UPDATE
I have to scope this project down due to time constraints and some personal life emergencies that have arisen. This project will be the PROTOTYPE of the full design, i.e. will not have a battery or servo, but will be hand-powered. I’d like to finish the full project in the future, but for now I need to start smaller. I will be doing my best to allow for easy conversion to “automatic” windshield wipers… right now, they will be manual. Here’s the plan:
ORIGINAL
I have had this idea for a toy / novelty item / “life hack” type thing since I was about 12 years old when I first got glasses. I was extremely annoyed with the fact that any time it rained, I was forced to choose between the following scenarios: 1) get my glasses covered in raindrops and try to see through the water on my glasses; 2) try to wipe the rain off my glasses every few seconds and end up smudging it, making my visibility worse; 3) attempt to shield my face from the rain, which was often impossible without an umbrella or when carrying other objects; or 4) take my glasses off and resign myself to navigating with decreased sight and pray I don’t trip and fall into a puddle.
A decade later with significantly worse sight and I’m still frustrated with these options. So, I’ve decided to fix this in the least fashionable way possible:
~ WIND-SHIELD WIPER GOGGLES ~
I was never able to make this idea a reality as a kid, so I’m going to do it now!
When I first thought of the idea, I made up blueprints for a design that would use safety goggles, a Lego motor, and little pieces of rubber. I based the design off of these things, which I bought in hopes that they would actually work (spoiler: they didn’t… they were a gag gift sort of thing. Funny, but not helpful.)
I plan to use some safety glasses as the base of the design:
I then plan to use a servo (or two? I could use one and hook up two of the wipers to it with gears, but I’m not sure yet) to control the little wipers.
I plan to make windshield wipers with little pieces of rubber — I’m going to look up how car windshield wipers work to emulate those.
I will also need to 3D print a waterproof casing for the servo and battery. I plan to put this on the top of the goggles — depending on how heavy it gets, I may need to add a piece of fabric to go over the top of my head and connect to the top of the goggles to help keep them from sliding down.
I think that if you were able to make the goggles a super bright color, it would really bring your toy to life and further emphasize the spunky idea you have.
This idea is awesome! Make sure you keep in mind the orientation of this when printing. In some ways you might need supports, so something think about
I like the idea! I notice the small circles on the top of the glasses and they made me think of lights. I think it would be pretty cool if you were able to add some tiny blinking lights like this to the glasses.
The struggle against rain is real! I personally had a hard time wearing a mask or gong to humid places since they always fogged up. I would try to stick with 1 servo as the weight could make them very uncomfortable to wear.
I don’t have any suggestions, but I’m super interested in how your going to do the little wipers!
I think this is really cool and I want to see how it turns out. One thing I’m thinking about when looking at this and the number of parts you want to include is weight. I’m concerned that it might get a little heavy on your face and be uncomfortable. You might want to consider, depending on the size of your battery, attaching the battery to the back of the strap to lessen the load on your face. You might also want to print a nose bridge support for the glasses so that it can move more of the load onto your cheek bones and away from your nose bridge.