Thor’s fantastic hammer, Mjölnir, that’s been recreated to be an interactive desktop piece. This is the second attempt at the famed hammer, the first being completely 3D printed and painted. This hammer contains lots of electricity, as it ought. A power bank supplies electricity to an Arduino UNO powering the NeoPixels inside the handle and 2 wireless phone chargers. Furthermore, there is a large Bluetooth speaker housed within the quaint hammerhead. Atop the wooden base is a sturdy leather wrapped 3D printed handle with a NeoPixel LED strip within to light up the handle in sync with the music.

This project was a large culmination of many skills: coding, electronics wiring, 2D fabrication & design, 3D printing, 3D modeling, woodwork, metalwork, welding, and, most importantly, time management. I wanted to grow many of these skills as well as make a unique project with many pieces. Also, a friend joined for this quest to forget Thor’s great hammer, and we had the joy of designing, planning, and building Mjölnir together. 

1. This is an animation of my model that shows all the pieces we used for our project. I brought in the Bluetooth speaker, wireless chargers, 3D printed handle, Arduino UNO, NeoPixel strip, microphone component, power bank, and a USB to USB splitter. I specifically worked on electronics wiring, coding, electronics placement, cut a rectangular piece of acrylic, put in equal effort with final assembly, and wrapped the handle with leather cord. My friend helped drill a hole in a rectangular piece of metal to act as a large washer, stained the wood, helped assemble the wood box, and helped with the final assembly of the handle. 

2. This is a short video of Hello Worlding the code to “bounce” with music. 

3. My friend's brother is great with welding. So, he took my threaded rod and a nut and welded the nut on the end and smoothed it out to act as a ridiculously long bolt whcih was used for securing the handle to the wooden box.

4. Of course a song had to be chosen. After much debate... none at all really, we decide on Thunderstruck by: AC/DC.

5. We then used the laser cutter to cut out of particle wood our pieces for the hammer head box.

6. These were then quickly stained and clear coated by my friend

7. I disassembled the 2 wireless phone chargers to stick to the underside of the hammer's top.

8. As the stain continued to dry, I began work on fitting the nuts inside the handle, and making sure the threaded rod screwed on well; regrettably with a much annoying squeak with each rotation.

9. My friend worked on cleaning the bent and rough edges of a rectangular piece of metal we would use as our washer between the threaded rod, wooden box, and handle. He also drilled a hole for the threaded rod to slip through.

10. Once the stain and clear coat were finally dry to the touch, we began assembly of the box top house our electronics. This is the beginning of the hammerhead wooden box being assembled. A design flaw we noticed was that the teeth of the edges of our pieces were not long enough to receive brad nails, so thankfully the wood glue was strong enough. 

11. Once the box was partially assembled, we cut a small rectangle off of a beautiful piece of hardwood decking we brought to give contrast to the Nordic rune cutout on the front of the box. 

12. We assembled the box, then I had to push out the top piece so I could slide in the makeshift bolt through the upper hole.

13. I also went and cut a small rectangle of acrylic to act a viewing window for the internals and a sliding door to access them.

14. Screwed down the handle and inserted the NeoPixel strip, only to find that it would not round the arch within the handle. So, improvised to pull it around the bolt and in-between the handle sections. This did not look as nice, but kept our functionality... sort of.

15. Leather wrapped the handle whilst gratefully borrowing the ever gracious Dr. Grout's super glue and accelerant spray. 

16. Edited the code to fit our sensitivity, pin numbers, and NeoPixel length, especially with the shortening. However, this affected our LEDs. One side just blinked rapidly and the other synced to the music.

17. Most importantly, we prayed it all stayed together when we gave our presentation.