instructables

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine

by er1c3dp

(UPDATE: thanks to comments from petercd and object myself.

Kiteman - I have improved the turbine design. See
Step8 : Wind Catcher) Using my Strandbeest turbine kit as an example, I'll
illustrate the general process I went through to
--- design it, as well as some of the speci cs of modelling
the 3d printed gears that made this design work.
I've seen a lot of amazing 3d printed things, and have
often found myself trying to gure out how they were Following the steps in this Instructable, you will be
designed and modelled, how they went from being able to make your own Strandbeest turbine kit, and
an awesome idea to becoming an actual physical 3d more importantly, get a general idea of the design
printed object. I believe gaining such an process which you can adopt for your own 3d printed
understanding leads to a deeper appreciation of the projects.
object, as well as the ability to make or repair that

1
1

1. Theo Jansen's Strandbeest Animaris Geneticus Parvus #5 1. improved turbine vanes, see Step 8 : Wind Catcher
2. my turbine add-on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmO1UIEUu-E

Step 1: An Idea
3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 1
Everything begins with an idea. the Strandbeest, how the gear ratios converted the
(In this case, the initial idea wasn't even entirely propeller movement to the legs. I didn't want to
original!) replicate the propeller kit, so I started looking into the
di erence between horizontal axis propeller-like
Like many, I was really fascinated by the way the live- systems vs vertical axis helicopter-like systems. (At one
sized Strandbeests (by Theo Jansen) walk and interact point, I thought maybe I could give my Strandbeest
with the wind. I got myself one of the 3d printed ight capabilities too!)
miniature strandbeests when I found out they were
available at Shapeways. And when the original Without an engineering background, a lot of the
propeller kit came out to give the Strandbeest wind maths and physics was beyond me, but I discovered 2
propulsion, I thought to myself 'hey, I can probably main characteristics of a vertical axis system that I
make something like that!' wanted to explore: that it could be driven by wind
from any direction, and be more stable spinning
I began by looking at the propeller kit to try and around its centre of mass.
understand how it worked: how the kit attached to

1. only 4 components to the turbine kit

Step 2: What You Will Need

Hardware:

Strandbeest - Animaris Geneticus Parvus #5 from Shapeways

a caliper

It helps to have the Strandbeest physically in front of you, to understand how it works and to visualise how your
design will interact with it. A caliper will allow you to build an accurate reference 3d model to base the design on.

Software:

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 2

 Sketchup
Involute gears plugin by Cadalog Inc
Curviloft plugin by fredo6

It might be easier to model some of the gear parts with programs like Solidworks, but I want to show how this can
be done with freely available software.

For this instructable, I will assume you already know how to build simple 3d models, and have an understanding of
the nuances of modelling for 3d printing.

If you are just starting out, Sketchup is a great rst program to learn to build 3d models with. If you are familiar
with 3d modelling, but haven't designed speci cally for 3d printing before, this article by Shapeways designer
Laurie Berenhaus gives a detailed overview of the 3d-printing-speci c issues that need to be considered.

Lastly, this design is made to be printed with the nylon polyamide12 material on a Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)
printer. The SLS printing process o ers a higher level of detail over desktop FDM printers, and the nylon material is
very sturdy with a bit of ex to it, making it perfect for tiny mechanical parts.

1. This is the Parvus #7 (with pointy feet) which is no longer available from
Shapeways. You can still get the Parvus #5 which is identical, apart from
having wider feet.

Step 3: Measuring and Creating the Reference Model

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 3

Before we start the actual design, we need an It is very important to work o an accurate reference
accurate reference 3d model. model, otherwise you might nd the new parts not
tting properly after they are printed. With the caliper,
When I rst started this design, I felt that it would be you can obtain fairly accurate measurements of the
quite neat to t all the new add-on parts to the center overall dimensions and member thicknesses.
frame of the Strandbeest. So this central section is all Depending on the scale of the design, it is usually ok
we need for our reference model. to round measurements o to the nearest 0.5 ~

1.0mm (even though SLS prints can produce details included my sketchup reference model that you can
down to 0.2mm, the ex of the material allows a bit of download and use.
tolerance)

If you don't have a caliper (or the Strandbeest), I've

1. this is a good spot for the add-on 1. model only the important parts
2. always easier to start with a 2d plan or elevation, then push/pull to
create the 3d form

Download
https://www.instructables.com/ORIG/FHC/RQR7/HVTWC4G3/FHCRQR7HVTWC4G3.skp
…

Step 4: Spliting the Design Up Into Smaller Components

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The next step is to split the design up into separate 3. step down gears (red & green) - using pairs of
components that work together to drive the legs of di erent sized gears to slow down the 'output'
the Strandbeest. Each component can then be tackled rotation and smooth out the Strandbeest's leg
individually as a smaller, more manageable design movements
problem.
4. a clip-on frame to attach to the Strandbeest and
This sort of approach work quite well for mechanical hold these add on components in place. This can be
designs, especially ones that seems a little too done last as its shape and size depends very much on
complex at rst glance. the rst 3 components.

This step is really about de ning the design objectives At this stage, we also have a general idea of using the
for each of the components: top part of the Strandbeest frame as an axle for some
of the gears, and of the need to attach the last gear to
1. turbine (blue) - to catch the wind, spinning on a the drive shaft. How to actually achieve this on a
vertical axis closed frame would be another design problem we'll
need to tackle down the track.
2. bevel gears (red) - to change the plane of rotation
from horizontal to the vertical

4
5
2

1. 1. a turbine spinning on the vertical axis to catch the wind

2. 3. provide step-down gear changes so that high rpm at the top is
converted to slower, more even rotation for the legs
3. 4. the last gear to spin the central drive shaft, making the strandbeest walk
4. 2. a way to translate the rotation from the vertical to the horizontal axis
5. this part of the strandbeest is perfect to act as an axle for the gears

Step 5: Gears 101

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When I rst designed this, I had no prior experience a ng le of 25deg, to get a wider base to the gear teeth.
modelling gears. Luckily there are a lot of guides and
tutorials on the Internet, and I found this one by For this pair of gears, we will use a step down ratio of
Richard|Capolight particularly helpful. 1:4, so that 4 revolutions of the small gear = 1
revolution of the drive shaft gear. This ratio applies to
With the Involute Gear plugin for Sketchup, it is quite the num be r o f t e e t h on each gear (8 : 32) as well as
straight forward to generate a gear pro le based on a the pit ch ra dius of the gears (3.3mm : 13.2mm). The
few input pa ra m e t e rs and then push/pull the pitch radius for each gear is calculated from the
pro le up to create a simple spur gear. distance between the centre of the two gears, ie the
distance between the drive shaft and the axle.
In more complex machines, the pressure angle of a
gear will a ect the e ciency and the backlash (gap drive shaft~axle distance = 16.5mm = x + 4x, so x =
movement between gears) of the system. These won't 3.3mm and 4x = 13.2mm.
be an issue here because our gear won't be spinning
at that high a speed and the tolerance of our overall No content with a simple spur gear and wanting to
system can be fairly loose. make use of 3d printing's ability to construct complex
geometries, we will turn this pair of gears into
The consideration for 3d printing is more critical: that herringbone gears. This can be done by rotating the
each gear tooth needs to be thick enough top face of each gear by the same amount, relative to
(>0.7~0.8mm) to not break under load, and that there the gear teeth (eg rotate by half a tooth), and then
is enough clearance between the gear teeth (>0.6mm) mirroring that section to form the other half of the
to prevent them from fusing together during gear. With herringbone gears, the pair of gears will be
printing. For these reasons, we will use a pre s s ure self centering and won't slide out along the axle.

1. a pair of herringbone gears, stepping down with a 1:4 ratio 1. gear profile generated by the plugin, based on the 3
parameters above

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 1
3 1

1. 1:4 ratio 1. rotating the top face by half a tooth

2. large gear centred on the Strandbeest drive shaft 2. mirroring to create the other half of the herringbone
3. small gear centred on the top bar of the Strandbeest frame

Step 6: More Gears

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We have one more set of gears to create, and this one Take the gear pro les and lay them onto our 2
is a bit more challenging. This is the pair of bevel truncated cones. Then, for our larger gear, separate
gears at the top that transfer rotation from the out 1 gear tooth each from the inner and outer
vertical axis of the turbine to the horizontal axis of the pro les.
gears. In addition, we also want this gear pair to step
down. Both tooth pro les then need to be rotated to
become perpendicular to the meshing plane, using
To model this we need to consider the bezel gears as 2 the pitch circle as the rotation axis.
pairs of gear pro les, one pair on the outside (red),
one pair on the inside (blue). Start by modelling a pair Using the curviloft plugin, we can then join the 2
of truncated cones that, when put together, form a rotated tooth pro les to form 1 tooth of our bevel
right angle. The radiuses of the circles at the top and gear. Copy rotate this along 15° (360° / 24 teeth) to set
bottom of the cones will be the pitch radiuses of our the position of the next tooth, so we can add in a face
gears (inside 3mm:9mm, outside 4mm:12mm), and to the trough between the 2 gear teeth.
the shared inclined plane will be where the 2 gears
mesh. Group this tooth & trough module together, copy
rotate it in 15° multiples to complete the circle, close
We will use a step down ratio of 1:3 this time, due to the hole in the middle and we have our rst bevel
the size restriction on the larger gear from where it gear.
sits on the axle. Along with the gears from the
previous step, we will have an overall 1:12 step down, Repeat the above process for the smaller gear (rotate
giving 12 revolutions of the turbine to 1 revolution of in 45° multiples, 360° / 8 teeth) and we will have
the Strandbeest drive shaft. The number of teeth and nished modelling all gears for this design.
pitch radiuses will follow the 1:3 ratio - (8:24 teeth,
inside 3mm:9mm, outside 4mm:12mm), and we will
again use 25deg for the pressure angle.

1 2
1

1. a pair of bevel gears stepping down with a 1:3 ratio 1. a pair of truncated cones, forming 90 degrees
2. 1:3 ratio
3. 1:3 ratio

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 8

 1

2 1

1. overlaying the gear profiles onto the 2 truncated cones 1. rotating the gear tooth profiles
2. separating 1 gear tooth each from the inner and outer pair

2
1

1. using curviloft plugin to create the gear tooth 1. adding a face to the trough between
2. rotate by 15degree multiples to fill the circle

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 1

1. a pair of properly meshing bevel gears!

Step 7: Attaching the Gears to the Strandbeest

The gears need to be inserted into a close loop/frame, less than 0.6mm.
and since we do not want to break the Strandbeest
frame or the drive shaft, we will need to create The small herringbone gear and large bevel gear
openings in the gears. need to be connected to act as one component in this
gear system, and be tted onto the axle at the top of
The large herringbone gear need to be attached the Strandbeest frame. To achieve this, we'll make an
rmly onto the cruciform drive shaft. To do this, we'll opening from the side of the gear to the gear's centre,
modify the gear so it is made in two parts, allowing while keeping the gear teeth intact. With the exibility
the gear to open, t onto the shaft, and then close of the material, we can make this opening (0.8mm)
around it. And the two parts of the gear will need to narrower than the axle (1.5mm diameter), so that the
stay rmly together when the gear is spinning. gear will bend & clip into place with a bit of pushing,
but stay in place when spinning on the axle.
Through trail and error, I found that leaving no gap
(0mm) between the separate parts actually gave a To help the gear spin as freely as possible, we will add
very snug t. With the ex and surface roughness of in cylindrical bumpers on the inside of the gear
the SLS nylon material, the gears parts are able to sleeve, minimising the contact area and friction
hold together and onto the drive shaft fairly well. The between it and the axle. 0.2mm clearance from the
two gear parts will need to be separated for printing bumpers to the axle will give it enough room to spin
though, to prevent them from fusing together during without catching.
printing, due to the clearance between parts being

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 10

 1
1

2 3
2

1. gear with gap for axle 1. 4spoke gear wheel to save material
2. gear in 2 parts for drive shaft 2. modelled with 0mm clearance to the drive shaft for a snug fit
3. ability to open and close the gear wheel

2
1

1. hooks to hold the parts together once they are in place 1. 4 spoke gear wheel again to save material
2. opening without affecting the gear teeth

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 11

 1

1. opening slightly narrower than the axle 1. bumpers along the inside of the gear sleeve

1. amazing level of detail from SLS 3d prints

Step 8: The Wind Catcher

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 12

(UPDATE - thanks to comments from petercd and The turbine also wants to be as light weight as
Kiteman) possible, to minimise load & friction so it can start up
My original turbine design had the vanes orientated with less force, and spin more freely. To do this, the
at to the direction of the spin, resulting in a lot of turbine is modelled as an open frame structure, with
self generated 'eggbeater' drag. I've rotated the vanes each turbine vane designed to take a thin paper
to minimize this drag so the turbine spins with less membrane panel.
e ort. The rounded ends of the vanes doesn't look
that bad either! Another consideration for the turbine design is how it
sits in relation to the Strandbeests. The bottom of our
--- turbine is positioned about 20mm above the top of
the Strandbeest frame, giving it enough clearance
In this step, we will be tackling the last moving over the legs to not catch on them when it is spinning.
component of our design, the turbine. The diameter of the turbine is about 150mm, to
match the overall width of the Strandbeest. The
Wanting to understand how the vertical axis turbine turbine vanes are about 40mm wide x 16mm high to
works to catch wind from any direction, I rst looked provide enough surface area to catch the wind,
at cup type anemometers. I didn't want to use the cup without being too tall as to unbalance the
design for our turbine as it didn't t aesthetically Strandbeest.
(with no spherical elements on the Strandbeest). So I
took the principle behind the cup anemometer and An 8 arm-turbine design is adopted, perhaps from an
applied it to something more rectangular. The turbine subconscious bias for the 8 compass directions.
leaves are angled in such a way that wind from any Generally, a higher number of turbine leafs gives a
uniform direction will catch on more surfaces on one smoother spin.
side of the turbine than the other, causing it to turn.

1. from wind speed meters, the 3 arm cup anemometer

2. more force on the right, causing the turbine to turn anti-clockwise

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 13

 2
1 3

4
2

1. trying to keep the structure lightweight but rigid 1. eggbeater drag

2. open frame leaf ready for paper infill afterwards 2. eggbeater drag
3. rotated vanes to minimise drag
4. curved vanes

1. improved turbine with rotated vanes. shape of the curved vanes is quite
nice too!

Step 9: And to Hold It All Together

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And nally, the clip-on frame that holds everything the vertical axis while the turbine spins.
together. (although it actually only holds the turbine
and the small bevel gear in place over the To get the turbine to spin freely, small cylindrical and
strandbeest!) spherical bumpers are added between the turbine
neck and the 'C' bracket to reduce contact area and
Firstly, the small bevel gear needs to be connected to friction, similar to those used in one of the previous
the bottom of the turbine so they act as one steps.
component, and the clip-on frame needs to hold this
turbine in place while it spins. A 'C' shaped bracket is For our clip-on frame to attach securely to the
modelled at the top of our clip-on frame for the Strandbeest, small 'c' type clips are used on the 6
turbine to slot into, with the opening of the 'C' is corners of the triangular Strandbeest frame.
slightly narrower (4.0mm) than the neck of our
turbine/gear (5.8mm diameter) so the turbine stays in And to nish it all up, the small 'c' clips, the 'C' bracket
place once it is clipped in. and the pin are then connected together to create our
clip-on frame. Generally 1.2~1.5mm thick frame
A hole (2.4mm diameter) is made at the bottom centre members will be sturdy enough for frames of this size.
of small bevel gear, for small pin (2.0mm diameter) to
slot into. The pin holds the turbine's centre in place on

1
2

1. the turbine rotor assembly 1. 'C' bracket with bumpers against the turbine neck, and the upper and
2. clip on frame lower plates
2. pin and spigot to the bottom of the bevel gear

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 15

 2 4

1. 'lego man hand' type clips

2. 'C' bracket
3. pin for turbine gear
4. 'C' bracket
5. cross brace to make the clip on frame more rigid

Step 10: Print, Test, Refine, Print...

There you have it. Now all you have to do is send it o unusual to have to adjust and print a design a several
to get it printed (unless you're lucky enough to have times to get it to the point where you're happy with it.
access to a SLS machine). Depending on how accurate
your reference model is, and how well you have Once the turbine add-on is working more or less as it
allowed for the right amount of tolerances, your should, you can even test out di erent gear ratios and
Strandbeest turbine might t perfectly on rst print, di erent turbine designs and con gurations.
or you might need to do a bit of re-modelling. It is not

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 16

 2

1. testing out a smaller step down ratio - legs movement not as smooth and
gears more prone to jamming
2. first iteration - neck too narrow, turbine wobbled and spun out of the 'C'
bracket
3. testing with 4 arm turbine - not enough catching area to spin smoothly

yes thi is a very amazing work.

But how do you have it this idear?
Amazing work. A real good example of the good uses for 3D Printers. This reminds me of that
walking metalic 80 Foot Tarantula spider from the Will Smith film Wild Wild West. I know you've
surely seen it but in case not youtu.be/NHRtlXDOqOU. And to quote Will Smith from the film "Nice
to see an invention that actually works". If that works as a prototype, then theoretically there is no
reason why it wouldn't made from metal and much bigger. Doesn't have to be 80 feet long. Maybe
the size of a horse carriage or something. Mind you it might only work on windy days!! That said,
maybe you could make one that was manually powered by cycling to spin a turbine that spins the
gears etc. We have a 3D Printer noob forum at My3DPrinter.club will have to put this on there and
look forward to seeing your progress. Regards.
it's a steampunk crawler! now if this were made of metal and used a steam powered turbine for
power, then it'd be steampunk to the nines.
now i just need to figure out how to 3dprint a miniature steam engine ;)

hahaha if only that were possible.

Guaranteed to make any ol' Gizmo Maker smile! :)

Favorited and Blogged:
http://faz-voce-mesmo.blogspot.pt/2014/06/biga-e-imprimir-em-3d-uma-stranbeest.html
glad you like it :)
thanks for blogging about my instructable!
:)

awesome work, congrats!

thanks!

It's called a Theo Jansen machine, but I think that this is rad

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 17

no it is called "strandbeest" and it's designed by Theo Jansen a Dutch artist. Strandbeest
translates to beachbeast, which is revers to it walking on the Dutch beaches.
fyi http://www.strandbeest.com/

Could we see it working / walking?

video added! (I think I need a bigger fan though :P)

In its present config the vanes tend to shade each other due to too many wind vanes so that its
become a bit of an "eggbeater".
The main culprit would be the end vane shape, the Vee shape was a great idea but you've cocked
it at an angle so that it is inherently a flat with respect to the arm rotation, hence the fairly equal
drag properties on leading and trailing sides.
Try adding another section to the outside to create more of an angled bowl shape with a reduced
number of arms.
I would imagine 5 vanes should be enough with longer arms for more torque if needed.
Thanks petercd and Kiteman! I'll definitely try that out for an improved version of the turbine vanes.

For video purposes, you could have used a hair-dryer blowing on one side of the turbine.
petercd is right about the vanes - looking from above, try rotating each "V" by around 20 degree
clockwise, and maybe closing up the V a little, to make it more pointy. That would still fit with the
aesthetic theme.
+1

like it

I like

3d Printed Gears: Strandbeest Turbine: Page 18