Jansen's Linkage

If you have seen Theo Jansen's amazing kinetic sculptures, you know that they are amazing pieces of mechanical design fused with art. His Strandbeests wander the beaches powered by the wind and stored compressed air. Theo Jansen has been quoted as saying that Strandbeests reproduce by infecting people to build more of them. Well, bad news, I'm infected.

The idea started out after seeing some RC controlled Jansen's Linkage based robots. The basic linkage lengths need to construct the walking mechanism are pretty much everywhere on the internet. I went with the values found on the Wikipedia article for Jansen's Linkage. The plan was to design as much of the structure and mechanisms to be 3D printing friendly as possible. The only non-printed parts would be fasteners, motors, and electronics.

The whole thing would be designed in CAD and test pieces made as need to test certain concepts. I would be reusing some motors and fasteners that I have left over from other projects. Expect more posts to come.

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