No, not that kind of e-famous.

I’ve been working on a little project lately. It’s nowhere near complete but after performing the first mechanical test, I figured that I put it up on Thingiverse anyway as a WIP.

The project in a nutshell is to produce an animatronic tentacle that responds to one’s mental state.

The parts were printed with PLA on my Ultimaker. I’m not sure how I should tackle the ball joint as it’s brittle when printed with PLA, and I think the print was too solid (and hence too heavy).

So, after the first test, up went thing #10337 onto Thingiverse, along with the following video:

I wasn’t entirely sure what response I’d get (or any at all), but the denizens of Thingiverse are an encouraging lot, offering compliments and feedback.

And suddenly, BAM! Next thing I know I get mentions on the Makerbot Blog and the MAKE blog.

Right now I’m redesigning the segments to reduce weight, but still keep the same look. I have few ideas kicking about in my head that I’ll need to investigate. And all the positive feedback has spurred me to keep working on this.

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This post is tagged Animatronic, Mechanical, Rapid Prototyping, Robotics, Tentacle, Ultimaker