Introduction: Robotic Headless Horseman
I thought it would be fun to use my JD robot to hand out candy to people visiting my office. In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to make a costume for JD and The Headless Horseman was my first choice. Being a video game enthusiast, The Team Fortress 2 Horseless Headless Horseman seemed like the perfect costume for my JD robot. You can check out the Team Fortress Wiki page here.
I have entered this 'ible into some of the Halloween themed contests. Hope you enjoy it and consider giving me a vote.
Step 1: Meet JD From EZ Robot
My JD robot serves as the base for this project; however, The scope of this instructable is how to get JD into the Halloween spirit and not on how to assemble a JD robot. For that you can visit EZ-robot.com
The EZ-robot products page has complete JD Robot kits available for sale; however, EZ-robot also makes the .stl files or 3D models, of all the clip n' play parts needed to build a JD robot, available for download. So if you have access to a 3D printer you could build one for much less. I printed all my parts and purchased hobby servos online for less. If you go this route, be sure to buy high torque servos, especially for the legs. I haven't bought the cmera yet, although its on my wishlist. I did purchase the EZBV4 controller and the 7.4 V Li battery from EZ Robot's website. I built mine for around $240 instead of the $430 price tag of the kit. There was considerably more work involved with printing it myself and using third party servos. For more info on my assembly of JD you cn visit my website at www.DivideWorks.com
For this instructable JD will need to lose his head.
Step 2: Pumpkin Head
Now that we have a headless robot we need a pumpkin. My first thought was to 3D print a hollow pumpkin with Jack-O-Lantern features, but that didn't work out for me. In fact, it could qualify for the epic fails category. I did consider using a real pumpkin, but even the smallest I could find were much too heavy for the micro servos that carry the head. Finally I found what I was looking for on the dining room table. Hoping it would not be missed, I re-purposed a small foam core pumpkin from the cornucopia to serve as my headless horseman's pumpkin head. I chose to draw on the eyes and mouth with sharpie, because I did not think I could hollow out the pumpkin without destroying it. I did need to carve out a rectangular cavity, to provide a mount for the head to the micr servo.
Step 3: The Head Taker
Since this headless horseman has no horse, he's gonna need a weapon. The Team Fortress Horseless Headless Horseman carries an axe known as the Head Taker. I had some 1/4" balsa wood laying around, so that was my material of choice. In hind sight, this would have been a good candidate for creating a scale-able vector graphic or .svg file to cut the axe out on the Makerspace Epilogue laser cutter. Instead I used a rotozip tool to route out the rough cuts and a sander to fine tune the edges. I was concerned with the balsa wood splitting, so I opted to draw in the snarling grimace and eyes instead of cutting it out.
Step 4: Finishing Touches
The Headless Horseman wouldn't be complete without a costume. I found an old black tee shirt to donate to the cause. I kept the garb simple and cut out a pancho style cover with enough fabric to wrap around from the font of the body to the back. I used a couple of safety puns to secure the shirt in place. The cape will help hide the seam.
For the cape I once again borrowed from my family. This time it was my sons Star Wars Mr Potato Head set's Darth Vader cape. It's a perfect fit.
For black gloves & boots I used electrical tape to cover JD's shoes and hands. I used another strip of tape as a belt around the waste. Finally, the perfect twig growing out of his head and now were ready for some trick or treat-ers.
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