Punch & Judy Automata

As a fist year ID project my class was split into groups of three and sent off to investigate the ups and downs of our assigned mechanism. My group was assigned the crank, a relatively simple mechanism that has been used for ages to accomplish a range of tasks. Once the research was complete we were to design a simple display / object that makes use of the mechanism. Our group decided to turn this into a fun project and integrated it into a puppet show. Inspired from a variety of automata we decided to integrate the crank automata and the puppets punch and Judy which turned out quite well. The materials used were wood, and a variety of stationary such as rubber bands and clips etc…

 Some more info i dug up from the presentation:

I am going to discuss the Construction and planning that we went through to get to our final prototype model that you see here.

First off, our main inspiration came from the CABARET MECHANICAL THEATER movie that we watched in class, and also various other models that we came across on the internet, however most of these models were too complex, or used other mechanisms which were of no use to us.
    
Eventually, while searching for the perfect idea we came across this simple cartoon of a puppet show. We decided that we would break up this cartoon into simple pieces and animate each of the characters using our mechanism.
    
After deciding to animate this cartoon we had to find some information on how are mechanism worked, and what materials would best be suited to the project.
    
After constructing sketch models out of paper, plastic, and other miscellaneous items, we all came to the same conclusion; we needed stronger and more rigid materials to create a reliable prototype. Naturally, wood was an excellent candidate, being strong and versatile, cheap and fairly easy to work with, not to mention gave our prototype and “old wooden toy” look.
    
 The construction of the stage area was relatively simple; however there were quite a few times where we had to go back to the drawing board to work out the kinks. The main issues we had were trying to get the characters to work. For example, it took hours of tinkering with the rubber band linkage to make the puppets move their arms even the slightest amount. In the end we discovered that the differing shapes and lengths of the arms were fighting the simple up and down motion that our mechanism was capable of, and the only way to fix this was to experiment with the leverage that the rubber bands had on each arm. Once each arm was adjusted the puppets arms flailed effortlessly at the command of the crank.

Images

Videos in action!