Animatronic eyes have always been fascinating to me. If you look around a bit you’ll see that there are a few common design methods, which means most systems look very similar. Now that 3d printers are so commonly available, the ability to simply download and 3d print a design is pretty tempting.
Here are 6 designs that are free to download:
Dasaki compact animatronic eyes
Super simple, only 2 servos. The demo isn’t as exciting at first glance because they didn’t make hyper realistic eyes, but you can see passable movement here. No eyelid operation though.
Animatronic Eyeballs from Micropuller’s post
This rig is apparently based on someone elses’s design and even though the author is sure to give credit, they didn’t link to it (I fount it! see the last entry at the end of the article), so I have no idea what it is. This modification is mainly to fit on smaller printers. If you like this design and have a larger printer, check out the others below that share similar origins.
This is a showcase of a 3d printing company so they pushed to 3d print as much as possible. Of particular interest are those yellow flexible hinges on the back of the eyes. Pretty neat idea.
This one breaks each eye out separately for a self contained unit. might be useful if you’re doing a cyclops or if the eyes can’t be mounted together for some reason.
Animatronic E.T. Eye Mechanism
Another based off the Micropuller design. This one includes a stand and some size modifications to make parts fit better.
Micropuller’s Animatronic Eye mechanism
Here’s the one so many others referenced! Really great motion and pretty solid design here. The blink and eyelid follow system is pretty elegant.
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