Servo - November 2015

together in my garage using bits and pieces I had on hand.

It always was my plan to redo many of the components in order to improve their appearance. However, they worked fine, and other projects demanded my time so the prototypes are what I went with. Although you have the opportunity to see “under the hood,” he will be clothed and my guests will never know (Figure 12).

So, with the torso already built, half my work was already completed.

I still needed to design and build the slide mechanism.

Since it would be supporting a full torso and head that would be violently thrashing around, I chose to build it out of steel. I cut the base so that it would fit inside the tripod that supports my hanging skeletons. This would partially hide it when it wasn’t activated, as well as provide some additional support to keep it in place (active pneumatic props can be a challenge to secure in place).

I modeled my slide mechanism after the one built by Canyon Trail Cemetery at http://tinyurl.com/pxzfrj9. I liked the simplicity of the design, as well as the ease of construction. It utilizes materials easily obtained from a big box hardware store. I chose to weld mine together, but the design could be adapted to allow you to assemble it by using bolts and lock nuts instead (Figure 13 and Figure 14).