Constructing RoboTurkey

Here are some construction details for RoboTurkey. Warning: lots of pictures and a video, to follow...

The body of the turkey is made from a tall, 4" diameter cookie tin I got at the Goodwill.

Jumbo sticks are used for wing crossmembers. The wing bones are mounted onto the horizontal stick, rotating on small nails as hinge pins secured with hot glue.

Wings, crossmembers, wing servo

The neck is a dowel with a smaller dowel sticking out of it at a right angle. This dowel has a hole drilled into it. Music wire linkage inserts into this hole and into the neck servo.

The neck inserts through a slot cut into the cookie tin on the top. A plastic hole plug at the bottom acts as a bushing.

The neck is held somewhat in place with sections of jumbo sticks hot glued into place.

The neck servo sits at the bottom rear of the body with linkage up to the neck dowel.

The beak is actuated by a mini servo you can see below. The servo moves a music wire linkage up and down. The linkage runs alongside the neck, and up to the lower jaw.

Here's the beak mechanism with the hole for the linkage in the lower jaw.

I put together a Sketchup animation showing how the parts go together since it's not obvious from the pictures.

The feet are just craft sticks glued to a small cube base, dowels for legs. The legs glue into a mounting base onto which the cookie tin is in turn mounted.

The bird is wrapped in a feather boa and has construction paper wings and tail that my daughter helped cut out and glue in place. The red thingy on the beak is a piece of cloth and the hat came from the craft store.

Source

https://github.com/shimniok/roboturkey