# Mellis HB-7: a robotic bee simulator that comes apart (Elvar's Claude "teardown" skill) ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-poster.webp]] **Creator:** Elvar (@elvar_official) · **Published:** 2026-10-30 · **Length:** 0:24 · [Watch on X](https://x.com/elvar_official/status/2116192984299344372) · Quoted article: [How I Turn Any Machine Into a 3D Simulator You Can Take Apart](https://x.com/i/status/2116174609355571402) > Caption source: **none, there is no speech.** yt-dlp found no subtitles and faster-whisper returned only a "Thanks for watching!" hallucination on what is music or silence, which I discarded. This note describes the on-screen content (one frame about every 2 s was reviewed; 7 are embedded) plus the post text and the quoted X Article. The video is a 1920×1080 screen capture of a browser simulator. ## Summary The post announces a free Claude Code skill called **teardown** that turns one reference picture into a complete interactive 3D "simulator" of a machine, written as three.js code. Elvar says he gave "opus 5.5" one reference picture and asked for a full teardown "every part in code"; the model compared its render with the picture side by side for 3 rounds before any video was made; 260 tiny pistons, hoses, screws and wires sit under the big gears; and after the first version "just hovered" he made something come apart every 2-3 seconds. He says he built 7 of these in 2 days. The video is a 24-second tour of one of them: **Mellis HB-7**, a fictional "robotic pollinator, micro air vehicle" (flapping-wing drone) on a pale studio background, surrounded by a lab-console UI. It starts in flight, then the operator isolates assemblies one by one (optics, a wing, the thorax, the abdomen), the model explodes into a labeled "teardown," then reassembles and flies away. Every gauge in the UI changes with the model state. ## Outline - **0:00** Banking flight. Header: *Mellis HB-7 / Robotic Pollinator · Micro Air Vehicle · Flapping-Wing Drone / Field Simulator*, Sim ID HB7-0412, operator "LAB 3 · R.K." Left panels: wing beat (frequency, amplitude, live sine trace; 7.5 Hz and ±32° in the 0:22 frame), power (battery, draw in W, cell 3.70 V, motor temperature), per-leg servo load (L1-L3, R1-R3). Right panels: flight (altitude, vertical speed, pitch, roll), assembly buttons (Hero, Optics, Wing, Leg L2, Thorax, Abdomen), display toggles (Labels, Exploded, Motion blur, Turntable) and a subsystem list. Bottom: a 24-second flight-log timeline with "8 operator actions." ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0000.webp]] - **0:02** Mode changes to HOVER. - **0:04** Mode label OPTICS OPEN (the optic head assembly is opened up). ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0004.webp]] - **0:06** Mode label WING OFF (a wing assembly comes off while the rest holds pose). ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0006.webp]] - **0:08-0:10** Back to HOVER between actions. - **0:12** THORAX OPEN: the thorax drive (gears and actuators) is exposed. ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0012.webp]] - **0:14** ABDOMEN OPEN: the abdomen capsule and its gear train. ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0014.webp]] - **0:16-0:18** TEARDOWN with "Exploded" on: wing beat drops to 0.0 Hz, leg servos read DETACHED, and labels point at the abdomen capsule, drive gears ("spinning free"), wing hinge ("quick release"), neck bearing (10 segments) and optic head. The turntable shows a "% apart" readout. ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0018.webp]] - **0:20** Reassembled and HOVER again. - **0:22** DEPARTING: banking away with motion blur on, wing beat back at 7.5 Hz, battery about 79%, subsystems read tracking, locked, running, holding and sealed. The log shows "Operator · Hero · Release." ![[images/Mellis-HB-7-Teardown-Simulator-t0022.webp]] ## Key takeaways - The workflow is: **one reference picture, then a model written as pure functions of a single input, then every part, panel and label reads from that model.** Nothing is animated by hand, so the gauges cannot drift from the 3D pose. - The picture decides the quality: with no reference the author got "generic toys"; with a clip of a real V8 simulator the model rebuilt the engine panel by panel. - The model checks its own renders: stills at every beat of the tour, scrubbing transitions at 0.2 s, fixing collisions with numbers rather than hiding them with the camera. ## Things mentioned - Claude Code and "Opus 5.5" (as named by the author); a free skill called **teardown** (MIT licence, 3 machines included: V8 engine, Cessna 337 landing gear, Strandbeest); built on **whaleyxbt's claude-motion** - three.js, Node.js 20+, ffmpeg, Python 3, headless Chrome (Playwright/Chromium), Vercel deployment - The author's playground, visual-learning.app (6 simulators), and the repository github.com/elvarofficial/teardown - Other machines the article built: a V8 engine, a wildfire tool, a sandworm (1,300 m long, 190 m across), a robotic jellyfish, a walking hexapod, a rabbit-in-a-hat scene, a Cessna landing gear, a Strandbeest. The robotic bee in the video is not named in the article text. - Theo Jansen (Strandbeest linkage, "11 link lengths from 1990") ## Claims check | Claim | Status | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | "I built 7 of these in 2 days"; 3 ship inside the skill | Author's claim, not verified | I did not install or run the skill. | | The skill is called teardown and is free and open source | Not checked | The article gives `github.com/elvarofficial/teardown` (MIT). I did not open the repository. | | "Opus 5.5" | Not verified | Only the author's wording; I did not check the model name. | | A V8 simulator pulled 3,790,000 views and a wildfire tool 1,640,000 | Not checked | Engagement figures from the article. | | 32 teeth at module 4 mm gives a 128 mm gear whose half circumference is 201 mm (Cessna gear example) | **Arithmetic checks out** | 32 × 4 = 128 mm pitch diameter; π × 128 / 2 = 201.06 mm. Whether the real Cessna 337 gear uses these numbers was not checked; the article's prompt text says to flag uncertain numbers. | | Something comes apart every 2-3 seconds; pulling a leg flips its servo bar to DETACHED | Consistent with the video | Assembly changes appear at about 4, 6, 12, 14 and 16 s, and the leg servos read DETACHED in the 16-18 s teardown frames. | | "260 tiny pistons, hoses, screws and wires" | Not checkable from the video | Too small to count. | ## Added context - **The 9 prompts in the article** (from its text, for the workflow): install the skill (`npx skills add elvarofficial/teardown -g -a claude-code`, then `npm install` and `npx playwright install chromium` in the skill folder, then `/teardown` in Claude Code); pick a machine with one moving input and real numbers plus one reference picture; build the model; build the console (title, live numbers, charts, 2D schematic, one button per subsystem, camera buttons, callouts); give it the look (pale studio, one accent colour for the working part, machine fills 60-70% of view); check it like a critic; make it a page people drive (auto tour with a cursor, hand control back after 25 s of quiet, integrated-GPU quality steps); turn it into a video (render as a pure function of time at 60 fps 1920×1080, then score it with generated audio at -14 LUFS); put it online (HTML under 1 MB, 1200×630 preview card, Vercel). - Article ideas for next machines: bicycle derailleur, mechanical watch escapement, car differential, sewing machine lockstitch, excavator arm. - I only read these as text. I did not run any install commands from the article. ## Biographies - **Elvar** (@elvar_official): X account that publishes the "teardown" skill and the visual-learning.app playground; no further background found or researched. - **Theo Jansen**: Dutch kinetic artist known for his Strandbeest walking sculptures (general knowledge; the article cites his 11 link lengths from 1990). - **whaleyxbt**: author of claude-motion, which teardown builds on per the article; not researched. ## References | Source | Link | | --- | --- | | The post | https://x.com/elvar_official/status/2116192984299344372 | | Quoted X Article | https://x.com/i/status/2116174609355571402 |