Design Preview Report

For my final project, I plan to create a 3D-printed strandbeest. This is inspired by Theo Jansen who create Strandbeest, “Sand Beasts”. They are self-propelling walking sculptures. One such example of Jansen’s work is the picture above. I plan to take his designs and shrink them down to a more manageable design, about the size of a cat or small dog. I will be 3D printing it and using PLA as the base material.

The image below is an example of a 3D printed Strandbeest leg component that I retrieved from Thingaverse, which is a website where you can access free 3D models that others have uploaded. This model is crank powered and only composed of one completed leg segment. My model will be composed of multiple leg segments.

The image below is the basic design of Theo Jansen leg segment with the correct measurements and orientation of the different parts. I took this and created my own measurements based off this. In the next image is the measurements I went for with the total leg being around 1 ft. in height. From those measurements I created  a CAD model of the basic structure of the leg I want to got with.

The next step is to refine my CAD models for the printing process. I plan to have the printing start the week of the 4/16 so that if I encounter any issues I can work out solutions before the project is due.