BB-8 Droide Out of the 3D Printer

The developers of XRobots have rebuilt the BB-8 droid of Star Wars. To make this possible they have used a 3D printer to create the needed parts.

James Bruton has already developed three BB-8 droids and each one of them was better than the previous one. If you are not a Star Wars fan: The BB-8 is a robot from Star Was that is very simple, only a ball with a head on it. The ball is moving while the head sits on top of the ball.

The first version of the robot was very simple and had only the goal to stabilize the ball. With the first prototype he wasn’t very successful and the robot had big problems.

After this prototype the developer has looked at other movies with the BB-8 and had sawn that the robot works a little bit different than his first approach. Than James Bruton started to develop the second prototype – this prototype was already very good and looked semi real. Most people would have already been satisfied with this version but not James Bruton. He developed a third prototype and published the development process and all needed files. The parts for the robot were 3D printed out of ABS with a Lulzbot TAZ. The electronic to stabilize and move the droid has a power consumption of up to 900watt for a short period of time.

The whole project is open source and you can download all files. If you are interested in a more detailed explanation you can watch a whole video series about the droid on YouTube. Parallel to this development another group of people tries to create a BB-8 but they were not as successful as XRobots and James Bruton.