Thread: Jaw mechanism for skulls

Tweet

Hi,

I'm finally getting ready to start my skull. There's a lot of great information here on the forum about the 3 axis movement, so I think I have a good grasp on that. I just have a few questions about the jaw part of the skull. I have a Lindbergh skull. From the videos I have found, it looks like most people use a vertical servo with a wire attached to the bottom of the jaw that gives the speaking movement.

1)How do you attach the jaw to the skull? It seems like you need a good joint that allows the jaw to move freely without being too loose and which is not too visible

2)Where do you attach the wire to the bottom jaw so that you get the most realistic speech? And how do you attach it? Do you simply drill a small hole through the jaw and thread the wire through it?

3)Is there any need for a spring anywhere.I thought I read some time ago that a spring will help you get better speech movement, but now I can't find that thread.

Thanks for any help

I didn't use a spring for mine.
I attached the wire by drilling a small hole and putting the wire into the hole...
To keep it from slipping back out, I used a tip on my solder iron and melted some of the plastic below the hole and pushed it up close to the wire... Otherwise when the wire was pushed down ward the wire would slip out.
I don't know how others have done it, so this my version and it works great.

This is what I use for bucky jaws, it may work on the Lindberg also. A better Bucky jaw hinge

I found that on a few of the Lindberg skulls the jaw hinge points are not aligned properly and were pretty loose. At first I was able to re-align them a bit by heating the jaw piece sides with boiling water and bending them back into position.

I ended up with a better solution by drilling through the hinge points (posts) on each side of the jaw with a 1/16" bit and also through the matching sockets at the base of the skull. This allowed me to insert short metal rods (epoxied into the jaw piece holes) to allow free/stable movement and keep the jaw in place.

and some people use the scarey terry method for hooking the Jaw up. Just depends on how much $$ you want to put into the project.
http://www.scary-terry.com/buckyserv...kyservoold.htm

I hinged a jaw on a Thrifty skull last year using a metal tube and rod. I hot-glued the tube on the bottom of the skull and drilled matching holes in the mandible for the steel rod. Very smooth action, easy to do.

Originally Posted by Otaku

I hinged a jaw on a Thrifty skull last year using a metal tube and rod. I hot-glued the tube on the bottom of the skull and drilled matching holes in the mandible for the steel rod. Very smooth action, easy to do.

Do you have any photos of that, Otaku?

-handy_haunter

Originally Posted by Handy_Haunter

Do you have any photos of that, Otaku?

-handy_haunter

I'll post a couple on Tuesday. All my pics are in my machine at work - my Win98 clunker doesn't know how to talk to an SD card.

I used two ball and sockets that look like two tiny trailer hitches and put one hitch on the fly wheel and one hitch on the jaw. bought them a servo city and used a tiny piece of coat hanger wire ( superglued ) into the plastic ends between them snap them in place and wal - la ready to go.

here's the link Servocity

Originally Posted by Handy_Haunter

Do you have any photos of that, Otaku?

-handy_haunter

I finally got a pic of the jaw hinge that I used on a Thrifty skull last year. You can see the steel tube running between the sides of the mandible. A piece of stiff wire goes through the tube and sides of the jawbone. I used hot glue to hold every thing in place, including the servo motor. Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, been busy with the gymnastics season.

Jaw hinge:
HalloweenGallery.com - Talking skellys/Thrifty skull jaw hinge

Servo mount:
HalloweenGallery.com - Talking skellys/Thrifty servo