Today we had a herd of Elephants running around here at CTH. They are 3D printed and part of Dmitriy’s most recent project, a three dimensional zoetrope. He started by modeling 10 different elephants, each representing one-tenth of a stride. Each model is printed and attached to a spinning disk powered by a stepper motor. A bank of LEDs flash 10 times per revolution resulting in the illusion that the elephants are running. The contraption is powered by an old ATX power supply, 12v going to the stepper motor and 5v for the logic. An Arduino controls the stepper motor and times the LEDs.

Notice the spinning plate, it has several rings of holes. These holes are used to locate and position the pieces. That way, the pieces can be changed quickly to watch other animations on the same machine.

Dmitriy designed all the parts himself and made them available here, so anyone interested in making something similar can do so. The video below doesn’t do this zeotrope justice…