Evolution of a Blog

This blog has evolved as I have as a maker. It starts at the beginning of my journey where I began to re-tread my tires in the useful lore of micro electronics and the open-source software that can drive them. While building solutions around micro-electronics are still an occasional topic my more recent focus has been on the 3D Printing side of making.

Monday, July 11, 2016

N-Scale (1:160) Bascule Drawbridge - Animated by an Arduino

Have finally gotten to the point where I am shipping a copy of my latest model to someone in the States that will be incorporating it into their layout:


I got the idea for this model after doing a couple static bridges and originally was thinking about doing a lift bridge:


Once I started working on it I decided that it was both too big and too complicated (from a perspective of doing the animation).  I had already seen the Bascule type of bridge that I ended up modeling and had an idea of how to animate it ... so this project was born ... to model this bridge:



Here is a video of the final result.  It is not 100% finished as I have not got working tracks on it but that is why I was looking for a tester!  It should be noted that I was not after accuracy in rendering this model as my priorities were printability, ease of assembly, and ability to animate.  These requirements made some compromises necessary.



Here are the source files for the bridge and the lift mechanism as well as instructables covering assembly of the bridge, of the lift mechanism, and of the electronics.

This was a great project in that it combined some 3D Design and Printing that pushed my experience and the capabilities of my printers as well as combining the Arduino for animation.

Virtually everything that I design is "open source" under the "Creative Commons, Attribution, No Commercial Use" license and can be found here on Thingiverse!  I am also interested in project ideas so please reach out if you have one!

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