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Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Align legs, knees and waist


About 20 times I figured out how I was going to align the legs/ knees/ waist sections and about 20 times I found flaws in my plans. I want to make it flexible so I can take it apart easily into sections yet have the robot very sturdy. I also want to make it look very level. My wife and I worked on figuring out the optimum space between layers to accomodate the pipe insulation. Basically 1 1/4 " between layers that have two pieces of insulation (top and bottom) and 1" for layers that only have 1 piece pipe insulation butting up to wood. I priced nylon spacers at Lowes they were too expensive so I cut spacers out of pvc pipe I had laying around the garage. I tried cutting it with my scroll saw but the cuts weren't very level. My pvc cutting tool is also not very clean cutting. On a whim, I grabbed my pipe cutter and tried it. Worked like a charm and made very clean cuts. Plus no plastic dust from saws. Occasionally the pipe cutter would make a bad cut but all in all it wasn't too bad. I think the measurements were more accurate also.

I got a really cool sound board in the mail today. Got the idea from one of the members in the B9 club. He had it on his R2D2 site. The people involved in these clubs are extremely helpful and clever. This sound board takes input from a compact flash card and I can hook it up to my remote control. This option is so much more efficient than sticking a cd player and amp in the robot. This card does it all. I can get up to 11 hours of sound on a card the size of a postage stamp. Plus I can switch cards out anytime I want. It also has background sounds that can activate between triggering sounds. I would also like to add switches to the bezel buttons that trigger some of the sounds. Not sure how to put a switch on a bezel buttons yet. Then again, I don't have my bezel and buttons yet.

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