The Hacksmith: Wattson’s Tesla Turret from Apex Legends

2019-07-19 | By The Hacksmith

License: See Original Project

This project was created by Engineering Superheroes of Hackmith Industries.

DO NOT ATTEMPT to Re-Create

If you play video games, you may have heard of Apex Legends. If you’re not familiar with it, Apex Legends is a battle royale game with unique characters (similar to a mix between Fortnite and Overwatch, but without the building component). Apex Legends is free to play and has become immensely popular since its initial release.

Apex Legends Season 2 began this month and recently released a new character: Wattson. As the name implies, Wattson is a master of electricity who puts out a lot of watts. In battles, she creates electrified fences around perimeters that slow and harm enemies in order to keep them away from her team, or funnel enemies into bad positions so her teammates can take them out.

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Wattson and her electrified perimeter security fence. Image courtesy of EA.

Her ultimate ability is the “Interception Pylon”: a giant tesla coil with four mechanical legs that repairs friendly shields and destroys enemy projectiles.

As lovers of video games, tesla coils, and machines with mechanical legs, the Hacksmith team was naturally on board when Apex Legends commissioned them to recreate Wattson’s Interception Pylon for the “Make it Real” series. See how it works in the video below!

How Does it Work?

The tesla coil was lent to Hacksmith Industries by Applied Tesla Technologies in Texas, so its inner workings remain a trade secret. The legs were custom made with a plasma cutter. The tesla coil sits atop a lift, which was originally a hydraulic scissor lift for motorcycles. The hydraulic cylinder was removed and replaced with linear actuators so the turret platform can ascend and descend with a switch, instead of the hydraulic pump.

Linear actuators are also used to move the legs that the scissor lift sits on top of up and down. In total, the system uses 5 linear actuators to move the tesla coil. The actuators all share a battery and control system so that they can perform in unison. With this many moving parts, it’s important to get the controls right, because one leg over or underextending can cause the turret to tip over. You can find more information about the circuit setup in the Scheme-It diagram below!

More Hacksmith Video Game Projects on Maker.io

There are more Hacksmith projects on Maker.io from games like PUBG, Fortnite, Warcraft, Rainbow Six and more!