Imperial Rocker For Stopping Tiny Rebel Scum

Some of the luckiest kids in the world have to be the ones with hackers and makers as parents. While normal kids are stuck playing with cookie cutter mass produced toys, these kids get one-off gadgets and creations that will be the envy of the playground. Frankly, some of the stuff ends up being so cool that it’ll get the adults wishing they could go back in time and play with it.

One such parent, and one such project, is the Imperial Rocker by [Matthew Regonini]. Hoping to instill an obsession with a galaxy far, far, away on his offspring, [Matthew] designed this AT-AT rocking horse piece by piece in Illustrator, and then cut it all out of birch using his XCarve CNC router. Each piece was then meticulously glued together to produce a final 3D effect from the individual cutouts.

With a liberal application of spring clamps to hold it all together while it dried, all that was left to do was painstakingly sand all the parts so the edges of the laminated construction would be smooth. Dowels were then added for the handlebars and foot pegs, and a few coats of polyurethane seal up the plywood while bringing out a natural look.

[Matthew] notes some issues here and there, notably quite a bit of blowout in some of the detail cuts and a couple miscalculated dimensions. But he reasons that the rocker is going to live a pretty hard life anyway, so best not to sweat the small stuff.

While the Imperial Rocker has that quaint old-school charm, we wonder how long it will be before [Matthew’s] little Stormtrooper starts yearning for the blinking lights and buttons that youngsters just can’t get enough of.

 

15 thoughts on “Imperial Rocker For Stopping Tiny Rebel Scum

    1. Not big fan of star wars but ain’t that supposed to be A-wing? Still remember ’em from the X-wing DOS game…or some other.
      Good job on the rocker, I like the way it looks.

    1. Yah, there’s all kinds of clamps there. G clamps, C clamps, F clamps, metal clamps, bar clamps, spring clamps, stall clamps, surgical clamps, wheel clamps, current clamps….

  1. I really wish that Hackaday had a requirement that projects featured must publish source material that the community can iterate on. It’s less of the ego stroking “check out what I made” and more “have a crack at making this yourself”.

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