Beauty and the Beast - Enchanted Rose Prop

This project was created as a prop for the Ontario Christian High School Theater 2025 Beauty and the Beast Musical. Made by myself and the other members of the Principles of Engineering class (credited below), the final product has the following features:

1. 5 remote-controlled petals (including the center bulb)
2. Petals are controlled by a repurposed RC plane transmitter and receiver)
3. Petals are easily modified and reset by use of small magnets embedded in the bulb
4. Toggleable lights (+ 3 spotlights above the prop)
5. Rechargeable battery with 4 hour lifespan (theoretically longer but 4 hours proven)
6. Looks absolutely incredible, if I may permit myself to say that :P

This Instructable functions as both a tutorial and documentation for the rose.

For a demonstration of the rose in action, please watch this video.

2024-2025 Ontario Christian Principles of Engineering Rose Team

Team Leaders: Austin Drown, Ethan Yeh

Modelers: Scott Aznoff, Austin Drown, Ethan Yeh

Testing: Russell Peterson

Aesthetics: Joshua Mulder, Russell Peterson

Documentation: Joshua Grunder, Jordan Moss, Ryan Price

Staff/Faculty Advisors

Gilbert Sifuentes

Ken Yeh

Tools Used

1. FLSun V400 3D printer
2. Hot glue/super glue/wood glue
3. Scissors/X-Acto Knife
4. Paper tape

Materials

Structure:

1. 3D filament
2. Tree bark
3. Brown paint
4. Wood glue
5. Fake moss
6. Plastic leaves
7. Floral tape
8. Glass dome
9. Fairy lights
10. Canvas
11. Faux rose petals
12. Fishing line
13. Magnets
14. Springs

Electronics:

1. Mini servo motors
2. Transmitter
3. Receiver
4. Battery

** The next few steps were taken from the written technical report we were forced delighted to write as part of our assignment. In charge of documentation for this project were Joshua Grunder, Jordan Moss, and Ryan Price. They shot many of the behind the scenes images used throughout this Instructable and also wrote the technical report, attached below if anyone is interested. **

Project Brief

Goal: to create a prop rose with petals that fall off on command. It must be:

1. Simple and reliable
2. Aesthetically pleasing
3. Able to be used for at least 4 shows (plus testing)

Start Date: October 30, 2024

End Date: February 22, 2025

Project Brainstorming

To start the project, we spent the first few days outlining a design for the rose. Starting with brainstorming ideas individually, each member of the team came up with 2-3 ideas. At the end of the session, we combined certain aspects of our ideas to create our final design.

The main focus of the brainstorming session was figuring out what mechanism to use to make the petals drop. We had numerous ideas, some feasible like the 2D rose (petals would be mounted on a board or screen oriented toward the audience), others silly (the team will fondly remember the "airsoft gun shooting petals from the back of the auditorium" design). We eventually came across a website made by Steve Murch, containing detailed steps for how to build a prop rose. His instructions would guide the build direction of our rose from that point onwards.

Murch's original design employed the use of magnets with servos, but he also made a second version that used air pumps. From his designs, we proposed 3 options: electromagnets, servos with spring-loaded magnets, or air pumps. Originally, we decided to pursue using electromagnets to drop the petals, but quickly ran into a problem; the electromagnets would need to be constantly active for the petals to stay on. The electromagnets we researched only had the ability to stay powered a minute or two before they overheated or failed. As a result, we decided to abandon the electromagnet idea. The second option was to use normal magnets instead of electromagnets. The magnets would be attached to strings pulled by servos located in the base of the flower, and, upon the servos pulling the strings, would be pulled inward and unattached from a metal point in the petals, causing the petals to fall. This idea was more power-friendly compared to the design that used electromagnets, since servos only require power at point intervals rather than constantly. The third option was to use air pumps to push the petals outward. This design would have fewer moving parts, thus lowering complexity. However, we eventually settled on the second design, as it seemed to be the most straightforward with the resources we had available.

Once we chose a mechanism, we thought up several base designs, since the flower would have to sit upon a supporting structure. The two main options were short and wide or tall and thin. Eventually we decided on a short and wide base, made to emulate the appearance of a tree stump, as we thought it would give the rose a very fairytale-like presence. Additionally, a short and wide base would give more stability than a tall and thin base, which would desperately be needed on the very active stage.

During the brainstorming period, we also created a Gantt chart, which is a chart that allows engineers to schedule tasks and deadlines for team members to meet. To be honest, I didn't really see the point of the chart at the time, but now that I'm in the position of trying to document and order the events of creating the rose, I'm extremely glad that we made one. I've attached both the prototype and final Gantt charts below if anyone is interested.

The First Prototype

For our first attempt at making the rose, we aimed to create a functional prototype by our first deadline, December 17, the day we were required to present our design. Due to time constraints, we decided to neglect the rose's appearance, prioritizing functionality over aesthetics.

Most of the structural elements of the rose were 3D printed; I'll go more in-depth about the 3D modeling that went into this project in a later step to keep everything organized.

In order to drop the rose petals, the prototype design used a hollow 3D printed cylinder that contained a second 3D printed piece with magnets glued to the end. At the other end of the inner piece, fishing line was threaded into a hole in the bottom. The fishing line was then threaded down the hollow stem, before being attached to one of 5 servos in the base. Additionally, a spring was placed inside the cylinder to push the magnet back to the "up" position after the servo retracted. The third image provides a visual for how the magnets function.

To control the servos, we initially attempted to program and use a Raspberry Pi, but this proved to be more difficult than expected. My dad suggested a better idea: to use parts from a remote control airplane. This ended up being a much more practical option because it required neither a computer nor code to function. It also required far less space; the initial design would've required 2 AA batteries per servo, plus 6 batteries for the Raspberry Pi, but the RC design would be able to power a maximum of 8 servos, along with the signal receiver, with only a small LiPo battery. To put that into perspective, this new design compressed what originally required 14 AA batteries and a relatively large brain part into a package the size of a 2x4 Lego Duplo brick. Space optimization!

For our prototype petals, we simply used printer paper cut into petal shapes with a staple attached to the end. Initially, we explored alternative ideas for attaching the petals to the magnets, including aluminum foil, Rubik's cube magnets, and paper clips; however we found that staples proved to be the easiest and most reliable method.

For the bulb, initially we modeled a 2 part design that would have magnet capsules sticking out the top. We later decided to add a third spacer piece to allow the magnet capsules to sit flush with the top of the bulb. The stem was a basic hollow cylinder about 9-10 inches in diameter, since we wanted to keep the prototype design simple.

Finally, for the base, initially we attempted to design and 3D print a 4-part 14-inch diameter base that we would glue together. Unfortunately, after printing two of the sections, we realized that glue would not be sufficient to hold the base together firmly enough. As a result, we sacrificed a few inches in order to create a design that was able to be printed in one solid piece. The new base design measured 11 inches in diameter, with 0.5 inch thick walls and a lid roughly 10.5 inches in diameter.

Additional Thoughts

The first prototype, while not being pretty, achieved its purpose in being functional. Additionally, the prototype also revealed many issues with our design that would need to be addressed in the final version. For example, a petal would sometimes stay stuck on the magnet as a result of the staple sticking out from the petal too much. Some of the servos would not pull the fishing line consistently; the line would become tangled inside the stem, causing the servos to either pull multiple strings or not pull a string at all. And of course, the design looked nothing like a rose at this point.

Refining the Design

Our prototype was functional, but as described above, there were issues that needed to addressed. After returning from winter break, we resolved to put in the effort necessary to turn our prototype into a final product by our new deadline, February 7.

One of the first improvements we made was on the stem. From the prototype, we knew that an issue with the old design was fishing line becoming tangled inside the stem. In order to fix this, we added a spacer structure that divided the stem into 5 separate chambers, one for each line. This prevented any lines from crossing, ensuring smooth motion for each servo (although this also made threading each line through the stem a huge headache).

We also made a few adjustments to the bulb. The original prototype design used a 3 part bulb that was held together with glue and electrical tape. However, we realized that the 3 part design was completely unnecessary; the spacer piece could just be made a part of the top or bottom halves of the bulb, thus dropping the piece count by one. Additionally, rather than using glue or tape to hold the two halves together, a friction-fit design allowed for far easier access to the bulb interior, as well as easier assembly in general.

The attachment of fishing line to the servos in the prototype was somewhat rushed due to running out of time near the end, so for the final product we entirely redid the positioning of the servos (much hot glue was used) and paid extra attention when tying the fishing line.

Aesthetics

Once the petal dropping mechanism was finished, we turned our focus to the aesthetics: what the audience would see. As our aesthetics head, Joshua Mulder was in charge of many of the decisions during this section. First, we made the stem curvy to simulate the organic shape of a rose. After a couple of small redesigns, we had a stem shape we were satisfied with, so we tested to ensure the fishing line would be able to travel unimpeded through the stem, which was necessary to drop the petals. During this time, we also went through "multiple" iterations of the bulb design, which would be attached to one end of the stem. I say "multiple" because really it was just one redesign I happened to have made that was eventually scrapped anyways...let's just say that it was a little questionable appearance-wise.

For the petals, we threw out our old paper designs and purchased a faux rose to pilfer petals from. During one of the project weekends, Russell Peterson went to a nearby Hobby Lobby and returned with a lot of the materials we used to enhance the rose's appearance, including floral tape, fake moss, and two faux roses with petals and leaves. The floral tape was used to wrap both the stem and the bulb in order to add texture and give a more organic-looking green color. Additionally, plastic leaves were glued to the stem, moss was placed on top of the base, and green canvas was attached to the top of the bulb to emulate its sepal. But out of all of our additions, the title of best aesthetic enhancement definitely has to go to the tree bark we glued around the perimeter of the base with help from our school's woodshop students. In fact, this single design step was so crucial to the rose's final appearance that I've made it a separate step below, in order to explain more in-depth.

Once the stem and bulb were (for the most part) complete, we researched options for lights that would be placed along the base and stem. After a series of Amazon mishaps (while the rainbow-colored lights we were accidentally sent were extremely tempting to add, we ended up returning them), we ended up with two strings of warm yellow lights. However, upon trying to wrap them around the stem, we encountered a problem. One of the requirements for the lights was to be remote controlled, but when the receiver was placed inside the base, the infrared signal from the remote was unable to reach it. To solve this problem, we drilled 2 holes, one in the base and one in the lid. We first mounted the receiver on the base exterior, allowing for access from backstage. The wire was then threaded through the first hole in the base and the second hole in the lid, where the lights were wrapped around the stem. This was necessary because after the last petal fell, we wanted to have the lights turn off as well, symbolizing the "death" of the rose.

Adding tree bark to the exterior would've remained an idea on the drawing board were it not for my school's woodshop/skilled trades class that helped us with this step; special thanks to Cadence Monfore for, upon being asked, literally walking out to the back with an axe and chopping a log for us to use.

The following was written by co-project lead Austin Drown, as he was the main team member working on this step in conjunction with woodshop:

For the bark, I used a mixture of wood glue and epoxy to make it stick. I had to line the outside of the base with blue painters tape because the 3d filament plastic wasn't good at holding the epoxy on. Cade helped me with breaking up the wood bark; for the rest of the gluing it was basically a puzzle to figure out where each piece looked best.

After attaching the wood bark, zip ties were used to hold the bark in place as the glue dried.

Before moving on to final stage preparations, now would be a good time to go in-depth about how we utilized 3D modeling to create the rose. CAD, or computer-aided design, greatly helped us not only to print the final parts but to also visualize and test different ideas before making them reality. About 80% of the structural elements of this project, including the base, stem, and bulb, were 3D printed, after first being modeled in Fusion 360. All final Fusion files are attached below, although our prototype models are not included because I no longer have access to them (oops). Most of the models were designed by our in-house modeler, Scott Aznoff, although Austin and I also modeled a fair bit.

For the base, we had the opportunity to use an FLSun V400 3D printer, which has a 12 inch diameter circular build plate, so we took advantage of this and scaled our 3D model accordingly. The resulting base is 11 inches in diameter, with a ~10 inch lid. Unfortunately, most 3D printers are not able to print an object of that size, so it's recommended to scale the base down to 9-10 inches instead. If others were to build their own rose with our files, when scaling down the base, make sure to keep the hole at the center of the lid the same size in order to allow the stem to fit. The glass dome needs to fit the base as well, so plan accordingly when choosing a diameter.

As for the lid of the base, I've made a change to the 3D model that will make a later step easier; when we were attempting to add lights to the rose, we realized that we needed a hole in the lid to allow the wire to pass through. This forced us to go through the arduous task of drilling a hole into plastic. A hole has been inserted at the edge of the lid to eliminate this step.

3D printer settings will vary, but for the majority of printed parts we used a 0.4 mm nozzle.

Tech Week

In the penultimate week before the show, or "tech week" as theater called it, our focus turned to preparing the rose for the stage.

The main challenge we faced during this time was trying to improve the visibility and stage presence of the rose in order to ensure the audience would be able to see the petals fall, since that was the whole point of building the rose in the first place. The stage crew designed the set to have the rose as a centerpiece; a pedestal under an archway in the center of the stage ensured that the audience's attention would be drawn to the rose. However, under the harsh stage lights, the rose ended up blending into the backdrop too much.

In order to make the rose stand out from the stage, we attempted to illuminate the rose with the stage spotlight. This caused its own problems; the intense beam from the spotlight caused a huge glare, blocking the rose from being seen from certain points in the audience. We discussed several different solutions, one of which was removing the glass dome, but since we wanted to make our $52 glass dome purchase worthwhile, we came up with a more elegant solution.

Rather than lighting up the rose directly from the front, we realized that overhead lighting would accomplish the same purpose without creating a glare like the spotlight did. Consequently, we purchased 3 puck lights from Amazon and mounted them above the rose (first image). Unfortunately, using the puck lights created yet another problem; in the last scene of the play, the script called for the entire stage to be blacked out. Our puck lights conveniently came with a remote control, but the range at which the signal would reach was limited. In a perfect situation, we would've preferred to be able to turn the lights on and off from the back of the auditorium, where the remote to control the rose would also be located, but the solution we came up with wasn't bad either. By using infrared signal repeaters strategically placed in hidden locations on the stage, we were able to create a chain connection that allowed a backstage crew member to remotely send a signal to the puck lights (shown in the third image).

During tech week we also ironed out a few other minor wrinkles with the stage; we requested that the base be made more stable (there's a scene where people are dancing on stage we didn't want the rose to be accidentally knocked over) which was resolved by duct taping the pedestal to the floor, and we installed a Velcro strap on the side of the pedestal that would hold the battery pack for the fairy lights. Additionally, Russell tested the range of the transmitter signal from various locations within the auditorium. Since the transmitter had been repurposed from an RC plane, we found the range to be more than sufficient. Finally, we scheduled who would operate the rose during the two dress rehearsals and four show dates (fourth image).

One last-minute obstacle that occurred during tech week was when one of our servos detached itself from the base (shown in the last image). The servo originally had a sticker attached to it, but the repeated back and forth motion of the servo during our testing caused the sticker to unstick itself. So at roughly 6 PM that night, the team rushed the rose back to the engineering classroom to perform some repairs. 10 minutes and a stick of hot glue later, the servo was good as new and (hopefully) ready for the show next week.

Play Overview

An overview of the rose's part in the play would probably be helpful to include before describing how the show played out. Our rose was specifically designed to have 5 petals; 5 was enough to make the rose look like a rose without being too complex to design. The play directors took this number and promptly inserted 5 locations in the script where a petal would be dropped. Additionally, the day prior to the first show, the play directors approached us with a brilliant idea about how we would go about timing when to drop the petals. Rather than waiting for a specific line to cue the petal drop, our live stage band would play an audio cue in the form of descending chimes to signal to us the right timing. Not only did this make it much easier for us to know when to drop the petals, but the chimes also enhanced the mystical atmosphere tenfold. Needless to say, we immediately adopted this idea into our proceedings.

A total of 3 remotes were used to control all of the rose's parts. The first remote was the RC plane transmitter, placed in the tech booth at the back of the auditorium. The transmitter originally had more switches than was needed, so we made sure to clearly label each switch to ensure that the right petal was dropped at the right time.

A brief tangent about the petal dropping order, we chose to drop the two petals closest to the audience first. The curved stem was designed in a way such that the bulb tilts towards the audience, which meant if the center petal was dropped with the two closest petals still attached, they would be knocked off prematurely. Following the two front petals, we chose to drop the center bulb next, then the side petal, leaving the furthest petal to drop last. We designed the furthest petal to stick up higher than the other ones in order to ensure maximum visibility, as the last petal falling would be the climax of the play, signifying the beast's death in the story.

The second and third remotes were used to control the various lights placed on or around the rose. Funnily enough, both lights that we bought from Amazon—the fairy lights and the puck lights—used the same signal wavelength to turn the lights on and off, although some of the other buttons on the remotes would differ in their function, for example to dim the lights or set a timer (this would cause quite a scare for us during a later show, which I'll describe shortly). Consequently, we used the same remote to toggle both lights off once the last petal had been dropped.

After the last petal was dropped and the play was over, we planned to move the rose to a booth that had been prepared for us outside the auditorium to showcase the rose to curious audience members. Transporting the rose anywhere was a slightly nerve-wracking ordeal, especially when trying to move through the audience crowd, but the booth was one of the most enjoyable parts of the play for us as it gave us an opportunity to display our hard work.

The Four Shows

The night of the first show arrived and went off without a hitch. Austin Drown and Joshua Grunder, the two team members assigned to the first night, performed their tasks flawlessly, and the rose was extremely well received by both the cast and the audience.

The second show went just as smoothly as the first. Team members present were Jordan Moss and myself, and everything went as planned.

The third and fourth shows were on the same day, one at 1 PM and the other at 6 PM. Russell Peterson and Joshua Mulder manned the rose during the day show, and I, along with Austin and Scott Aznoff, joined them for the night show, making the tech booth rather crowded. However, as the curtain pulled back to reveal the rose to the audience for the fourth time, we realized something startling. The puck lights that we had installed to illuminate the rose from above were turned off, hiding the rose from sight.

Luckily for us, the first petal would not need to be dropped until after the 15 minute intermission in the middle of the play, which would give us a window of time to investigate the issue. The five rose team members present—Austin, Joshua, Russell, Scott, and I—wracked our brains to determine why the lights had turned off. One possibility was that the pucks had run out of battery, despite us recharging them prior to the show. To be safe, we swapped them out with spares that we had purchased for the purpose of an incident like this one. But then, as we were preparing to exit the stage, the puck lights suddenly shut off again. It then dawned on me: a crucial detail that we had overlooked earlier. Although the two remotes that we had been using to toggle the lights shared the same power button, some of their other buttons were swapped around. Specifically, the button to brighten the lights on one remote corresponded to the same button on the other remote that set a timer for the lights to turn off. One of the team members must have attempted to brighten the lights with the wrong remote, unknowingly putting the lights on a timer to shut off prematurely.

With the cause of the unexpected shut off determined, we reset and brightened the lights with the correct remote before again exiting the stage to operate the rose one last time. As the last petal fell and the final scene reached its peak, our team had a celebratory moment—hugs all around, fist pumps, etc. We had accomplished our goal; with 20/20 petals dropped, the rose had performed its role flawlessly.

The Rose Project was the first time I've really felt that I was able to use all of the engineering principles that I've learned to solve a real world problem. Whether it be CAD software, Gantt charts, decision matrices, or even the engineering design process as a whole, I've never before utilized them to the extent that I did while creating the rose. As one of the project leads, I learned a great deal about not only how to design and build a product, but also how to manage and guide a team of engineers to collaborate and work together. There were moments where productivity was low, sure, and there were definitely many disagreements that sprung up from time to time, but when I look at what we've managed to accomplish after overcoming those hurdles, it's almost too amazing to believe. I'm extremely grateful to all of the rose team members for the hard work they've put in for the past year, and I'm excited to see what's to come.

To any other student engineers out there, keep doing what we do best! Let's solve the world's problems, large or small, impactful or unseen, one creative solution at a time.