Here is a picture of the finished Opportunity Mars Rover (it has a twin called Spirit but I like the name Opportunity better.) I’ve been working on for what seems like forever and was just about done before my motherboard fried on me. I decided to get rid of the wooden casters in the wheels which would have been cut at the same time as the rest of the model to reduce the part count and cutting costs. The result is the same, a spinning wheel but it just doesn’t have the “slippage” it had before.
Opportunity Mars Rover - made of wood! I wasn't looking for 100% accuracy, only a pretty accurate representation of one.
Release time line
I’d expect this model to take a solid two weeks to animate and render, including making the assembly instructions and the related EPS file. The measurements of this model are big too… roughly a meter square (length and width) with a height of half a meter using 6mm board! This is by far the largest and most complicated piece I’ve done and I look forward to doing a few simpler things afterwards just to take a mental break from all the angles and calculations I had to do while building this wooden Mars Rover.
Good job Jon !
I’m curious to see how are doo the wheel’s !
Your most big fan, Stéphane.
Thanks Stephane for your kind words… the wheels look the same but the internal assembly that use to make them up has been heavily simplified.
Jon
Great to see this design fully modeled. How about the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (two separate pieces) and Lunar Rover Vehicle as some “simpler things”?;)
The wonderful thing about WoodMarvels.com is that there are endless projects that catch my interest… I still have a strong desire to make an aircraft carrier but we will see… right now, I’m “enjoying” the process of itemizing and rendering out the animation for this model which will be rather long in addition to producing the soundtrack to go along with it. I also want to release all my models as DXF as well and re-release all the puzzles as EPS files.
Thanks for your comment Josh, much appreciated!
Jon