ANIMECH Actinia - Kinetic Gear Anemone

ANIMECH · ACTINIA  A kinetic sea anemone driven by sixteen meshing bevel gears   Sixteen bevel gears sit on the faces of an icosidodecahedron, every one of them in mesh with its neighbours. There is no idler and no free wheel anywhere in the network: turn one gear and all sixteen turn. A single small motor in the base drives the whole thing, and each gear carries a three-branch tentacle. When it runs, the entire colony moves at once, slowly, like something breathing on a reef. The gear network is a closed bipartite 1:1 graph, module 1.25, thirty teeth, twenty-five simultaneous meshes. Getting it to close was the whole design problem, and it is why the assembly rewards a little patience at one specific step.   Two builds, three parts apart The sculpture is identical either way. Only the lid, the motor mount and the coupler change. Basic — the PG002 continuous-rotation servo from the CyberBrick kit. Everything you need is in the Ultimate hardware kit. N20 — the LA008 worm-gear motor. Smoother and quieter, with no dead band to creep past. Bought separately. Print everything else before you decide.   In the download Two ready-to-slice 3MF projects for the Bambu Lab P1S, plates arranged and per-part settings already applied. A 15-page A4 manual in English and French: parts inventory, print settings part by part, eight assembly steps with direction arrows, the MicroPython code for both motors, speed tuning, and a troubleshooting table.   Printing 67 parts across 10 plates, about 712 g of Bambu PLA Matte. P1S with a 0.4 nozzle, 0.20 mm layers, 15 % infill, 2 walls. Supports are already switched on for the six parts that need them and off everywhere else. The tentacle plate carries eight and the sculpture needs sixteen, so that one plate is printed twice — every other plate runs once. Finished size: 327 mm across, 228 mm tall. Run time is 2.7 to 4 hours on the kit's 800 mAh battery.   What you also need XA003 core · XA004 receiver shield · PC003 battery · XA007 power switch · plus PG002 (Basic) or LA008 (N20).   Two honest notes. The LA008 is not in the Ultimate kit , that kit ships different DC motors, so the N20 build needs one extra purchase. And the M2.5 self-tapping screws are not in the kit either: you need seven 10 mm and five 8 mm. The kit's M2.5 × 6 machine screws are the wrong type and length.   One word on assembly Everything presses or screws together, and there is nothing tricky about it except the gear timing. Because the network is closed, each gear has to find the teeth of the neighbours already seated. Rotate it on its axle before pushing it down, leave the retaining caps until the very end, and never force anything. The manual walks through it. Give yourself an unhurried evening.     ACTINIA is specimen no. 01 of the ANIMECH series, mechanised biology, one genus at a time.