Wall-E Robot! – Fully 3D Printed (Sort of Works)

Garret posted a video of his latest project on YouTube. Garrent has been working on his Wall-E build for about 7 months and has been posting updates on his YouTube channel – Here’s a playlist of them. He designed the parts in Autodesk Tinkercad, which he says took about 14 hours of modeling and 40 hours of 3D printing. Garret’s goal was to make Wall-E with functioning tracks and moveable head. Since the size and weight of Wall-E is a bit more than expected, it’s too much for the DC micro servos and doesn’t provide enough torque for him to move – although the head moves nicely! Garret says he’s learned a lot from this project and will be releasing his files to the community so folks can build their own. Check out his video for more information about his project.

That’s right! It’s finally time for Wall-E. This is a semi-functional Wall-E Robot that I created in Tinkercad, printed out on my Robo3D and painted by my wife using spray painting, airbrush painting and brush painting techniques.

I have links to the files for Wall-E listed below. Please note that there are two versions of some files. These are basically for the electronic and non electronic versions. The only two files with multiple versions are the neck files and the leg bracket files. These files have “Non Electric” in the file name so they’re easy to spot.

In the electronic version of Wall-E there are 43 individual files, 84 main parts, 72 treads, and 144 pins needed. So that’s a total of 300 individual parts that need to be printed.

This is a list of the electronics components that I used. However, be aware that the DC motors I chose to drive Wall-E DO NOT work. They don’t have enough torque to drive him. So if you want to try to make this robot work, you’ll either need to redesign the legs/wheel mounts, or you’ll need to find a really high torque motor that is in a micro servo casing. The mounts I have built in fit micro servos specifically and it would be difficult to fit any other sized motors here.

Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!