This week was the group project week, and together we built the Doomscrolling Dalek. You can see the full team documentation here: Team Project Page
I worked on the exterior team, with my specific focus being the lower half of the Dalek design. One of my biggest concerns was weight — if the machine became too heavy, the motors would have to work much harder than necessary. At the same time, the exterior still needed to be structurally sound as the robot moved.
As a result, the exterior team agreed to build as much as possible out of cardboard and thin PLA.
I began by designing the hemispheres for the sides of the Dalek. I tested multiple thicknesses and ultimately settled on 1/16 of an inch as the sweet spot between lightweight and sturdy.
I printed 40 hemispheres total and added a brim so they would press-fit more securely.
Next, I moved to the cardboard sides of the Dalek. The vision was a set of modular panels that could be taped or glued together, with cutouts for the hemispheres to press-fit into.
I took the group Fusion file, isolated the side geometry, and converted it into polygonal panels. Each side was exported to Inkscape, where I added circles with radii 0.01 inches smaller than the hemispheres to ensure a tight fit.
Once the designs were finalized, I laser cut the panels in cardboard. The team then took everything to the architecture shop to be spray painted for a uniform finish.
After painting, the real assembly began. The press-fit worked exactly as intended, though we added small dots of hot glue for extra stability. All the panels were assembled into the final Dalek skirt.
Download the hemisphere file to print your own: hemisphere.step
I also “made” the song for our group video — which really means I took our group script, asked ChatGPT to rewrite it into song lyrics, and then fed the result into Mureka.ai with an energetic female singing voice.
The final song can be hear and lyrics read in our group video on the team project page .
This project was a great exercise in collaboration, rapid iteration, and balancing design constraints like weight, durability, and manufacturability. Seeing the Dalek come together — and scroll — was incredibly satisfying.