A few weeks ago, we posted a video of James Brennan-Craddock’s animatronic bird, so beautifully crafted and realistic that it belongs in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Well, Dr. Brennan-Craddock is still at it, using additive manufacturing to fabricate the inner workings of his mechanical creatures. This time, the artist has made an endearing specimen you’ll never forget, Axl the Animatronic Axolotl! Watch below:
‘Axl’ Animatronic Axolotl with 3D Printed Insides – October 2013 from James Brennan-Craddock on Vimeo.
After visiting James’s website, jbcsfx.com, I saw that neither the bird nor Axl were his first 3D printing projects. It turns out that he’s been using the technology for quite some time. He was first introduced to the technology while pursuing an undergraduate degree at Loughborough University in 2002, saying, “We had loads of machines available to us and it was just an irresistible opportunity to be able to design the most complex stuff imaginable and then see it brought to life.” Since then, he’s obtained his PhD in design systems for 3D printing, explaining that he “did a PhD partly as an excuse to continue playing.” The technology has opened James up to a huge world of possibilities:
3D printing allows me to design things that just cannot be built by any other means, and lets me design things that are solely concerned with form and function, without having to worry about conventional manufacturing constraints. Being able to design unique parts that are strong enough not just to handle but throw across the room is pretty cool. I’ve had the opportunity to design some 3D printed products in titanium too.That’s the future right there!
Designing his animatronic puppets, 3D printing was the ideal process for constructing the creatures’ custom inner-workings. His AM method of choice is typically laser sintering, saying, “still the best in my opinion!”, but due to time constraints, and to experiment with FFF 3D printing, James printed the parts for his bird on an Ultimaker. He explains, “I was really surprised how good the results were. I was really limited in time with that project – 2 weeks from ‘go’ to filming, so being so fast and cheap (all things being relative!) meant I could make lots of versions on the Ultimaker. It’s hard to measure up a dead bird and the Ultimaker could print out a new version of a bird body in 45 minutes or so.”
For Axl, the artist returned to laser sintered nylon, knowing that, to film his Axl music video, he’d need something more durable:
Axl needed a much more complex skeleton and it really had to withstand a lot of abuse. There’s four servos and associated linkages and joints all crammed into a small area. Like all 3D printing processes, Ultimaker parts are weak in the build direction and at the size I was designing Axl’s components the fiddly bits could easily be snapped. Laser sintering is really strong, more accurate and doesn’t require a support structure so it was a no-brainer. With laser sintering I know what I will design will ‘just work’, there’s little worry about build quality or part strength.
His work with the Ultimaker gave him a new perspective, however, as he realized the advantages and disadvantages of each technology, “But hey, it’s much more expensive right? You get what you pay for! That said, with the cost involved I only really had one chance to get things right. I had much more time to design and build this animatronic (3 weeks!) so once I’d sculpted Axl’s body I used photogrammetry to capture a virtual model which I used as the envelope to design the 3D printed skeleton to fit.” You can see the artist working with Axl’s skeleton in the video below:
‘Axl’ animatronic 3D printed internal mechanism – October 2013 from James Brennan-Craddock on Vimeo.
Though you might assume Brennan-Craddock to be an established filmmaker, based on Axl’s short music video, the field is still somewhat unexplored for him. His day job involves working part-time at the Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Research Group at Nottingham University, a big player in the 3DP world. The group is currently working on 3D printing objects with multiple material components where functionality – electronics, etc. – is printed right into a given part. James, however, wants to get more and more into filmmaking, which is why he submitted his Axl montage to the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes music video contest.
Dr. Brennan-Craddock is still working on his animatronics though, including some robotic alien tentacles, which we’ll treat you to when they’re complete. In the mean time, you can head over to his site and peruse some of his older, non-animatronic work alongside the bird and Axl. Maybe, when the folks at Nottingham perfect their multimaterial process, James will be the first to 3D print a complete animatronic puppet in one go!
Source: James Brennan-Craddock
