side of the puppet parts in order to fit my manually made hooks. (Connected upper legs to pelvis.)

Then I cut and turned each pin in order to form a round hook using wire cutter alongside a pair of long nose pliers. (Connected upper legs to lower legs and head to trunk.)

Here it is where I had all puppet parts connected to each other except for hands and feet that were too small to punsh holes into them. (Connected lower arms to upper arms to trunk.)

I told my friend that it looked like fall victims in the animated series "Detective Conan", so he brought a piece of red tape and made it a little more realistic.😂

Failure:
After assembling my 1st prototype, I connected some pieces of fishing thread to its head and lower arm. I fixed the head thread to the desk then connected the arm thread to a servo motor in an attempt to simulate its movment. Unfortunately the arm was too lightweight that it couldn't even pull the thread straight.

Solution:
I had to 3D print a bigger / heavier puppet prototype.

Prototype no.02:

Here it is where I scalled my puppet to a larger size using Cura and prepared it for printing.

Aparently the filament did not stick to the heated bed and it turned out a mess.

To fix the non sticking problem, I changed the "Build plate Adhsion Type" from Skirt to Brim

And as the image shows the result was promising.

unfortunately it lost the same arm which was weird but it was okay to let that happen for now and let it continue printing. It's prototype after all.

I used the same method to assemble the 2nd puppet. A couple of sewing pins nailed into each part and their tops are formed into hooks.

B.The Theatre:

I. Design:

Theatre body:

Version no.01:

The first version of the theatre wasn't that good lookig that's why there weren't much images of it.

At first I started designing the theatre it looked like an elevator cabinet. :D

Version no.02:

I wasn't at all pleased with the firts version and thatks Allah I used parameters in my design so that all I had to do was to apply some edits to my parameters.

After adjusting some parameters increasing its width it nearly looked appropriate. ^^

Here was adjusting width of the shelf as well as the location of the rectangular slot.

This image shows the placement of the curtain holders, curtain rod as well as the top cover.

Theatre front view:

I wanted to make a decorative front view to my theatre so here you see my humble trial. :D

Here was the sketch of the top part of the front view ornamentation.

I noticed that it had to have a support from the lower side and it shouldn't be kept monocromatic.

II. Manufacturing:

Being done with my design I started exporting all my sketches as dxf in order to open them with RD works.

Third batch and the trickiest one where I tried my best to fit all the remaining pieces into the small residual piece of wood.

In this image you can see the massive sheet of 8 mm MDF of 2440 mm x 1220 mm

Using an arket saw I cut suitable piece of the mdf sheet to fit into the laser cutter.

Third and final batch of theatre pieces to be laser cut.^^

Here are all my laser cut theatre pieces.

Part II: Electronics & Programming

The Idea:

When I open the curtains and switch the spotlight on , the light is gonna fall on the phototransistor in the input circuit that's gonna send some kind of data to the motors in the output circuit so as to turn the motors on and move the puppet.

A. Input Circuit:

The circuit from input week with the phototransistor just with a different code.

Here is the 2 servo motors output circuit schematic diagram.

Here it is the 2 servo motors output circuit PCB design.

Final Result:
Outline generated using gimp.

A hero shot of my manufactured input circuit.

B. Output Circuit:

For the final project I couldn't use the output week circuit as I needed 2 Servo motors instead of one.

Final Result:

A hero shot of manufactured output circuit.

C. Networking:

The one I struggled with the most :D
It was almost just two weeks before the presentation when I finally had the chance to get my electronics done and have them ready to try networking for the 1st time.

    #include < SoftwareSerial.h>

    const int PhR = 3;
    int lightLevel;
    int trigger = 0;
    
    #define TX 0
    #define RX 1
    SoftwareSerial data(RX,TX);

    
    void setup()
    {
      data.begin(9600);
      pinMode(PhR, INPUT);
    }
    

    void loop() 
    { 
      lightLevel = analogRead(PhR);
       
      if (lightLevel >= 100)
        {  trigger = 0;   }
    
      else if (lightLevel <= 100)
        { digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);
          trigger =1;
          data.println(trigger);
          for (;;);       }
    }

Networking successfully ❤

Part III: Assembly

Assembling the stage that consists of 4 layers of wood guled together.

Marking the stage position on the base considering walls thickness.

Gluing the first side to the base as well as the satge. Then leaving it to set supported by some heavy objects.

Continuing to glue the sides to each other allowing each side to set.

After assembling all things to be glued. I needed to mark the position of the mounting angles to support the rack.

Fixing the mounting angles I then had to alocate the karcy hinges to the back of the theatre and to the cover.

After painting the 1st layer of the theatre's front view I glued the 2nd layer.

After getting done with Theatre assembly, It was time for the final touches,
I had to do a lot of research on how to paint MDF, about it soaking in paint and having a rough ugly surface finish. I read about glossy paints, sealing surafces, oil based as well as water based paints. I already bought 2 cans of brown spray paint. But when I tried the spray I did not like it as its colour was sort of reddish brown. Then my fab academy colleague Ahmad Mansour suggested a bottle of brown wood stain that we already had in the lab. I tried it and I LOVED its colour and how it felt painting MDF using it. painting was such a fun and sort of stress relieving experience.

One of the reasons why wood stain was awesome is that it is easily absorbed into MDF and it's so fun painnting.

Getting done with painting the last side of the theatre according to my fusion 360 design.

Back into the lab in order to add the puppet and the electronics to the theatre.

This photo shows me attaching a couple of hook screws to hold the strings to the puppets arms. (I had been holdening them using blu tack all that time.)

Here is my humble spotlight that I used to trigger the input circuit placed beneath the puppet.

And this was the final look to the theatre from above. That 9V battery was the power to the spotlight with 5V through the voltage

Part IV: Presentation

Presentation video❤️️

Downloadables: 💾

Theatre, Puppet and output circuit files.rarHere