The Multimedia Gentleman

This is the piece that will serve as the base for Bubbles. The horizontally oriented pieces will be wells that give the servo room to work and the vertically oriented pieces will fit the “ribs” of the creature. Yesterday I tried to cut out my templates using the Laser Cutter. Unfortunately, the Laser Cutter isn’t strong enough to cut through the plywood I’ve been planning on using for construction. After consulting some people in the shop, I learned that, for this material, the CNC router might be the best tool for the job. Unfortunately, that means I’d need to learn how to use the new tool, which seems more difficult and time consuming than for the Laser Cutter. So now my dilemma is, do I switch materials and use the Laser Cutter, or do I sink some time into learning how to use the CNC router?

Bubble’s re-design features the movement of her bristles from several strips spanning her width to one strip spanning the length, imitating a spine or back ridge. This will allow us to have all of the servo motors work cooperatively to control the bristles, as seen here:

The pieces will be laser cut according to the following template, and will fit into each other, much like a model dinosaur.

Figure 2