• Managed the manufacture, assembly, and testing for all hydraulics on 5000 part animatonic.

I was fortunate to work on a few projects with Edge Innovations, a company dedicated to creating the world's most realistic animatronic figures for major Hollywood productions. Both of the finished goods are shown above, but unfortunately (for you) the mechanisms and details of my work are trade secrets.

I was responsible for managing the assembly and debugging of the hydraulic actuators for 2 projects: a shark featured in the (terrible) movie, "After the Sunset", and the featured animatronic figures in the Universal Studios, Orlando theme park ride "The Revenge of the Mummy".

When I joined the team the control hydraulics needed an overhaul and some design tweaks. After some oil-soaked adjustments the liveliness of the "animal" was greatly improved. This project also afforded me the opportunity to work in the Bahamas while hanging out, a bit, with some big name movie stars and get a few great stories.

In order to make the articulation responsiveness realistic as possible needed for over 36 axes of movement, including finger clenching, eyebrow movement and blinking, the mummy hydraulics were being operated at 3000 PSI. Directly managing the manufacture and testing of each custom, precision hydraulic actuator was a serious task. I was handling 2 technicians and half a dozen vendors for hundreds of specialized parts made in 17-4 stainless steel. By the way, if you ever have to debug systems running hydraulic oil at thousands of PSI I recommend you wear coveralls, and maybe a poncho. I definitely donated a pair of pants to that project, though it was certianly worth it. The resulting figure is exceptional to watch. Literally tons of stainless steel "bones" whip around like a trained fighter almost effortlessly, it's futuristically surreal.