Making a Mechanical Flower... Tentacle... er (Patreon)

The first mechanical thing I ever built... ever ever, was a robotic "flower". It was more or less a spine with many vertebrae that was to bend and twist by means of pulleys and motors, however I never got it to work quite right.

Back then, with my limit experience and knowledge, I chose a weird way to go about building such a device. Its main structural component was a tension sping (of all things!). I mean, what I ended up building sort of worked... but it wasn't what I had envisioned.

I'm going to model this fresh iteration closer to an actual human spine. Flower 2.0 will be made of both hard 3D printed disks as well as layers of soft squishy silicone. The silicone parts are in fact curing as I write this...

...In another day or so I will post an update on how my first shot at the molded vertebrae turned out. NoodleFeet isn't very happy about the fact that I'm spending time on another robot, but he'll get over it I'm sure. =]