Week 3 – Jan 29-Feb 4
Further material/design exploration for purring CuddleBit.
Silicone body
First pass at attempting to cast a silicone body. Used some bowls scavenged from my house as a mold (that stuff’s not toxic, right…?).
Ran into some trouble with the liquid rubber material – it was a little difficult to mix and pour, and as a result the cast did not seem to be terribly successful. Some parts still haven’t cured yet (it has now been almost a week), and it seems that it will likely remain this way. Will try again with new material.
![](https://blogs.ubc.ca/cuddlebits18/files/2018/02/IMG_0923-300x225.jpg)
First pass at casting with liquid rubber.
Motor adjustments
Minor tweaks to the frequency of the purring motor. As previously noted, in designs where the motor is entirely encased in a quasi-fluid (as opposed to on top of a water cushion), lower frequencies transmit better.
IMG_0928
Combined design
Toyed with the idea of mixing DOFs – in particular, breathing and purring.
Two particular designs that came to mind were 1) silicone air “bubble” with the purring motor embedded in a thick silicone base, with hydraulics/pneumatics for breathing motions 2) same base, but a skeleton ribcage embedded in a thin layer of silicon for breathing motions.
1)
2)
Another design that we briefly considered was 3) to have the same purring bottom, but a skeleton-only top.