Paul Newcomb

Paul's spider features animated mandibles. They are mounted on bike brakes, and actuated by pulling on a cable.

Also, note the classic PVC skeleton. :-)

The mechanism in the center automatically pulls on the control cable to actuate the mandibles.

Thanh Quach

Thanh said that the project was a little more expensive (perhaps due to buying all new parts, no scrap or reused components) than he had anticipated, but was very rewarding.

Nice, clean lines.

It looks as if she is dancing!

Rip Kaiser

Here's what Rip had to say about his creation:

I have visited your site heavily last year, and used your PVC framework idea for the spider I built for my front porch. I have a large porch area that the kids have to pass by to get to my front door, so I thought it would be great to have a spider rear up and scare them. The final project measured 9 feet from leg to leg, and the legs are 7 and a half feet long. The legs are 1/2inch PVC with Water Noodles shoved over them, and then I spray-glued fake fur to the legs. My spider runs on 12VDC, and when triggered, the unit rears up, a red 40 watt lamp turns on to illuminate the beast (just in case it's too dark, but it sure grabs the rugrat's attention!), the LED eyes turn on, a mixed audio clip is sent out the front speakers, and the fangs move. After two seconds, the spider then spits water out the front, just to get the brave ones that don't run at first. It was a tremendous amount of work, all for approx five seconds of trick. I had to design the circuit board that runs it, and I used the venerable 555 timer chips. There are 5 timers in the circuit, all adjustable (pre-trick delay, trick length, pre-spit delay, spit length, and a post-trick delay so the rugrats don't trigger it on the way out).

Now, let this be a lesson to those of you who meddle in the affairs of nature!

Vernon Graner

You can find more of Vernon's precious at

http://www.mugbbs.com/tower/spider

Here's a picture of Vernon holding a printout of the Wolfstone Giant Spider page.

Vernon didn't build the "second layer" of pipe as we did, but instead used chicken wire to build out the body from the frame.

Dynamic testing: She works!

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