Sophie Synth

Description

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR OWN SOPHIE, PLEASE READ THE 'READ ME' FILE INCLUDED WITH HER PARTS! This is a 3D-printed hollow chassis for a young lady called Sophie Synth. She is supposed to be a humanoid robot (or more correctly a gynoid). I'm currently working on a chat bot "A.I." brain scripted in Python and AIML for her and I'm also attempting to print her out some robotic arms (the WE-R2.4 Six-Axis Robot Arm designed by LoboCNC). I plan to run this all off a mini-computer that will fit inside her lower abdomen. Sophie has no legs because after a little research I soon realized that near-life-sized robotic humanoid legs which can walk reliably are incredibly difficult and expensive to pull off. I don't have lots of money to blow on powerful computers, high-power servos, sensors and LIDAR! Instead, I am planning to bolt her torso to the base of a remote control car so she can zoom about that way. (Apologies - the pupils I had uploaded originally were the wrong size for the eyeballs, so I've uploaded the 'pupil scale' that I used instead. 50% scale is the correct one.) README FILE CONTENTS BELOW (Updated 20-04-2020 when new .STL files were uploaded). 3D-PRINTING SOPHIE'S TORSO ---------------------------------------------- All of these parts were printed using an Anet A8 printer, which is a clone of the Prusa i3. That's why each .GCODE and .3MF file name begins with 'PI3'. It's up to you what scale you print these parts at, but in my experience, Cura kept auto-scaling the .STL files up 10000%, so I had to change the scale back down to 100%. Unfortunately, the part was then far too small, but I worked out that if I scaled parts back up to 5600% that was the largest I could fit onto the hotplate of my cheap, little AnetA8 3D Printer at the time. If you have a printer with a larger hotplate, you can obviously go larger than 5600%. I'm not sure what scale 'life-sized' would be, but the 5600% I used makes Sophie about two-thirds of life-size. If there are parts where I have only supplied one side of the model e.g. soph_face_left, then that's because all you have to do is Mirror that part in Cura in order to print the opposite side e.g. I uploaded the right ear, and all you have to do is mirror it to print the left ear. I have included .STL and .3MF files for certain large parts in case you want to load them into Cura and print them using a different position or different infill and supports to the setup that I used (0.2mm with 10% lines infill, a brim and supports everywhere). It took me 8-9 hours to print each half of the face and cranium using these settings...but they were literally some of the first parts I ever 3D printed that weren't just tests of printer calibration, so other more experienced people will probably find a more efficient way. I started printing with the head and worked my way down gluing the plates together two at a time. You could work from the base (lower abdomen) upwards if you want. Of course, it's worth considering where the supports go. If you place them on a the front of a plate that is going to be visible on the outside of the chassis, then you will have a lot of post-processing to do (snipping away excess plastic then filing and sanding down burs) in order to make that plate look nice and smooth. However, if you place supports on the inside of the chassis, then you will have less sanding and filing to do because all those plastic burs aren't going to be visible. I found that if I was having problems with scale (as I did with the shoulders not matching up symmetrically at first) mirroring one side in Cura solved the problem and made the scale of both the left and right plates uniform. GLUING SOPHIE'S PLATES TOGETHER -------------------------------------------------------- I used Gorilla Glue, a spritzer bottle of water and four small, metal jump-lead crocodile clamps to glue and hold the chassis plates together. If you have the proper C and G clamps which hobbyists and carpenters use, then even better. Gorilla Glue expands a lot when it's working properly, so you will need to file and sand down the seams on the outside after the glue has set. Remember that PLA tends to shrink about 2% when it cools, so if there is a little gap when you try to glue two separate plates together, this may be the result of 2% shrinkage of both plates, which means 4% total shrinkage. I noticed this along some of the seams that run down the side of Sophie's abdomen in particular. I used some strong scissors to cut out rectangles and strips of plastic milk bottle which I glued to the inside of Sophie's chassis anywhere that I could see a larger gap or an area that I thought was weak and could use re-enforcing. Before you glue on the milk bottle plastic though, make sure that you have roughed the surface with sandpaper and scored it gently (I used the sharp end of a square metal file). Then apply your glue (I applied to both surfaces) and give it a quick spray with water to activate. This all ensures that the Gorilla glue will adhere strongly to the surface of the milk bottle plastic. If you are struggling to hold a part in place while it glues (say your clamps are too large to fit into a gap, or the part is too large to be clamped) then improvise. For example, I used elastic bands to hold the two halves of Sophie's head together as the glue set. I also used a bit of Blu-Tack to hold my rectangles of milk-bottle plastic in place over some of the internal seams whilst they glued in place. I have also included a couple of 'Fixplates' which I printed to fill in gaps that appeared between the two front plates of both the upper and lower abdomen. Hopefully you won't need them because you have a better 3D printer and are better at 3D printing than I am, but just in case... I used Unibond Acrylic Flexible Decorators Filler to fill in any smaller gaps which appeared in the seams of Sophie's torso. FITTING THE EYES INSIDE THEIR SOCKETS --------------------------------------------------------------- I would recommend not gluing Sophie's cranium onto the top of her face because you will need to fit her eyeballs inside her head. The eyeballs fit in best if you cut away some of the support plastic from inside the two halves of Sophie's face. The eyeballs are one inch in diameter, so they should fit snugly against the back of her eye-sockets. You can use sticky tack around the perimeter of the eyeball and stick it to the inside of Sophie's eye socket (the same way that resin eyes are fitted into the eye sockets of a 60 cm ball-jointed doll). Alternatively, you could just pack around the back of each eyeball using tissue paper or newspaper until it fits snugly up against the socket. If you are going to pack around the eyeball, it would make sense to print two eyeball halves, then glue them together to make a sphere. This should require less packing.

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