K-2SO Cosplay Project with 3D Printed Mechanical Hands
June 08, 2023
Recently a friend of mine, Dave, approached me to ask for help putting together a K-2SO costume for the C2E2 convention in Chicago. He wanted me to help with the mechanical hands since he knew of my work with the e-NABLE Volunteer Community making free 3D printed prosthetic devices for people around the world.
Ivan Owen, the c of the original 3D printable prosthetic design that paved the way for the e-NABLE community, offered to help us with the project.
Designing the 3D Models
To save some time, we started with a K-2SO hand model on Thingiverse, created by Stormtrooperguy:
Ivan recreated the model for the K-2SO hands in Autodesk Fusion 360, adding channels for the control cables and an adapter that would connect the hand to a lazy-susan device. As a result of this mechanism, Dave would be able to rotate the mechanical hands:
The Lazy Susan Adapter
Dan Pelland, who recently joined the 3D Universe team, designed a handle and adapter to connect to the lazy susan device:
3D Printing the K-2SO Hand Parts
All of the hand parts were 3D printed on an Ultimaker S5 3D printer using Ultimaker NFC Tough PLA:
Assembly
Once the parts were printed, we assembled the K-2SO hands using some basic hardware:
Then we added the control cables and elastic lines that would allow the fingers to open and close:
Here we have an early version of the lazy susan adapter connected to one of the hands:
We fabricated the rest of the arm frame using aluminum bar stock, and a couple of youth shin guards were used to mount each arm onto the operator's upper forearm:
We made some leather loops to go over Dave's fingers, for operating the finger control lines.
Final Testing
Once the arms were ready, we did some testing to check the overall proportions. Dave would be standing on dry-wall stilts to achieve the target height of K-2SO. And with the extended arms, the droid's hands ended up coming just about to the knees, which is exactly what we were shooting for.
The End Result
And here's the final result, as seen at C2E2 2019 in Chicago:
The crowd really enjoyed the K-2SO costume, and it was a lot of fun to see all of the reactions!
This video shows how the whole project unfolded, leading up to the final debut at C2E2 2019 in Chicago.
The Chicago Police produced a video for the 2019 Star Wars Celebration event, and Dave is featured in the video in his K-2SO costume at around 5:20. Check out the full video below, or click here to jump straight to the part with Dave.
For More Information
Check out Dave on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unboundgeekdom/
A big thanks to Ivan Owen for all of his design work and to Dan Pelland for his help with the assembly process!
More 3D Universe blog posts:
Learn more about making 3D printed prosthetic devices here.
Learn how to get started with 3D printing here.
Learn about the Ultimaker S5 here.
Written By Jeremy Simon
There is so much happening in 3D printing right now! There is an enormous global community driving development, aided by each others’ efforts thanks to the Internet....
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