3D Printing on Adam Savage's Hellboy Glove Project

hey everybody it's adam from tested and if you're a regular watcher here you know that one of the earliest build videos we shot was of a project that i've been working on for about four years now it's from one of my all-time favorite movies hellboy and it is hellboy's mecca glove with incredible reference material i've been slowly assembling all the bits bob's parts and pieces to make my own mecha glove all with working lights and electronics and everything and well i'm almost done uh and you might remember the man sitting next to me this is sean charlesworth he is the winner of the inventorn from last year and one of the things he got to do from being the inventor and is to be my inventor yes that's what the whole contest was about so i've tasked sean with actually helping me with a key part of the mecha glove uh i have built everything here myself except for there's a piece that goes right here in this blank spot it is a very complex sort of concertina of moving parts and little gears and stuff like that uh and i stared at it for months nay years wondering how i was going to make it and then sean won the inventor and it turns out that one of his specialties is 3d printing and i tasked him with helping me build this thing which is officially called the millenball motivator named after the machinist from spectral motion that built it and sean you've been working on the mill and bob motivator for a few weeks now a few months for a few months yes it was quite the project yeah because the uh as we discussed it not only has uh all of these moving parts it had to actually function right which i which frankly made me a little nervous so do you want to talk me through the process of figuring it all out from start to finish you did you you sent me a bunch of prints like this from uh uh makerbot right yeah these are done on home at home on my makerbot so i was able to do a lot of prototyping right in my apartment which was nice um and we were in the you know early on we were a little i was a little concerned about the size of some of these pieces because they're so tiny and i was like i'm not even sure on a high-end machine if that will be able to pull them off so we went back and forth a few times about like because you're trying to ride the line between um being accurate and being functional and i know that sometimes they don't move yeah and we we talked about maybe modifying a few pieces or combining a few pieces that make them stronger and so on and so forth and in the end we actually meet we're able to build it uh pretty much like like it is which which i was happy now i happen to know that millenball who built this they basically gave him this task and a rough drawing and said go ahead and make this and he went and added all this extra functionality but it is one guy spending like weeks just doing this did you discover some of his problem solving while you were figuring it out yeah i could definitely there was definitely some places where i could see where uh you know because he he was machining it all out of metal right i'm doing this digitally which which in theory is easier and but you're reverse engineering it so there's definitely places where i could see where because you supplied me with lots of excellent uh reference photos so i was able to really get in there to the detail and see like oh that bent there or this was hitting there or or you could see where they have to file this out to make room because they they got into like oh this isn't working oh so you can actually kind of surmise the progress that he made yeah yeah so they're so based on stuff that i was seeing uh that could be problematic or that they modify themselves i made further modifications on mine so it's relatively accurate but some of the pivots had to be changed and some of the arms had to be lengthened or shortened but the biggest i think the biggest challenge for me was the fact that uh we are reverse engineering this from pictures now you provided me with uh known measurement and really good photos that that weren't distorted so i was able to go into photoshop and get lots of measurements off of those to get it pretty pretty darn close yeah the biggest problem i had is building the crankshaft so that this has the the crankshaft that runs down the middle and runs everything now we had talked about originally maybe even centering this out of metal yeah yeah and and i was like well you know what let's try it on the plastic printer and at least it'll be a good reference and i did manage to get it running with the plastic one so we'll have to see in the long run how you you know how you'd like to handle it how well it holds up and i mean the original it's these are shaft pieces that are actually with the little brass cams drilled and then all soldered together yeah i i was willing to do that if i had to i didn't want to i don't i don't blame you so also i will tell you that your makerbot print looks so much better than any makerbot print i've ever done do you do you have a secret or is it trial and error you're just really really good i have a machine that i've spent a lot of time tuning so i've got some aftermarket parts and i've dialed in the profiles for certain materials and i'll usually go the extra step of measuring the filament so that i know exactly the diameter of it which will also make it print a little nicer i see so and and i might print a little slower than you typically would which will get you a finer print so you have to like leave it going overnight yeah yeah okay so like a block a block like one block like one half of the block would maybe take like uh three hours right something like that so i mean not not too bad and uh and it was good enough to get i was able to obviously prototype the whole thing using this now it's not super dimensionally accurate so i i had to know know in my heart that when i printed it on the good printer that everything would be okay but i might have to file some stuff to get it to work on this and ultimately i couldn't get the crankshaft to work on the makerbot oh really it just wouldn't i tried it everywhere so so going into the final the first we're going on yeah and then and this was all eyeballed where i was basically in the 3d program i was looking down the length of the crankshaft and lining up the lobes and being like okay it's not going to hit here and it's not going to hit here and i got through one whole iteration and realized that i just made the assumption foolishly that this was centered right between the blocks and that's the first it's not the first it hit every single pivot so i had to shift everything over and then the the cams on this side are a little different than the cams on this side now at one point uh in the making of this i was in new york so i got to visit your shop yes and you gave me this to come home with and just have as a sort of inspiration and i'll tell you the first thing that happened when i got home was i put this up to here and i was like oh my god it's too small i i you know it's just this weird because i've been thinking about it and maybe because it loomed so large in my brain it's it's deceived it's a mind bend because uh i have that problem a lot working digitally because all the photos you gave me are blown up like full size right like a full page so i'm looking at these and looking at and like the first time i printed i was like oh this doesn't look right i'm like i'm measuring and re-measuring and but it's it's it's right on but then when you sent this and i put it there i was like well and the other the other point that i knew that it we were good is that i was specking out hardware that i thought was the right size right and so i would uh a nice little trick as you go to the mcmaster who has all the supplies in the world for industrial stuff mechanical drawings yeah and they'll give you the cad model so i download it and bring it right in and that's how i figured out all the hardware and so when i knew the hardware was lying up is like okay this actually is how big this is and you gave me an idea of how big the crankshaft was like the diameter yeah and i had some bearing material i found some little tiny tiny tiny bearings and this crazy this is great isn't that beautiful it's beautiful and um so printing uh printing out a lot of this stuff i was convinced that yeah this isn't right but it it's right on all right so i guess we've teased it enough um do you want to put together a final or we've got mostly of a put together final here i can well i can show you this yes this is the finished prototype now uh we changed a few different things uh the first print that i got had uh the despite how good this printer is because this is these are some of the nicest prints that i've ever got off of any printer it's dimensionally accurate yeah so if you make a three millimeter hole for the the you know or the shaft three millimeters it goes right into the bearing perfectly right right right um but the uh the top plates here kind of turned out ridgy it's got a texture to it which i was a little disappointed about well that can be sanded out yes but so what i ended up doing i laser cut the top plate and stuff oh okay um which turned hadn't needed a little cleanup as well they got a little melody but they they were far cheaper yeah imagine so and then uh so the first uh this particular plastic is kind of like a polypropylene it has a nice little flex to it and that doesn't look like it's gonna break very easily yeah i have yet to see this thing actually operating all right so let's see hold on hold on let's count it down all right oh man this is so pretty i love how light it is too oh wow yeah let's take a look at the underside that's the adjustable motor mount yeah so the motor mount can slide back and forth to adjust the chain tension that's great and uh wow all right let's let's let's flip this puppy on all right oh look at that is so pretty doesn't look like there's much flex at all in the shaft yeah not on this one the other one a little bit more but uh you can see down here it's a little weird but right but we're going to yeah well what i did i was terrified to fire this up under full power so i made a little hand crank that right on this spine so i could i could very slowly test it and uh so that was meant to be cut off when you're all done now is it possible to run it faster i don't i no this is just a three volts uh i don't have a speed control on it so hold on a second yeah it might fly apart all right actually i need this lead right there okay so cross your fingers there we go starting slow because you know in the movie it spins quite quickly yes yes so we're at two and a half volts now slightly less than your batteries i had it up to four volts it did okay 3.3 i'm just going to monitor it i don't care about the voltage i'm just going to stop when i feel like it's not safe hey dude i think we're good no i'm cute i'm gonna keep going all right push it yeah we got extras and there's oh so these aren't bearings in here these are just no it's just a little a little oil oh hello well luckily that's just the pin came out oh okay so it didn't break break the pin just worked its way out is that the only single sided no there's many most of them are single-sided actually really the uh the pit the tolerances on this prototype i did uh are a little looser so the pins work their way out after a while oh i see i made them tighter on your finals i'm just going to go all the way i see a wisp of smoke coming off no you don't do you no okay don't scare me like that 11.4 11.6 hold together that's about how fast it moves in the movie i mean i'm using the correct motor so here we go that's it 12 volts it's beautiful i'm frankly i'm quite surprised that is gorgeous sean it's got a good sound it really does yeah oh man that is just great ah it's gorgeous all right awesome a job well done successful thank you i i can't tell you how much fun i had on this it took a little longer than you thought it did but i it i it was just long enough that i i just started to get stuck of it so you know sean can you talk to me about the finish this is absolutely magnificent yeah so i printed this with the uh i am very lucky to have access to the nyu 3d printing lab since i work up there and they just got a new one which is a 3d systems pro jet which is a sls printer so it has it uses liquid resin that it basically draws the part on the surface with a laser that cures it exactly okay and then it rises no sinks and keeps under exactly yeah so it has uh there's support material that holds it up off the print bed that you have to clean off afterwards but it's kind of this particular one is their flex material which is like a kind of like a polypropylene and so it has a nice give to it um and it's a little it's a little grippy when you first print out but the resolution on is just phenomenal and it's really it's it's the nicest prints that i've ever got that it's actually dimensionally accurate so if you make a three millimeter hole it's it's right on i'm really impressed um and i actually think that that's what allowed us to do the crankshaft because it while i originally i thought this give was going to be bad i think it actually works for it because it it lets it give a little bit rather than break so um we need an aluminized finish on this have you done any experimenting with that well you you're more the finishing guy than i am i i have done some some stuff but not a lot but this is this this particular stuff will take paint just fine okay and you can even use regular paint or like krylon fusion or whatever okay but i was i started messing around a little bit and i tried a little rub and buff which i thought turned out pretty not bad not bad at all so this is the abs like the top plate so that was scotch-briting it to get a little texture and then two coats of rub and buff and then you know so i thought that that was an option but i i would love to hear your thoughts on it no no so i think that what i would probably do is take the full set of parts uh sand them just to get rid of any little artifacts and also just to soften them a little bit uh these uh these are some round caps that have ridgy i'd probably toss them on my lathe and hit them with a fingernail sander this is a funny one i happen to know the original effects company spectral motion hand machined all these caps but you and i discovered that cigar tubes work just as well in our the great way yes the grates of cart cigar tube search yes when i wrote to mike who on spectral motion i was like did you use cigar tubes for that and he went ah we totally should have well and that that led me to my wife and i spending a saturday in the village uh with a pair of calipers going to cigar shops which i was like i just need your crappiest cigar and a tube and that that got some interesting look so yeah so yeah i think we'd hit this with some primer uh then hit it perhaps with you know i think hitting these top plates with rub and buff makes the most sense but maybe doing the body with a little aluminum spray paint since it's a lot of area to cover it is yes um and then uh doing the same with these these removed so we can paint these separately yeah they're just friction fits and then pop them in um i think we could uh i think we're going to get something that looks 100 accurate all right uh sean i wouldn't be complete unless i showed you some of the lights actually working here let's see where are you there you are there's a bunch of the lights when this goes i'll have a micro control that makes it glow and gorgeous and do that hand machine all of that and your piece is going to go magnificently right there made out of aluminum oh i just had a little a twitch yeah a little twitch uh and also oh i actually designed machine plates for this excellent uh and i have in german it's a serial number model number and everything and then i thought who would have manufactured it i thought well the germans you know at this point in the war that what happens at the end they probably would have gone to just the one place that would be able to do it and i chose the guys that made the enigma machine so that's actually the name of the enigma machine manufacturer and this this is for you oh excellent thank you and uh your write-up's up untested about this build right i will be doing write-ups on how this whole process came together it was a it was a it was a long multi-step thing but yeah it'll probably be a multi-parter we have a we have a lot of reference to show of the entire build plus sean's progress he took tons of pictures and kept me posted throughout the whole thing and it's all gone up untested well thank you for including me on such an awesome awesome project i can't thank you enough sean i this is the first time i've used this is the very first time i've used 3d printing in a prop that i've replicated and it's a total success as far as i'm concerned i'm glad it worked

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 979,603

Keywords: testedcom, tested, adam savage, hellboy glove, mech glove, rasputin's glove, mythbusters, maker, 3d printing, inventern, inside adam savages cave, adam savage hellboy, 3d printer, adam savage (tv producer), prop replica, how to, one day builds adam savage, inside adams cave, tested adam savage, adam savage tested, film (media genre), prop replica making, replica prop forum, hellboy prop, mecha glove, 3d print, tested hellboy

Id: ENWhVYheWUw

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 31 2014