TW's mau5head

[Twilight Wolf]

So my last project was a rip-roaring success. For those of you wondering what happened, I *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ed up the case as of my last update, but I got a new one, but when I finished building the circuit it never worked and I couldn't figure out why. Ended up running out of time and just giving my girlfriend a movie instead, then I broke up with her anyway so the project has been indefinitely shelved. C'est la vie.

Anyway, I'm tackling another project for this year's SNAFUcon -- making a mau5head! I love deadmau5, and I know a ton of people who will be at the con do too, and since his new album comes out a few days before then, why not? I'm following this Instructables tutorial. I have a bit over two weeks to complete it, so I'm hoping for the best, but I've already gotten a good start. Before we jump right in, here are some basic specs:

The main body of the head will be made from a 14" transparent acrylic lamppost globe with a hardhat inside so I can actually wear it. The ears will be made of styrofoam insulation board, and the whole thing will be covered in stretch velvet, colors being navy blue and black. The eyes are cut from a 6" white acrylic globe and each will be lit by several blue LEDs. I won some cheap Sony mp3 player speakers on eBay, so I plan to stick those into the ears so I can play music from them. I will also be installing a small fan to keep myself from dying from heat. The LEDs and fan will be powered by as simple of a battery-powered setup as I can come up with.

Here's what I've done so far.

Here are my acrylic globes. You can see my Genesis and Sega CD in the background, so you can get a rough idea of how big they are.

Both globes all marked up and ready to be cut.

I went to Home Depot Wednesday afternoon and picked up some mounting hardware for the ears. That one neoprene washer in the middle is the wrong size and I didn't notice until I got home D:< I'll stop by and pick up the correct one after school today.

I also picked up some styrofoam insulation boards. These things are dirt cheap. $5 for two of these 1/2" x 2' x 4' boards. Given my tendency to screw stuff up, that's glorious.

Here are the eye pieces all cut. What a pain. After covering the lines in masking tape to help prevent chipping, I first tackled it with a hacksaw -- the blade was too dull so it was hard going, and the stress of the acrylic twisting after it got cut partway caused some cracks in the first piece. Mild cracks, thankfully, so it's still totally usable. Should have taped it up so it didn't move around at that point, in retrospect. Oh well. The second piece I cheated a bit on: in an unprecedented display of inappropriate tool use, I used my dad's belt sander as a cutting tool and sliced a nice neat eye dome from the remaining acrylic. Don't tell him that. Regardless, it turned out fantastic and with no cracks!

I used the belt sander on both pieces to neaten them up further and used a utility knife to shave off the burrs. I tried to remove the excess Sharpie with rubbing alcohol, but apparently the Uber-Sharpie I'd been using doesn't work that way. flax. I grabbed our bottle of Goof Off and tried it on a scrap piece of acrylic to make sure it wouldn't ruin the eye domes, and that got rid of it. Aww yeah. After slicing my finger on the sharp edge of one of the eye domes, I took some sandpaper to both of them, then cleaned them up with some soap and water. Slathered some Krazy Glue on the cracks on the one dome, as well as putting a few coats on the back to keep them from spreading. Hey, I fixed the broken cupholder in my Oldsmobile that way, why not? The finished product!

Finally, I cut out some strips of insulation board and carefully bent them into a curve as recommended in the tutorial, then taped the ends together to get them to stay that way until I can use them. Like this.

Today's plans: While at school, print out the template I found for the ear shapes, then transfer that to some posterboard and transfer that to the insulation and cut pieces out. If I get the speakers I won I'll also open those up and check them out and figure out how to fit them in the ears. After that, cut the 14" globe as needed, clean it up, and glue in the foam strips. Also gonna modify the hardhat I own and install that if I can. I shall pray that I can channel SS because I'm gonna need a LOT of hot glue.

And though it's not strictly mau5head-related, I made this shirt to wear with it at the con. Shameless promotion! I know it looks kinda sloppy, but it's supposed to.

So there's that! I'll do my best to keep you all updated on stuff. Wish me luck on the cutting the 14" globe, I'm gonna need it. D:

 

[Kickback]

deadmau5 sucks good luck, gonna put LED's in the eyes? Okay I might of missed that in the OP but still.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

deadmau5 sucks

Anyway, yeah, the eyes will each be lit by several blue LEDs. Gonna mount those to the acrylic and use some tinfoil or something as a reflector.

MORE PROGRESS

I got my speakers yesterday! They're pretty small, as you can see in the picture, and after some music testing I gave them a grade of "good enough" and proceeded to take them apart. What a hassle that was. However, they ended up being roughly an inch thick including the front grille, so they're perfect.

Next up is the hardhat. Using a hacksaw and some sandpaper I got it cut and sanded the top where it'll be secured with hot glue. Still need to drill some holes in the top for the hot glue. If I install it backwards in the head it's comfortable and my visibility is great.

And the acrylic globe was successfully cut as well. I had some help from my dad with this as it was too unwieldy to hold down and cut on my own. Some mild cracks started forming at the corners of the mouth, but some Krazy Glue took care of those admirably. As with the eye domes, I added some to the back to provide a tiny bit of extra reinforcement.

Before I went to bed I took the template I printed at school and transferred it to some posterboard, then to the styrofoam. Here's one ear cut out, and I did the rest as well.

And here's the globe with the styrofoam lips installed. These are hotglued into place and they give the head a bit of extra rigidity.

Next up: putting the ears together, then drillin' some holes in the head and installing the hardhat.

 

[Joeyjoe9876]

looking much better than mine so far.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

I thought you were making one, Joey, but for the life of me I couldn't find it anywhere. I was hoping to get some ideas from it

More progress!

Drilled some holes in the top of the hardhat and roughed it up further with some lower-grit sandpaper to give the hot glue something to grab onto. I also sanded the inside of the globe where it'll be making contact. After positioning it inside the globe, I filled the space with hot glue through the holes I drilled, which ended up looking like this. That's between two and three sticks of hot glue there. Good thing we've got a flaxload of it. Here's what it looks like inside the helmet. As you can see, the holes I drilled serve not only to give me a place to pump in the hot glue, but it floods out of the holes and hardens over the top, like the head of a nail. Keeps the hard hat from moving around.

Here's a view of the whole thing with the hardhat secured.

I also finished the ears! Two sheets of styrofoam held together with hot glue and Krazy Glue, with the two 12" bolts I showed off previously, which is how they will attach to the head once I drill some holes for them -- after I drilled the holes in the hardhat I practiced drilling on a piece of the acrylic that got cut from the globe so I won't screw it up when it comes time to mount the ears. You can also see the speakers are installed. The cord's a bit short, though, so I'll need to pick up a cheap extender so I can use them with my phone conveniently.

Next up: drilling some holes for mounting the ears and maybe stuffing some extra foam into the globe as a way of reinforcing the hardhat. After that I have to wait for stuff I ordered to arrive before I can do anything more. D:

 

[Abyss]

I'm liking the speakers in the ears. I've wanted to make/buy my own mau5ead for a while. This makes me want to do something about that.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Thank you, sir. And you should!

MORE PROGRESS

So today I used deadmau5's own CAD drawing of the mau5head to mark out where my ears should go and prepped it for drilling. (And before you ask, the writing was just nonsense and not something cool or technical related to the project.) I put a few foam spacers in the mouth to give the head some more rigidity, then got to work.

Success! No cracks!

I also drilled an extra hole in the back for routing the cable from the ear speakers into the inside of the head.

I then tested the holes for fit and filed them out slightly to fit the ears correctly. Didn't require much correction. I also filed out the hole at the back for the speaker connector to fit through. I almost got it completely assembled at that point, but then...

A SETBACK! NOOOOOOOO!

The left ear I made the night before came apart! The bolts came loose -- the hot glue must have not done its job -- and they became useless for securing the ear to the head. Attempts at reattaching them proved fruitless. Did you know Krazy Glue melts bare styrofoam? Because it totally does. Remember what I said about the foam, though? Well, I had almost a whole extra sheet at my disposal, so after violently disassembling the bad ear, I cut out some new ear pieces and assembled them with the speaker inside.

Victory! I am loving how this is coming out.

Ain't anything else I can do until my other parts come, sadly. When they do, my next steps will be positioning the eyes, figuring out where to mount the LEDs and the fan, making openings for both, giving both battery power, and then covering the whole thing in stretch velvet. I will of course post updates when I make progress.

 

[Kickback]

deadmau5 sucks

I do hope you realise that was a bad joke :')

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Of course I do! I mean, you're you

Also, I lied, I got a tiny bit more work done today.

At my dad's suggestion, I put a thick line of hot glue along the rear of the hardhat to further secure it to the inside of the globe, like this. Gives it some added stability. You can also see that I filed out the hole I drilled -- in order to get the right-angle connector on the speakers through, it was necessary. With the ears attached the speaker cable goes through that hole into the inside of the head.

I also placed the eyes. I like how they look here. I outlined them with some marker and mapped out where I'll place some LEDs in each eye.

Lastly, my dad stopped by Home Depot today and brought home some steel washers. Said they'd hold the ears on more securely. So I put them on. Turns out they make a big difference in how stable the ears feel. They don't wobble at all. Kickass!

I also did some digging in my toolbox and found a AA battery holder with a switch, as well as some resistors and wire and other things. Cut how much I need to order from Digikey down by about $15. yessssss

 

[ShockSlayer]

mfw you ruined a hard hat for this

A much better project would've been to get one of these and put it inside the hardhat, then whenever someone asks you to do something, you can refuse them by levitating your hard hat and extending your neck up so it fits back onto your head. Seems like a good idea to me.

This is cool too, though. If you put LEDs in things, you have no excuse not to make them pulse with other things, use a PulseVU2x(it also has fading, aww yeah) or that one IC which I don't remember the name of.

SS

 

[Twilight Wolf]

I'll keep that first suggestion in mind for a future project, SS.

As for the PulseVU2x or whatever, I'd love to add one of those, but my budget and schedule are rather tight currently, so I'm going to stay simple and just have on/off lights for now, but I'm keeping the circuitry uncomplicated enough that I can change things without too much difficulty later.

Aaaaaand some more work today!

So I decided since I knew the dimensions of the fan I'm going to install in this thing, I might as well make a mockup of it so I can position it and get an opening made for it made so I can just pop it in when it arrives. I decided rather than trying to cut out another square/circle/whatever from the acrylic, I'd just drill a bunch of holes in a uniform pattern. Far easier. Before I could do any positioning or marking, however, I had to remove the ears, upon which I saw... THIS...

Oh dear lord, why? :C

Further inspection showed it should be more or less fixable with good ol' Superglue and not *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing with it needlessly. But for now I had to push forward -- there were other things to work on!

I positioned the mockup inside the globe to find out where I wanted it positioned, whether it'd try to eat my hair, etc. Decided on the rear of the globe under the rear of the helmet and marked up where to make holes. Then I got to work with a drill and this was the result. I'm pretty pleased with that. I also roughed up the inside with sandpaper a bit so that when I hotglue the fan in, the hotglue will have something to grab onto securely, though it seems to do pretty well on bare acrylic as it is.

While I was at Rat Shack looking at parts for this project (that I ended up just buying on Digikey, dohoho), I found some lovely metal panel-mount LED holders. For the life of me I couldn't find anything like them on Digikey, so I went back today and picked up a few sets. When I was drilling holes for the fan, I decided I'd drill out holes for the LED holders as well. So I did, and I put them in place temporarily. Dat class.

Back to the ungodly cracking problem -- I attacked the area with some Superglue. Then I coated both sides of the acrylic around the hole where the cracks were occurring with even more. Several layers later the area around the hole is milky white and the cracked areas are almost completely smooth to the touch. I think it's probably fixed as well as it's gonna get for the time being. The Superglue shell and the washers/surface of the ear, provided I'm careful about tightening the wing nut, should keep things working just fine. If not, I have other options in mind.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

So I got my Digikey order on Wednesday! That was quick. Naturally I got to work on stuff as soon as I could. First would be the simplest -- the fan. It was conveniently labeled with which direction the air goes, so I hotglued it over the vent holes I drilled. Looks like I managed to overestimate the size. Oops. :v

Next I took the box of an iPod Shuffle my sister had and drilled a couple of holes in it: one for the toggle switch and one for the wires. Stuck the wires in, connected everything, added a battery, hotglued the case in place. The fan moves air pretty nicely for a 12v fan running on 9v. Nonetheless I'm only going to run it as needed rather than constantly, both to save battery life and to keep the constant whirr from bothering me.

Next was prepping the LEDs. Here's what they look like in the holders I bought.

Turns out the steel mesh dome I ordered (supposed to be a food cover) for covering the mouth was dropped off by UPS the same evening! This also serves to give the head some extra structural strength. Here it is prior to being marked for being cut. I used the piece of acrylic I cut from the mouth to roughly mark how much mesh I'd need. I cut it out later that night. Word of advice, this mesh flax is SHARP. Always wear your safety gloves, children.

Before I headed off to school today, I finished wiring up the LEDs! (See? I can build circuits, all you doubters.) They're beautiful and they're surprisingly bright. I installed them in the head (seen here and here) and secured the battery pack with some velcro for easy removal. Here's where the fan and battery boxes are located. It actually gives the head some nice balance.

After I got home I taped up the edges of the mesh and spraypainted it black. Far easier to look out of than blue mesh since my eyes aren't constantly trying to focus on it several inches in front of my face.

It's almost done, guys! Now we wait for my fabric to arrive and I can finish it.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Black Mesa comes out
T_W finishes a project

What next, Episode 3 bundled with a picture of Gaben at area 51?

SS

 

[Ashen]

I can't wait to see it done TW. I love the new av too. Its one of my favorite Tool video's.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Black Mesa comes out
T_W finishes a project

What next, Episode 3 bundled with a picture of Gaben at area 51?

SS

You saw it here first, folks, SS predicts Episode 3!

I can't wait to see it done TW. I love the new av too. Its one of my favorite Tool video's.

Thanks! And I'm glad you like it. I was playing with a .gif making program a few nights ago and decided to dig out my DVD copy of Salival. Two minutes later, that.

So... quick update.

Fabric arrived Friday. Ears are now done. Like, 100%. Started on the head but got too tired to do much work. Going to bed once I hit "submit." Hope to finish it after I wake up.

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Patience wearing thin. I have crossed the border from having fun to getting angry.

Anyone who says you can cover a globe in fabric neatly is a *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ing liar.

 

[Joeyjoe9876]

Sand down the globe. The spray glue works prett well, just dont apply too much of it like I did.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Adhering it isn't the issue, it's getting it to lay down smoothly.

However, I think I've solved the issue. I AM CLOSER TO BEING DONE THAN EVER

 

[Twilight Wolf]

*Can'tSayThisOnTV* YEAH. Got it covered in fabric successfully. This is just afterward, when I cut some slits in the fabric to poke the LED holders through and get the ear bolts in. The tinfoil circles being cut serve as a reflector for the lights. Helps make it a little more even.

And here's the wire mesh covered in white tights material and screwed/wood glued into the foam lips. (sweet pajama pants, bro) That's drying overnight at the moment. Once it's done drying, I'm gonna give the whole thing a final spit polish and assemble it and it's done. awwww yeah

Here's a picture of the eye domes I took a few minutes ago, glowing. Still Dang bright with the acrylic covers. Picture doesn't do it justice.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

IT. IS. DONE.

And here's a quick video demonstrating the electronics. Pardon the mess, I haven't cleaned up my workspace yet. :v



Finished Projects post will happen once I get some pictures from my sister that she took of me wearing it, and a legit, high-quality video will come soon.