Mad Max: Fury Road’s Imperator Furiosa is the sort of character that makes an impression. She’s not your average female protagonist, and the fact that Furiosa had a prosthetic arm that did not slow her down made her extra special. Furiosa meant a lot to Laura, a fetal amputee. Michelle Sleeper (msleeper at The Replica Prop Forums) wanted to build a functioning Endo Arm prosthetic for someone and when Fury Road came about after she met Laura, they decided to make the prosthetic match that character rather than the T-800.
They finished the project for Dragon Con. They took a plaster cast of Laura’s arm, took a detailed 3D scan, and created a model for the build. They 3D printed the arm in order to make sure it would be comfortable wearable for long periods of time. After the pieces were printed, here’s how Michelle cleaned it up:
The process of cleaning up a 3D printed prop is pretty simple – rough sand the surface to get rid of some of the print lines, then (in the case of an ABS print) use “ABS sludge” – a thick mixture of acetone and ABS – to coat the surface. This acts like a body filler and will help fill in the remaining gaps, but as the acetone evaporates, the ABS bonds to itself, so you have a single rigid object. The part is then sanded with a finer grit sandpaper, and coated in spot putty to fill in any remaining pits or print lines. After that dries, the excess is sanded off, and then primed for painting.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
