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2 AXIS BUCKY SKULL

There are many ways to mount servos in a skull for animation. Most of the how-to's I've seen involve 3 axis movement. (pan, nod, and tilt)  For this particular prop, I only needed pan and nod along with mouth movement. This guy's total time in the spotlight is about 15 seconds so the added movement of tilt wasn't necessary.

The first thing needed was a solid, smooth operating jaw hinge. After a little work with a Dremel tool I mounted a small piece of aluminum to the skull and used a 4/40 bolt through a nylon bushing into the jaw as the pivot. You can also see the rod attachment to the jaw in the pic below.

In this pic you can see the pan and nod servos. The center shaft remains stationary while the skull pivots around it on bearings in the pivot block. The nod movement is done by the servo moving the mounting plate up and down.

In this pic you can see the jaw servo at the bottom with lingage arm passing through the mounting plate. You can also see the pivot block mounted to the rod ends as well. Everything is mounted to an aluminum plate for strength and ease of installation.