Luzinda's Dragonfly
This monster was a follow on to the phantom flutterer, or Monster #F (June 2018 blog). The departure was to construct a body which was self-supporting instead of the frame and grid style used for the previous dragonfly. The structure results in a dragonfly which is much lighter, and therefore more suited to flying wire insects.
The image above shows the form of the dragonfly with its lightweight body mounted on the drive used to move it for the video. This form of construction was first used on the dragonfly as an experiment, to see if I could use crimped ferrules for most of the construction rather than the wrapped wire technique I used in the holiday special 4 person transporter (April 2019 blog). The overall effect of the silver ferrules seems to be to make the whole body look lighter (the wire wrap darkens over time, and generally has a heavier look).This was also an attempt to ease the strain on my hands by reducing the number of twisted wires in a monster. Not entirely successful as the crimping also requires effort and a lot of planning to allow for tool access.
The bulging compound eyes use the same technique as the first dragonfly, except only in red. They are basically hexagonal shapes with long beads threaded on thin copper single strand wires. The bulging shape is achieved by wrapping the flat hexagonal sheet over a wire dome form.
The wing flapping mechanism was kept simple. The first dragonfly tried to implement a flapping mechanism which moved forward/backward as well as up down (basically X from front and top). It added a lot of complexity, and was not that dramatic. For this dragonfly the wings only move up and down in a very balanced motion (the one set of wings move against gravity, while the other set are gravity assisted, and visa versa). To achieve this the axle has 3 cranks. The center crank driving the front set of wings, and the 2 outer cranks the back set of wings. The head is driven from one of the side cranks, which slightly spoils the balance.
The last description is of the wings. These are relatively simple with my standard varnished silk covering. The coloured pattern is painted with acrylic paint with lines basically trying to create the vein and membrane wing look, and spots to provide colour elements. This is finally covered with artists varnish to increase the colour depth.
That basically finished the dragonfly. And then I gave it away?
