CD.Bot
laser-cut wall-hanging CD-player mod
tags: decor , laser-cutter
Dec 2000 - Mar 2001
I had an old Sony portable discman, so I decided to make a new case for it. I removed the CD player from it's cheap plastic case and made this big robot for it out of corrugated plastic (on a laser cutter). All the pieces are designed to snap together. The CD itself spins vertically, as the right eye. As this wasn't meant to be a one-eyed pirate robot, I put a post in to allow another CD to sit as the left eye. The right hand ear is the play button, the left hand ear is the stop button.
The cardboard box images are of mock-ups I did to try and size up the protruding parts of the player to get as clean of a fit as possible. I ended up just scanning the player mechanism face down and then tracing the outline in Illustrator. The arms are actuated with little servos, but I never got around to programming them to dance. However, I know nothing about audio processing so I'm not sure how hard it would be to make it dance in time to the beat.
Sadly the lens of the CD player got dirty, so now poor CD-Bot is sitting dismantled in my basement.
Downloads
