Designing a 3D Printed Animatronic Eye Mechanism With ZERO Fasteners

wow! 2 min in and already I feel much respect for what you did here! Well done and I really hope I can build / learn this myself

but eyes always need to move individually!! 😅 how else do you make weird eye movements with a MaxMSP breakcore glitch patch at 180 bpm

Hello! is it possible to replace the sg90s with mg90s if we want to upscale this model for slightly bigger robots?

Great design, thanks for sharing! I've rebuild it with an ESP32 controller and a bluetooth app as remote control. (there is a video of the result on my channel...)

Holy christ this would be amazing in haunted houses, I might explore this opportunity

I would recommend you swap out the arduino micro for a D1 Mini ESP32. They only cost $6 and they have wifi so you can easily make a wireless controller. This is a great project!

Have you tried bambu PETG HF? SuperFastMatt loves it for around the house stuff and i agree. It's non toxic like PLA but better in every way, and flexible. It Might have more friction tho, idk

Love it but i dont have much money and some parts cant get Delivert to Germany and i dont have a 3dprinter can you do one for me please?

Is it possible to convert this to a raspberry pi pico?

Thank you for sharing you knowledge and time with us!

Have you tried calling a prosthetic eye manufacturer. They have lots of waste products that they might give to you

hi will. It's awesome to see what is done bytpeople like you. I have a couple of suggestions. Looking at the parts, it seems like some of the snap connections are unnecessary. This reduces the chance of broken pins. one example are the eyelid links. the servo horn would seem to hold them in place . I also wonder if the lips need to be so large asi it makes it hard to snap the parts together, requiring a lot of force and potential breakage. Please keep up the awesome work.
Regards, Jim

Dollightful mentioned ❤

Very nice design! Having some difficutlties with the small snapfits. Prinnting a new batch with other less matt material. Hoping that it will decrease the parts that break 🙏🏻

Sir your next mission if you choose to accept it is to switch the servos with noiseless gimbal motors 🐲 the saved space could be reworked to connect actual cameras to the eye balls. Balance the device on a storm32 bgc gimbal 40bucks currently on aliexpress and voila molto bene🤩 I marvel from the distance!

Great! Can I download the data, or Can I buy the 3D data of this?

Epic!
Very nice build. ❤

Would it be possible to scale this design up and still have it work fine?

I built v1, v2, and now this latest version of this project. Your design and tolerances on this version are nothing short of incredible. The design and entire assembly are a work of art man. Keep up the incredible work you're doing with all of these open source projects. Massively inspiring.

Will, do you have the Arduino source code available for when using the custom PCB?

Dude! You are amazing! Just found your channel

hey don't know if you will see this I'm trying to build a creepy endo skeleton to sing 50s songs for Halloween 2025, i was wondering if it would work out if i put red lasers in the eyes?

unsure if this will get answered seeing as how the videos a little older but has anyone tried to scale this up? is it possible to print this same design a little larger?

Excellent project, Kudos to all your hard work! This is the best iteration of your eye mechanism, the model went together perfectly for me. My tip to make easier, but impressive eyes, I imported the eyeball STL into TinkeCAD and made the recess to fit a 16mm glass eye (with flat bottom), with a bit trial and error, I was able to get the glass eye to fit perfectly and it matched the overall curve of the eye, fits perfectly inside the eyelids. You can find 16mm glass eyes in many different styles at your favorite online vendors

Hi Will: I built the updated eye mechanism using the Arduino Uno. I really liked the snap together model so I printed that out. I would like to use the Arduino for this design since I have it already. Do you have a wiring diagram and code for the and code to use the Arduino on the snap fit? The current codes do not work. Thank you in advance. Great work.

Thank you for sharing this great project! It works great. I did have an issue with the eyelids "chattering" and found that the generic nano I was using was to blame.
Two questions for you.
1. Since Im a bit of a novice here do you have any plans to offer the populated circuit board (without the nano). I expect you could make some extra beer money if offered..lol
2. Any chance of offering a version of this using a weii numchuck? Im sure that design is beyond my capabilities. The current remote works fine just would like a smaller handheld. Perhaps push-hold button etc. for eyelid movement

In the next version, instead of manually operating the controller, please add a function that reacts to the camera or sensor and moves the pupils.

Excellent! new suscriber!

Hi Will, is the PCB from JLC still available, Link seems to take me to JLC´s Home Page.

Heeyhey dollightful refrence, its not often my overlapping intrests in dolls, animatronic and various eclectic tech stuff overlap but im always suprised they dont, since dolls require such a degree of both anatomical but also engineering know-how especially if your starting from scratch, ive been loving these videos since i mostly draw machines, asides from heavily customising dolls and animatronic toys, i draw cybernetics and robots and so on and while alot of it falls under the "idk it just works" but i do pull alot of inspiration from real animatronics, dolls, toys, robots, nature itself ect so these videos are incredible for technical understanding of motion, inspiration and just to watch while i sweat over my painfully overcomplicated mechs, so keep it up man, its super cool.

Where can I get the 3d impresion?

It would be cool if each piece was marked with its number in the order of construction.

Can you make the Eyeball the black area pupil area to be a camera? Is the print hollow for the eyeball? Is that available?

hey buddy i am facing very big problem this part whenever i try to print it just print other side part and another side part does not print

Just found these, I still have V1 in a box somewhere can't wait to try this one and hopefully actually use it like I wanted. also congrats on channel growth and you have a new subscriber!

i want to make this with an arduino but i have no coding experience and im only 13 so im not sure what to do

How do you go around casting the resin eyes on these with your old tutorial on realistic eyes? is there a new eye casting base?

Trying to find away to contact you

How to put together

where you can post your anamatronics

You know the project is going to be mediocre as soon as they bring up the chinese PCB sweatshop sponsor

One big thing you need to encourage is a partial "cross-eyed" mounting. Eyes are never parallel. They are partially cross, at far focal ranges and up close to someone, they are more cross, focusing on some central point. Being parallel, makes them look fake and unnatural, almost freaky looking. Being partially cross, as every professional puppeteer knows, creates an intimate and natural look. (This is a key element of every "muppet". That is why most animatronic robots look creepy and devoid of life.)

Needs an auto blink function. As well as a "blink on move" randomly forced. Before looking left and right, you often blink to moisten and pre-coat the eye with moisture. Just force a blink early, on the first move. A timeout resisting blinking, after side motion, unless it's time to auto blink.

hock these to your robot vacuum for shits and giggles, maybe terminator head would be cool to... and terminator eyes

Could u please maybe exain how to start ? Which cheap printer to use and servos and app ,also the arduino uno or something,please help ,i want to learn it ,i want to build an animatronic

try using complete autonomous movement using IR or ultrasonic sensors , it makes more good to the project , i am trying to do so , lets see what happens

How do you get the servo horns to fit on the servo? I dont see any teeth grooves in the design.

didnt work for me with pla i tried 2 times and the thing that goes in the eyes either broke or didnt even fit my layer height is 0.2 mm idk why it doesnt work :(