Building a Portal Turret with motion controlled audio and lighting

Step 10 Making the Eye

Looking into the soul of an armed and emotionless turret can be slightly hazardous to your health but I really wanted to go all out just in case someone was so inclined as to gaze into the eye of fate.

Taking the time to make sure it came out as good as possible was very important.  After finding a suitable plastic lens I could start on making all of the other necessary pieces. Here is an image of everything that makes up a finished eye. The black disks were designed and laser cut to create the groove pattern you see in the final eye. The translucent disk will help diffuse the red LEDs, and the black rod will create the dot in the center.

After roughly fitting all the pieces together I noticed that the light spill coming down the sides of the lens was really messing with the overall look of the eye. I resolved this issue by coating the inside of the lens with black electrical tape to prevent any light leak from happening. This way the only light you will see is coming through the translucent surface of the eye. The final result is perfect.

All that's left is to install the eye and connect up the power. With the electronics finished and installed, all that remains is the detail work.


Materials used for this stage
Skil Router bit cover from Lowes
2" protoboard
4 bright red LEDs
Custom Laser cut and engraved eye detail pieces from ponoko
translucent plastic sheet
Small piece of black plastic rob
black electrical tape

Laser Cutting done by Ponoko.com

Comments

[halosk8ingking]

i was wondering if the eye design was up on ponoko or if you could upload it some how. it would a great help to me
-halosk8ingking

[dMFNt]

Excellent work CitizenSnips! I think I'm going to try and give it the old college try with your portal turret here.

One quick question regarding the eye. Are your two designs saved anywhere on Ponoko's website?

[Ysdrem]

Haha ! I first thought it should be that type of cover, but... I imagined that would be too easy. Well found ;p

(Thank you for your link & your availability, by the way)

[Ysdrem]

Hey there,

Really impressed by your whole work o_o

What kind of glass/plastic'(?) did you use (the one you beveled with router bits) ?

Thanks :)

[CitizenSnips]

Are you referring to the lens used to make the eye?

[Ysdrem]

Hmm, Not the black pieces (that you laser cut via Ponoko.com) but the glass bowl (the curved part of the eye).

Thanks for you reply ;)

[CitizenSnips]

The clear plastic part of the eye is the cover from a Skil router bit that I picked up at Lowes. Here is a quick link so you can see what I'm talking about.

Link