peekaboo mechanism

[mrklaw]

I took some pictures this morning of my peekaboo mechanism. I built this at our Rocky Mountain mini-gathering. It is loosely based on the peekaboo skeletons that Wormy-T has at her yard haunt. Halloween Propmaster designed this PVC version. He spent a lot of time making mistakes so that we wouldn't have to.

This is a picture of the completed apparatus. It will probably be painted black and I will add some paper mache heads to the top.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5204.jpg

This is the base of the mechanism. It has one of the famous Saturn wiper motors which does the movement and it also provides weight to keep it all stable.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5205.jpg

Closeup of the motor. I cut away the shield around the connector with a hacksaw and soldered spade connectors onto the power supply wires so that I could just slide them over the pins of the motor connector.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5207.jpg

Closeup of the connection between the arm and the motor. The end of the motor arm has a kind of ball connector and we drilled holes in the PVC that were just barely smaller than the ball. I then used pliers to squeese the ball into the PVC hole until it popped in. Other people in our group knocked them together with a hammer.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5208.jpg

This picture shows how the two horizontal teeter totter arms connected to the stationary upright support piece and the upright arm that was connected to the motor. I drilled multiple holes in the arm that connected to the motor so that I could adjust the range of motion.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5209.jpg

More in the next post. I guess there's a 5 picture limit.

[mrklaw]

This picture shows the end of the horizontal teeter totter arms and how they connect to the upright arms which will support the actual props. We put a couple of washers in between the pieces of PVC to prevent them from binding. You can also see some holes that are kind of vertical on one of the pipes. We used the printing on the PVC as a guide to line the holes up and discovered that the printing isn't really very straight and I had to drill new holes.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5211.jpg

Here's a shot from above to give you an overview of how it all connects together.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/john_m/peekaboo/img_5213.jpg

When it all runs, the two uprights go up and down while staying vertical. The heads which will be at the top of the uprights will be playing peekaboo in one of my basement windows.

Hope this works and all of the explanation makes sense.

[mrklaw]

the horizontal arms move back and forth like a teeter totter, but the vertical arms stay vertical so the skeletons or heads or ghosts or whatever look like they are moving straight up and down.

[Death Wraith]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing with such nice photos. Some of us are stuck out in no-man's land with only the internet to help us. Looks like I have yet another project to work on!!

[Vlad]

Neat and simple, good work! Don't forget to post the final pics when you get those heads on.