Mechanical Wings for People to Wear

These are my big bat wings.They were built for one of my exhibition shows arround October 1997 and I also wore them out on the bit Halloween Weekend in Athens Ohio.  They are 16 feet across, stand 3 feet above my head and are draped in a black broque satin that changes to irridescant purple in the right light.   They are powered by a hand-pull pully system that in two functions:  1. brings them up off my back similar to a birds natural wing movement.   2. extends their main fingerlets.   The fully deployed set up is seen in the picture above.  They colapse down to form a cloak that fits around my sholders.  Their main structure was the framework of a portable golf bag cart (I try incorporate something rather distasteful into everything I build -to give it a new, better life).

These wings are probably my greatest love.   They are a pair of copper wings that fold into a wearable vest.  They weigh about 6 lbs and represent what I hope to do with my wing building hobbie.  Which is to build wings that fold into clothing. The recently rebuilt version of them is pneumatically powered off of small CO2 cartriges.   The pneumatic cylinder is homemade and can output 30 lbs of force under an 110 lbs/sq in pressure.  Interfacing the movement of the piston with the movement of the wings is a unique pulley system that I designed to accomodate the considerable weight of the wings.

These wings below are a pair that I made for a friend.  They are painfully simple with no moving parts (alas).   I hope to eventually mass produce these and sell them with the option of opening, flapping, and glowing.

Above is my lattest pair of wings.  They were apart of my pixie pirate costume I wore in the Mermaid Day Parade on Coney Island.  When I ran around the wind would blow through the soap dreanched wing fabric and blow bubbles.  To re-drentch the fabric with soap, I built in a mechanism so that the fabric would dip down into brass tubes filled with bubble solution.  The Fun never ends.

Above are a simple pull-chain wings that I custom built for this comrad of mine.  He wanted organic - metalic wings.  They turned out quite nice.   The harness is very adjustable.

These are a pair that I had built for Burning Man show.  They are pull-chain aswell only these have the added feature of flapping.  There is a unique two degree of freedom hing that when the wings reach the top of their open trave, pulling the chain further makes them flap. The harness is a heavy duty one that I built for my torso.

These are my pixie-bondage wings.  They have alot of leather and plastic used in their structure and harness.  I was experimenting with materials and back harness structures with these.  They also turned out nice.  (The wings that don't turn out nice I don't show :)

These are a pnumatic pair of large wings I built a while ago.   They nevery really found their place in the world without a covering of feathers.    It was about 3 years until I found a material that would make good feathers. These are real powerful, I attached large chains across them and they lifted them no problem.   The mechanism is a four-bar, single degree of freedom, double axis of movement mechanism I especially designed for this application. The picture below shows their new feathers.   They all fold up neatly on the back and sling out upon opening of the wings.  They really look super hot.

To the left are a pair of wings I made for a friend's wedding. Mike Connor wore them in his wedding ceremony.  In this picture he is dressed like a monkey with wings for Halloween.   They are pneumatic powered, 8 hinge wings that fold over his back like a cape.   Structurally they were pleasing and had lots and lots of moving parts.  They were suprizingly dependable and continue to garner compliments.

Above are wings I built onto someone's dragonfly puppet.  They moved in opposite motion, just as a real dragonfly's wings.  They were removeable and very pretty in the sunlight.

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