We talked about how type of project we want to invest ourselves, and the idea of doing something in the fantastic domain came naturally. So we though about doing an iconic thing from a Marvel's movie, and that's how we decide to reproduce the Thor's hammer in our way.

Why you see here is our prototype. It is made of cardboard and shows the led's positions. However, we realised that it was not possible to put some on the smaller surfaces (those below the picture), as we want this part to move. Indeed, the main goal of our project is to have 2 capacities: being able to light progressively once it had been hit, and make a thunder sound. So capt this information, we thought about a moving part (with strings) that would touch a capacitive sensor.

Finally:

So basically our idea for this part of the hammer is to make a push-in/push-up system to activate the capacitive sensor when the side is gonna touch a face. It gonna work with 2 planks. The first one is going to be the wood plank that is the actual side of the hammer, and the second one is going to be a shift wood plank. So the two have a little space between each other but are still related by strings, and here is where our push-in/push-up system is gonna works. Also between these planks, we are gonna put a little ball made of aluminium and of balloon to make the touch connection with the capacitive sensor.

- The frame: We were advised not to print the hole hammer with the 3D machine. That is why we decided to print only the frame/armature. We use the software Fusion 360 to make the shape of our armature, to after print it in 3d with Cura. But our armature was only made of surfaces, so before implementing it in Cura, we had to give them some volume. We started to make it parts by parts, but we encounter a problem for the bevels because we cannot just give them volume with the tool “Extrusion”. So to solve it, we had to select the entire body and make it volumic, and it worked !

- The faces: As just said, we decided to create some part by 3D printing, and others by laser cutting. That is why we decided to laser cut wood for the faces. 

- The plexiglass: We asked Capucine for an led stick in order to choose the right blue and the right transparency. We choose the one on the right, as it had an opaque blue. The point was to represent lighting as much as possible and to cover the led's. So to light, without showing it was fake.

- the frame: Here are the changes that we made to limit as much as possible the printing time. We put an infill density of 20% in order to be as strong as possible, as the point of the hammer is to hit things.

We choose the colour white as it could be easier to cover. The pictures are all below.

- the faces: We decided to cut some wood to the perfect sizes lacking on the hammer. To do so, we used the function "projection" on fusion on our frame.

Inside the faces we cut some bands of the size of our led's to be filled by plexiglass (see below).

- The plexiglass: To create the "lighting effect", we thought about band that could propagate light. That is why we cut the plexiglass bands the same size as the holes wood bands.

After having the perfect frame, we booked a slot to print it in 3D. It lasted 17 hours, and the result is right here :

Us removing the shelf :

Finally :

We then modeled the cut of our wood pieces on Adobe Illustrator, being precise on the empty part that we were going to leave to insert our blue plexiglas crosses:

The wood's laser cutting:

The plexiglas's laser cutting:

The final result:

The assembly:

We ordered a foam ball because it was the exact type of foam that we wanted for our project. We cut it to make 2 sides to put in our hammer and make our components to isolate them and stall them so that they do not move using the hammer afterwards.

The pre-result of the assembly:

The point here was to activate the thunder sound every time we hit the hammer. As much as the captative sensor system works, it is not the case of the sound. After months of hard work on this aspect we could not manage to make it work. First it was the wire that were broken, then we realised that we had a broken component (MP3 player). Still with a new one we could not manage to make it work.

There we started: a simple handle of 15 cm made of grey PLA by 3D printing.

- second version: we then thought, that it could be nice to reproduce the "metal rings" of Thor's hammer. 

Then we thought: why not create those rings with real aluminium wire and use the fact that humans are conductive to activate the hole system (thanks to Capucine). She thought about "the stairs of Chambord" that never touch themselves so that we are the ones creating contact when we touch both of the wires. That is why we created guidelines to help the wire « follow the right path ».

Here we had two failures due to the 3D printer:

- 1st one due to the low quality of the wire:

- 2nd one due to the machine that stopped the impression:

- the 3rd was the right one thanks to Capucine (again) who let us use her personal 3D printer:

Then we inserted the aluminium wires inside the holes with respect to the guidelines.

Then we fixed it. To do so we centered our handle and reported the holes with a blue pen.

We created the holes and screwed the whole thing together.

After that we wanted to verify that the hole system worked, and it appeared so that just Enzo was able to make it work! The humidity of the hands was a factor that we did not thought about. But it worked!

As it is a tough call to solder aluminium, we used pods to connect the aluminium wire to the arduino cable. After that we protected the whole thing with a sleeve that we heated with a lighter to take the perfect shape.

We spent the whole semester implementing codes and electrical connections in order to operate the components we wanted to use: sensors, leds. With the use of our knoledge, and by relying on video media and sites, we managed to build codes and connections suitable for our needs.

We ordered some leds, as well as sensors and emittor.

For the leds:

After, we cut crosses in light cardboard to be able to stick very precisely the leds in crosses so that it fitted with the crosses in plexiglas, and thus, create this effect of blue light in cross. Also, we used only one strip of leds, because we did not want to use several segments of leds, it would have been too complicated

Then we wired it with a prototype of what you saw on step 8 (we just took to aluminium wires (in gold in the picture): and it worked!

As you see, when a person is holding the two wires with its hand it lights the leds.

As said before that was not the case of the sound but still here is one of the wiring that we tried:

To still show you that the push-up system worked we decided to put a button. It won’t be the sound of thunder but the system works.

Finally, we decided to solder everything and to put some sleeves to protect the hole thing and take off the bread board: