After about 5 years and several hundred dollars invested, my original plans for WALL-E have stalled. So I have decided to go the easier route with a 3D printed version I found on Thingiverse, except I wanted my WALL-E to have a lot more moving parts than this version. This meant it had to be larger to fit all the additional hardware…and heavier.

I decided to scale this version up by 1:1.6 which would make the largest printed piece just under 200mm and would easily fit on my Creality Ender 5 printer. It would also require some creative re-sectioning of some the larger body parts as well as minimalistic slicing to keep the weight down.

Here’s a list of my requirements:

• Rolling, steerable tracks
• Hands capable of opening and closing and holding a glass of wine (don’t ask)
• Wrists rotatable through 120 degrees
• Arms movable up and down as well as side-to-side
• Head and neck movable up and down
• Head rotatable side-to-side
• Eyes individually movable up and down
• Movable eyebrows
• Ultrasound distance measuring modules
• Laser beams!!!

The project is well on its way; the tracks, body arms and neck/head assemblies are complete and all electronics including Raspberry Pi 4B, power supplies, servos, stepper and motor controllers and battery have found a home inside the body. The most difficult parts were articulating the arms and hands using futaba micro servos with some very impressive torque specs. I am currently in the process of assembling (a.k.a. “shoehorning”) all of the bits into some very small spaces. If it all comes together, it should be really impressive! I’ll post some photos here soon…