Mechanical Cardboard Bird

Have you guys ever heard of Animatronics ? well its a cool technique of making and operating lifelike robots and other creatures, with this said in today's Instructables I'm going to show you how you can make your own Animatronic cardboard bird which can fly actually and honestly it looks amazing and doesn't take too long to make it.

With this technique you can make other flying creatures like bats, butterflies and dragons !! and you know what the best part is that it just takes some cardboard and a few basic tools to make it at home. How amazing is that !!

This project is great for students who are interested in Animatronics as its needs all the creativity and your problem solving skills.

• Cardboard sheet
• White glue
• Packaging tape
• A big steel rod for our Mechanism
• Some thin copper wires
• Scissors & Cutters

• In this step we're going to make our bird wings, Draw a wing on a carboard sheet and cut the layout of it .
• Do the same for the other wing as well and also remember to give a slight creases between the wing so that it can fold and move up and down.
• Now cut some strips from cardboard to make the feathers and stick them with white glue and don't stick the strips on the creases which you have made.

• Now we're going to make the flaps of the wings, for making the flaps cut a sphere and stick it on the feathers which you have created in previous step.
• Now fill the untouched portion of the wing with cardboard so that it can give a little strength to your wings.

• Now cut 4 oval shapes from the cardboard and stick them according to their size - for example the biggest oval will be in center on above a little smaller oval and the smallest two ovals will be bellow as well as on top.
• Once done cover the body with more cardboard pieces.

• Now add the details to the bird like the legs, the neck, the beak, and the tail.
• For the tail take some cardboard strips and stick them at the back on the main body
• For legs make the layout on a cardboard and stick it on the body.
• Do the same for the neck and for the beak.

• Now attach the wing to the main body of the bird by using a thin cardboard strip.
• Our bird is ready, now we have to make the mechanism to make this fly, Let's do it !!!

• Now make a box with cardboard which has 3 slits and a open view as shown in the above images.
• If you wish you can make a close one as well.

• In this step we're going to make our working system and for that we'll be required a thick steel rod.
• Now take the rod and bend it in the shape of four U remember the outer U will be a slight bigger and the inner ones will be smaller and also they will be a little bend basically the smaller U will be down 2 to 3 degrees angle so that we can get a perfect wave form.

• Now we'll attaching our bird wings with our mechanism via the copper wires also we'll attach the bird body with a wooden stick so that we don't get vibrations of the body and we're good to go.

• Before flying this just check all the connections are good.
• Once done, Mechanical cardboard bird is ready to fly !!

I hope you enjoyed !

Happy making : D