Today I worked off and on until midnight on putting the tread section together. It's much more work than I thought. But part of it was not doing everything in the right order so I would have to take everything apart sometimes to add screws to an otherwise inaccessible area. The mdf wasn't as strong as I thought and in the few cases where I didn't drill my pilot hole long enough, the mdf cracked when the drywall screw was put in. The cracks weren't too bad and I filled them with glue and clamped where able.
The top of the tread section just doesn't seem too secure. Especially since my bazillion dollar robot is going to be sitting on top. I couldn't help but be concerned with the way the top plate of the tread section attaches to the flimsy 1/2" mdf. Brad also mentioned this to me and told me I should brace it up better. So I laid in a piece of 1" wood just under the lower knee plate and attached it securely to the tread section. Now I have something solid to attach the upper parts of the robot to and I feel pretty good about taking the extra time to do this. Dad also was concerned about this area. Another thing I'm doing is replacing the two lower knee plates (on the tread box) with one double sized plate. That will add more strength and stability to the base of the robot. I know it's supposed to be two feet so I'll find some way to make it look like it's two pieces instead of one solid one.
Today we drilled a lot of holes and Dad brought over a bit that was a countersinking tool. Man did that work beautiful to countersink all of the screws. I never used one of those before and always used a larger drill bit in the past. I'll be buying one of those bits for myself. After I got the treadbox 90% together, I started with the wood filler to begin finishing.
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