Running Reindeer Mechanism

One project that I used my CNC router extensively to build was a group of three electromechanical reindeer mechanisms. This was for a Christmas display that I was commissioned to work on. The mechanism was designed in Solidworks and started out as a Theo Jansen mechanism that I then heavily modified by swapping the front and back parts and adding another joint to the legs. This mechanism isn’t designed to walk on its own. Instead, it is suspended in mid air and runs without its feet touching anything. I made four of these mechanisms in total. Three of them were delivered to my client and the fourth now proudly hangs on my workshop wall. The mechanism sounds quite noisy in the video but that is due to an auto audio gain feature on my video camera. Note that you clearly can hear a bird chirping outside at one point in the video.

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