#Portal turret 3d print plus

I used wire to connect the servo arms to the holes in the eye and gun swivel. When all servo's are centered and everything is in place, the linkages can be placed. When later the body is done and both halves are joined, the micro servo's will be stuck in between. The standard servo's are attached by screwing them to on of the halves of the body, the micro servo's simply slide in place. Next the servo's are attached in the frame. The remaining servo's are centered and horns are attached that will be connected to the moving parts with linkages. Some glue was used to fix the rod in the eye. Then use some small pieces of 3mm rod (I used pieces of M3 thread) to fix the eye in the swivel. Center the micro servo with the hole at the bottom an mount the eye swivel on top. When assembling the eye, first press fit the laser into the eye hole. This swivel assembly was attached to a centered standard servo. Then the servo circular mount was attached to the bottom of the swivel. The 608 bearing was press fitted in the part named 'Turret swivel V2'. I fixed this by welding the two pieces together after linking them. This left an ugly gap between the two shells. Because 3D printing leaves a small amount of shrink in the first layers, the bottom is slightly warped. This servo also needs to get on of it's flanges trimmed so it will fit, bus this will show itself when you are mounting the servo.īoth sides of the shells of the guns (turret gun top and bottom) were linked with 2 M3 screws. There simply wasn't enough room to have the wires com from the side. One of the micro servo's needs to be modified so it has the wires com from the bottom instead of the side. Most screws screw directly into the plastic, reducing the amount of nuts needed. The first thing to do is to tap all of the M3 holes with an ordinary M3 screw or bolt. Most of the assembly is too complicated to explain in just words, but the pictures also do a great part of the explaining. With all the parts printed it's time to assemble the turret.

Turret eye swivel V2 (in clear plastic) Īll of these parts required about 20 hours to print on my UP! at 0.3mm layer thickness.

Turret eye swivel pan (in clear plastic).

I has served me well the last year.įor a complete turret you will need the following parts:

#Portal turret 3d print plus

I used my UP Plus 3D printer that I won last year at the UP2013 contest. For the turret you will need a 3D printer of at least 120mm x 120mm x 120mm (roughly 5'x5'x5') that is comfortable with support material. I take great care to design things that require as little support as possible, but in some cases splitting up the design into even more pieces is too much additional trouble. For this you will need (you'll never expect this.) a 3D printer.

(Reference image to the right made by: Tyler Garrison, for another turret project by CitizenSnips and modified by me to show the flaws in the turret's original design)

All in all the design took between 40 and 60 hours (I don't really track the time). Then this part was cut up into smaller pieces and mechanisms were added to make the guns and eye move. First the turret was designed in one piece in Solidworks to get the design right. The rest of the design was only a matter of time. There is some space there now to place electronics if you can manage to make them small enough. After I built mine i did a last wave of improvements where I hollowed out the top of the turret. The solution was a compromise where the turret only moves and doesn't open.Īlso the design doesn't include a real space for the electronics (as seen in all the photos and videos). There simply is no room to have a turret with all movement that can also open and close. The issue is (as you can see in the images) that the guns of the turret almost touch each other when the turret is closed. It is because the turret does things that are not physically possible.Īt first I wanted to make this turret so it could open and close as well. Not because there are no reference images or because the turret is that difficult in its design. The design was the the hardest part of this project.