Dino-Might: The Masterminds Behind It All
Back in October, Adrian Diaz swooped around the spooky streets of Salem, MA, with his transforming pterodactyl costume. Let’s go behind the scenes and learn about the dedicated team that made his costume a reality.
First, we’ll soar over to Albert Hernandez, the mastermind who envisioned and modeled the overall look of the costume, sharing numerous inspirational sketches of how it could come to life. Not only did he kickstart the design process, but as the team began building, he focused on the beak: an important mechanism of the costume that truly allowed it to transform.
Sal Lama assumed the role of team lead. When Adrian visited the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab for a dry fit at our Waltham campus, Sal took all of the measurements and created a model of the wheelchair in 3D. He then constructed the wooden frame using his at-home CNC machine. Another big challenge Sal tackled was figuring out the gearbox, an integral mechanical component that harnessed the force of the motor to move both the arms and the wings.
Next, let’s check in with Dan DeOreo, who volunteered to tackle the shoulder and arm mechanisms. The team decided the arms should be retractable as the costume transformed from a robot into a pterodactyl. Dan immediately got to work on designing the gear ratios and internal components to enable capabilities such as rotation and telescoping action.
To have the costume transformation be as amazing as possible (the goal of all Magic Wheelchair teams), the designers wanted the arms and wings to move simultaneously, a challenge conquered by Chinloo Lama. Using inspiration from pocket knife mechanisms to the wing movements of action figures, Chinloo was able to create lightweight wings with a bifold behavior: meaning that they underwent two types of rotation.
Not only was Chinloo the mastermind behind the wings, but she also had other tricks up her sleeve. If you remember from Freyja’s feline-pulled castle costume, Chinloo is quite the artist. If you don’t remember … go check it out, it’s awesome. After consulting with Adrian, Chinloo used some right brain action to conduct a color study and designed the pterodactyl in various shades of green with blue and gold highlights.
Even though the movement and mechanisms will be featured in a later post …I would be remiss to not highlight Yun Li’s amazing contribution to this project: the motors. Combining the use of a stepper motor, two limit switches, and an Arduino, Yun Li was able to program and control the amount of rotation and timing, allowing for precise movement in the costume’s transformation from robot to dino.
Now, let’s follow the fossil trail to our next builder – Max Lama. Max’s expertise was mostly focused on the robot’s shins, but he also helped with prototyping the wings and the logo design. Because the shins were such a large model, Max worked on separating them into smaller pieces to make them easier to print. He followed the different contours of the design to hide the seams, making it as smooth as possible. Even though they wouldn’t be visible to the outside, Max also modeled the inside of the shins to eliminate the use of supports to ultimately use less material!
What about the sound effects?! That is where voice changer expert Gabe Enright comes in. Gabe made sure that Adrian could have fun interacting with his costume while he was on the go. There were electronics integrated into a dashboard that played Transformer-like sounds, as well as a voice changer that Adrian could talk into and make himself sound like a robot.
Other super cool components of the costume that truly transformed it into Adrian’s vision of a robot pterodactyl were the rocket boosters and the spikes. David Law created these artistic elements using lightweight L200 foam.
David also helped with the magnets. All Magic Wheelchair Costumes must withstand the adventurous kiddos driving them around in all kinds of terrains: from grass to pavement to up and down ramps. The magnets had to be strategically placed to help assemble the costume, but also not fall off from vibrations.
Pivoting away from the engineering team, let’s talk about logistics. Sara Zuckerman was the planning superhero. In the early stages, she organized calls with the family to learn more about Adrian’s interests and personality. She has also probably met with everyone in the City of Salem to ensure a perfect reveal day for his family.
And last, but certainly not least – Rachael. Rachael is another of our resident dual engineers/artists. With the help of Chinloo and Max, she helped design the Adrian logo for our team t-shirts and on the sugar cookies enjoyed by all on reveal day.
Keep an eye out for the next blog post to learn more about how the team created all of these mechanisms and made stuff move!
Does Magic Wheelchair sound like the kind of project you and your community would like to participate in? Get involved with Magic Wheelchair by starting your own team!
