TARS Robot: Khớp Nam Châm (Magnetic Joints)

This is my model of TARS from the movie Interstellar. TARS body consist of 4 legs, this model uses magnets to form joints and keep everything together. The magnetic joints slides along the full leg length which makes for a very flexible and expressive model.

Build Instructions

Quick overview:

1. Print the legs with pause print to embed magnets.
2. Paint the TARS text and braille using a marker pen.
3. Print monitor graphics on photo paper, cut to size and attach using double sided tape.

About Printing

The model files are in the recommended orientation and should be easy prints. Inside each leg are slots to hold magnets. A pause print must be added at the top of the slots for inserting the magnets.

The TARS text and braille is easy to fill in with a marker pen (I used metallic gold + red).

About Magnets

I used 6 mm diameter, 2 mm thick neodymium magnets bought from Amazon. Since they are quite small, I used them in stacks of two for extra holding power. Bigger is probably better, the slot fits up to 4 mm thick magnets. Each slot should have two magnets for more stable legs (12 in total), single stronger magnets might also work (6 in total).

All magnets should be inserted with the same polarity direction in every slot. This is very important as otherwise the legs would repel instead of hold together. I printed one leg at a time to reduce the risk of mistakes. This is what it should look like before resuming print:

About Monitor Screens

TARS has two monitor screens on the top center legs. I used screenshots from my own terminal and printed on photo paper (see the zip file). The photo paper is cut to size (16 mm x 15 mm) and attached using double sided tape. The lower legs also uses the photo paper but just plain black.

Final Word

Let me know if anything in the instructions is not clear. Good luck.