Waking the Quetzalcoatl

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Quetzalcoatl in Action!

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Digital Fabrication + Physical Computing 2019

The lovely folks from our classes, and the creators of the #trophyzoo! 

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Maker Faire!

The big day has come and gone! Here are some pictures from the event:

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On the Road and Setting Up

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Final Touches

Perhaps some of you arrived here by scanning this?

This plaque was also laser engraved and cut out, with paint added.

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Surface Treatments!

The final touch of course was to add a paint job. The designs were loosely inspired by the painted designs on Mexican alebrije sculptures.

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Troubleshooting

The main issue we ran in to was keeping the linear actuator from straining too much as it lifted the head. This was a game of mechanical advantage. We started my adding a metal shackle to the end of the lever mechanism that moved the head, giving the actuator a “push” of sorts.

Note the metal “U” in the center. 

This helped quite a bit, but it didn’t quite provide enough aid to the actuator which was sounding strained as it pulled and slowed down as it lifted the head.

Our instructor, J.E., came up with the brilliant and simple solution of getting more weight on quickly (at this point Maker Faire was fast approaching).

Violá! A bag of metal shot placed just right so that the balance of the lever was more sensitive. 

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Glyphs for the Column

Austin created glyphs based on real Mayan images. They were laser cut out of 1/4″ plywood and secured with wood glue.

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More Photos from Column and Wing Construction

The column and the base structure that the head slips on to were created on a CNC Milling machine, using PDFs created by Austin.  The wings were made of thinner plywood and could be cut quickly on the laser cutter. 

The wings spread is controlled by ties of specific lengths in the back. This was our first tie set up, which ended up needing to be changed for smoother movement. 

The head is slips on to the plywood under-structure like a glove, making transporting and tinkering with the LED lights easier.

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Lighting the Head

The clear faces of the head are backlit with strips of LED lights. Here are our physical computers programming the LED strips. They can program the color, order, intensity, and speed with which the lights glow!

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The Moving of the Head

In addition to the movement of the wings, the head will also move up and down. The mechanism for this is a simple lever connected to the same linear actuator that moves the wings. The lever attaches to the back of the head to move it up and down:

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The Head: Final

After some failed tests with plastic (too brittle for folding!), we settled on 30 mil chip board as our final head’s material. Included in our design are light-up faces that we chose to create by having LED strips shine through clear plastic faces. Making the faces out of clear plastic was as simple as identifying the faces that had to be transparent, moving them all into one file, and cutting them all together. It took more doing to get them glued on, as you can see below:

You can see the difference between the 30 mil and 60 mil chip boards with our prototype and final head below, especially in the “cheeks” and around the eyes:

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Head Assembly

Worried about durability, for the first head prototype we used 60 mil chip board for the head. As it turns out, with all the intricately folded faces the thickness of the chip board actually makes it hard to assemble the head properly. 

Much was learned, but the prototype was never fully assembled. It did serve as a great proof-of-concept, however! It also provided our physical computing team mates with an exact map of where the LED strips in the head would go. This was important because certain faces would end up being cut out of clear plastic, and those specific faces had to be identified.  Behold, our beautiful monster:

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Getting the Head Together

The head of the Quetzalcoatl was modeled in Fusion360. From there the #D model was imported into Pepakura, a software that “unfolds” the surface of a 3D model to make it 2D printable. 

From there a file for the lines is created that tells a laser cutter where to cut. Illustrator is required for some editing of the DXF files from Pepakura to make the dashed and dotted lines readable. This is important because these dotted lines tell the maker if a fold is folding outwards or inwards. 

Once the files are created, the laser cutter takes care of the rest!

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The wings are modeled off of a fan mechanism, with the top wing acting as the main lever to control the movement. Here is our first full prototype of the motion!

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Interactivity Diagram

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The Column

The head and wings will be mounted on a plywood column with simplified Mayan glyphs etched into the surface. Here are Austin’s initial models of the columns dimensions and scale. The head will be mounted on the disc and the wings will emerge from a slot in the sides of the column. The disc base for the head will be what pivots to move the head.