Do you wanna build a Dragon?

[thebaronn]

A ton of people have asked (at least 2) for it, and I am finally getting around to it! This is how I built my Dragon for the Halloween and Christmas Show! I am definitely no expert and I am sure there are plenty of better ways to do this, but this is how I did it. When I started in Feb 2014 the original plan was to have a Alice in Wonderland Themed season. Then I heard Lana Del Rey's version of "Once Upon A Dream" and I changed the plans. I had no idea what I was really going to do, but I knew it had to have a Big Maleficent and she needed to breathe FIRE (well fake fire at any rate). So I started out with this very skilled blueprint:
And from that starting point we ended up with this:

 
Well, a lot happened in between, LOL! Originally, the plan was nothing too special. I wanted the 2 motors to control the wire run through pulleys on the roof. The dragon would just have a pivot point at the base and that would be it. Just a rigid structure that had very basic movements. The biggest decision I had was selecting the motors and figuring out how to control them. I enlisted the help of people at the halloween forum and it was silent.... So I jumped over to DIYC and posted my question there. Electrified3 and plasmadrive were very enthusiatic and gave me a little indirect push. Electrified3 said I sould shoot for this:

and plasmadrive agreed it looked awesome but a little to high of a standard. But they had made my mind up for me, that is what I was shooting for! Electrified3 pointed me in the direction of 12V DC linear actuators, easy, cheap and bulletproof. I had never attempted anything like this, but I was ready to jump in head first. I ordered a few and tried to figure out what to do.  
 
The first thing I knew I needed was a base. Originally I wanted the base to swivel. The goal was a triangular base with a 500lbs linear actuator to push and pull the whole thing side to side and the pivot would be a pole. Seemed like a good idea. Then I was off to home depot. I wanted to be able to purchase as much as I could locally, just because if something was amiss, I could run on back and try something different. So while I was at home depot (with actually no real plan in my mind) I purchased a bunch of stuff. Once I was home I just started bolting things together. Originally I was going to weld everything, but then I realized my welder (hadn't used it since the move) was gone. So I decided I wanted this to be able to be unassembled if needed so I decided to bolt everything together! In my loft I started building the base of my Dragon:

I was just winging it at the time. The base ended up being 6' deep, 3' wide and 2' tall. It was lightweight and I was still able to move it around (no matter what I build, it has to be able to be installed by one person, that is correct, everything I have ever built....ultimate mega tree, halloween tree, matrix, clock tower, castle, dragon....all done alone. Only because anyone who has ever offered to help, doesn't.)

After all that I was pretty excited and pleased. I figured I would use some heavy duty wheels for the base. Then I realized that my original triangle shape was not there. I figured I could easily toss a pivot point in the center, problem solved! Now I was waiting for some linear actuators!

[thebaronn]

The actuators arrived rather quickly and I had to figure out how to use them. So I just tossed something together in my office.

It wasn't anything special but I did learn some very important things! At the speed I was pulling (with no load mind you) 16" stroke was way too slow. But lucky for me, I purchased some other strokes and I had to find a happy medium between the speed (all of the actuators had a no load speed of 1/2" and 200lbs of force) I am happy with and the weight the motor would actually be able to handle (the shorter the stroke, the more strain on the motor and the shorter the distance from the fulcrum point). It was at this point I realized that my cheap hinges from GD were not going to cut it. I had to go with shoulder bolts. But of course the length of bolts I needed were not readily available at my HD or OSH. I eventually ordered them online through HD for about $5 a bolt (other places were $30 for the same bolt!) But it was 4-6 weeks!!!! So I did some mock ups in the mean time. In order to off set the slow speed of the bottom actuator, I decided to use the same setup as a backhoe, employing 3 linear actuators. One for the base, one in the middle somewhere and one for the head.  I figured I would use 1" square tubed steel for the bottom and then switch over to lighter 1" tubed aluminum.  I am no engineer, I never even finished college, so when I built this thing, I went with whatever "felt" right. Meaning, I tried to bend, break, twist it and if I held my 200lbs fatA-- then I was good. Some of this is probably overkill.

While I was waiting for the bolts I built the head of the dragon out of CORO! I sat in the kitchen with an idea and a hot glue gun and went to town!
The first thing I decided to do was the the horns. I created several 2" wide 6" diameter coro circles to start and then hot glued more and more inside each other working my way down to the very top, offsetting each one as it went down:

Then I started on the head. Once again, this was a fly by the seat of the pants kinda thing. My only goal was to make it look like the Maleficent in the video.
I finished the head and it turns out the eyes were too close and I needed to change that. I also decided to seal those off and have the eyes protrude above the skull (again, like the video). I was thinking green at first, but then I realized that I was going to use RGB Leds for the fire effect (I'll explain later), why not include RGB into the eyes and create the eyes with white coro? Then I had to add the side things (ears i guess? but they look cool).


With the head finished, I was feeling pretty good. Even if everything I did motor wise fell through, she would still look amazing! For the fire effect, my plan was to have fog funnel through the head and shoot out a spout that was surrounded by 8 RGB Leds! I could have them alterating red/yellow/orange for the fire and of course any other colors I wanted down the line. My original fogger was a powerblast 3000 from HalloweenFXProps and that was to supply the fog.  It would go through a short black irrigation duct to a small white plumbing duct from the sprinkler aisle at HD. And this is what happened:

That was at 1am! LOL! My wife was not amused. The kids loved it though! I also had the idea that the mouth would open and close.

I had a short break cable opening and closing the mouth, it worked well. Then I had to move the actuator to the base of the dragon to save head weight. Having no luck obtaining a 15' brake cable I went with a Bowden cable from some aeronautics company. That worked well as long as the whole apparatus was extended. It did not work at all when the neck was curled and the whole idea was eventually scrapped due to time constraints. But honestly, no one would have even been able to see it. Everything seemed to be coming along. 

I received the shoulder bolts in the mail! I attached the first section of the neck to the base with the shoulder bolt and did some testing with the linear actuators.

Everything looked good and it was finally time to move the base of the Dragon outside. After some drilling I finished the first 2 sections of the neck and bolted them together.

The first neck section is created with 3 6' lengths of 1" square steel tubing. Each is attached by 2 smaller pieces of tubing sandwiched together.. The first hole that connects to the base is 1ft from the end and the 2nd hole that attaches to the 2nd neck section is a couple of inches from the top end. For the bottom neck run I get a length of 58" from hole to hole. That is where the steel ends. the second portion of the neck is created the same way, except with aluminum. It moved pretty freely and it still does even with all the load.

Once again I was feeling pretty good! But that was about to change. I decided to shift my interests to the fogger. I had never really let her rip because I was doing all my testing in the house. So I arrived home from work at midnight on a Sunday and brought the fogger to my porch! At this point it is summer vacation so my children are up (night-owls like their old man) and we fire her up. OMG!!! she doesn't work! She puts out fog for 30 sec, full blast! Then she goes into this cycle of 5 sec on, 5 sec off! I film it and send it to the company. To my surprise, they tell me that is how it is supposed to work! After some argument on what the word "continuous" means I re-watch their online video. That is exactly what it does in the video. I conceded that I purchased exactly what was shown in their online video, but not to what CONTINUOUS meant!!! They offered a full refund. Then I was talking with Guy (the head prop dude over there) and told him what I was doing. He was intrigued and said he could build me a fogger. I said, I wanted a fogger that I can turn on and it will produce fog until it runs out. He said he had to run some figures and he would get back to me. He explained that he could build me a fogger that would simulate continuous fog.

And the INFINITY FOGGER was born! (yes I got to name it)

 

[Tracy West]

I so want to build the dragon for my castle display.

Now.. Trying to get my wife to buy into it..

[kingfish]

where did you get your actuators at

[jimswinder]

Darn...saw the Post Title and thought you had a cool song named "Do You Wanna Build A Dragon"...

 

Do you wanna build a dragon?
Come on lets go and play
I never see you anymore
Come out the door
It's like you've gone away-
We used to be best buddies
And now we're not
I wish you would tell me why!-
Do you wanna build a dragon?
It doesn't have to be a dragon.

 

excellent job as always Mr. Baron...

Edited March 16, 2015 by jimswinder

[thebaronn]

I am having trouble locating all my pictures, which is bad. They may have died with my show computer. 

Ill work on the rest of the thread in a few days on my day off. 

 

Darn...saw the Post Title and thought you had a cool song named "Do You Wanna Build A Dragon"...

 

Do you wanna build a dragon?
Come on lets go and play
I never see you anymore
Come out the door
It's like you've gone away-
We used to be best buddies
And now we're not
I wish you would tell me why!-
Do you wanna build a dragon?
It doesn't have to be a dragon.

 

excellent job as always Mr. Baron...

You read my mind! I actually wanted the header: Do you want to build a Snowman Dragon, but for some reason I couldn't get the strike through on the title of the thread.

And thank you!

 

where did you get your actuators at

I purchased the from Auto Express Parts on ebay. Free shipping! US company.

Also, I was planning an messing something up, so I purchased the set of 2 plus brackets (much cheaper than indiviually pricing it out).

 

I so want to build the dragon for my castle display.

Now.. Trying to get my wife to buy into it..

I will post a $$$ breakdown. It can't be that much. The actuators were only $50ish each.

And I am sure there are places to cut corners. 

 

Funny story:

 

For the first time in for-ever.....

I used fuses!

And one blew!

 

I checked everything under the sun except the fuse. Wasted an hour on the roof, pure genius! 

Someone asked what a fuse was and the reply was: that thing you add to be safe that eventually makes you angry and you bypass it anyway.

Edited March 16, 2015 by thebaronn

[Tracy West]

It is not a question of cost...

 

She thinks I have enough stuff and wanders where would I be able to put a dragon with all the other stuff I have.

Storage of the dragon after is the question.

I... on the other hand will figure that out!!!

[caniac]

Just build it and tell her, look at this cool dragon, it followed me home. It's how I sold big G

[Dcroc]

THAT is freaking amazaing!!!

[thebaronn]

Sorry I haven't added to this in a timely manner. I was lucky and I was able to contract the flu once, give it to my family, and then get it again on the ail end 3 weeks later (even had the flu shot, boooo! First time having the flu since 2008 I think).

 

But I thought this was funny: I am trying to refi my home. One of the stipulation from the freaking Home Inspection dude is that I remove the dragon from my garage because it is a safety hazard???? So yeah, only when he gives his OK, will the bank move forward. Too bad he didn't see it just sitting on my roof for 4 months, untethered, relying on friction and weight against the roof! There was a time when it was super windy with gusts up to 65MPH and we sat out side in the car just to see if it might fly!! It never budged!

[Tracy West]

A safety hazard?? WTH? It is a Halloween Prop!

 

When I sold my house last year, I had my satellite space ship parked in the garage. The inspector just looked at it and laughed. Go figure.

[thebaronn]

I agree with you.

But he has me by the....you know.

So I will move it the day before and when he is happy, I'll move it back!

I have no fight left in me, I just want to get it done and out of the way, maybe salvage this year and do a show.

[cgiambruno]

How did you controll the linear actuators? Did you use the LOR DC board and if so how did you wire it?