Freaked out

Haven't done much robot work lately because we've been helping our older son get ready for his move to St. Thomas. So robot building is in the background. Jeff's moving there with no job, no place to stay and very little in the way of contacts so if anyone out there in cyberspace has any tips of wisdom, let me know.

I did do some sailing this weekend, once with Jeff. The second time, I went out to the causeway and a crazy storm blew in and nailed us in a matter of minutes ... literaly. One minute it was beautiful blue skies and a slight breeze. Five minutes later, I looked back and the sky turned black and 30-40 mph winds blew through and challenged my sailing abilities to the max. My little sea kayak/sailboat worked well except for a problem with the sails reefing slippage. But the thing that completely freaked me out as I was tacking back toward land was a kite surfer I was watching. A kite surfer is a person who straps themself to a kite and has a surfboard attached to their feet. The kite sometimes raises them 10-20 feet above the water and it is an amazing thing to watch. But I would never try it. So as I'm fighting this terrible storm with every bit of strength I had, I noticed this kite surfer about 25 feet above the ground over by the causeway. As I watched the kite, a large blinding explosion flashed and I saw the poor boy's body thrown quite a distance. The wind blew him out of control and he went airborn over land on the causeway and blew right into a transformer and power lines. The sight completely freaked me out in the storm and I'm sure I'll never forget that terrible image. After I finally got back to land I found out he was still alive but one side of him was burnt real bad and he was bleeding from the mouth with internal bleeding. I prayed hard for him and his family.

Crazy stuff can happen to anyone out of the blue. So appreciate and love the people around you and let them know it all the time. And don't sweat the small stuff.

If you read this far then I'll give you a real treat. If you're a star wars fan and haven't seen these 8 episodes of "Chad Vader, Day Shift Manger" then these are must see episodes for you. You can watch all 8 episodes here http://www.splu.net/chadvader.php#ep8 Make sure you start with Episode 1.

NOTE ADDED SEVERAL WEEKS LATER: The young kite surfer is OK !!!! He was in serious condition for awhile but it looks like he's going to be all right. It's miraculous he lived so I had to post an update here.

Melting Arms and legs

Using this cool plastic welder I got, a few pieces of pvc for arms and legs were measured, cut and then melted at the joints to get the correct bend. It worked better than expected and the legs have a nice look like they're sitting and the knees are up a little higher than the waist. Looks more natural. And the elbows bend in slightly to allow the hands to sit on the knees.

And speaking of knees I experimented with one of my knee ideas .... it's ok but I'll keep trying things.

Paint was applied to the feet and they were installed. Not bad. Tomorrow we'll try adding paint to the legs and arms

Lazy headless robots

Today the bus stop robots were finally assembled in temporary form but sitting on their new bench. The legs and arms are temporary and need finishing. And of course the heads are still languishing while I try to figure out how to get them looking correct. But one step at a time.

After I get the legs and arms sized proportionally, I'll cut full size pieces and apply heat to the bend areas so I won't need PVC couplings. Then I'll try to come up with some creative joint ideas to make robot knees and elbows. I have about 3-4 different ideas how I'm going to do that so we'll see what develops there. Also need to figure out how to make robot hands for these two. And we can't forget the girl robot will need a set of robot mini-boobettes. Sorry folks, I'm just building them according to the picture.

Honey I shrunk the workshop !

One of the toughest challenges I struggle with is to keep my workshop in such a state that there's actually room enough to build. It's probably a problem many builders have. A friend of mine who is an incredible builder has been without a workshop for about 2 years now. He manages to build things in an incredibly small area thanks to stuff piling up in his workshop area. It drives him nuts but with a growing family he makes the best with what he has.

And now that's where I find myself after purchasing this cool new sailboat/kayak boat. The boat is being stored in my shrinking workshop area where space is at a premium.

The sailboat/kayak is state of the art technology that can sail in the Gulf of Mexico or paddle (with pedals or paddles) in incredibly tight inland areas. Great for fishing ... can't get any better for fishing.

Today I sailed the entire north end of Tampa Bay and just beat a bit of tropical weather that put a damper on the day. So not only is this new boat going to take up a lot of room in my workshop, it's going to also take up a lot of my spare time. So robot building will continue but at a slower pace.

Oh and if you were wondering why the creature was sold ... it was to raise money to purchase the boat and make more room in this cluttered robot room. I'll probably sell off some more stuff in the next week or so. Anyone need a budget R2 PVC frame or a fiberglass R2 Dome?

The picture was taken by my wife on my maiden voyage. Never sailed before so it was "exciting" until I figured things out.

Here's a video of the Hobie promo for this kayak/sailboat if you're interested.

Bye bye Creature

We decided to put our 7 foot sea creature up for adoption the other day and in no time we found a new loving family for the little guy. Our robot room is only so big and since the creature wasn't a robot he was the logical choice first one of who should find a new home. I'll be able to squeeze a robot into his place and use some of the $$ towards paying some bills .... translation - make the wife happy.

The creature will be right at home in his new digs. They promised to take him for a ride in their new Delorean and he will have a B9 and Robby to play cards with as well as a cool animatronic life size chimp. Of course we expect to retain full visitation rights next time we get out to California. Oh and I just received an email from the new parents who wrote " We promise that we won't let him go too California either. No blond highlights for sure or tie-dye."

Too bad I never got around to taking him to the Everglades to surprise a few tourists.

How to survive a robot uprising

Tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion. Ok folks, let's face it. Someday these robots are going to be running things and we could be in trouble if we let ourselves get complacent.

How to survive a robot uprising is the title of a really cool book that is written by Daniel H. Wilson. It recently arrived in my mailbox and I haven't been able to put it down. It's packed with all sorts of helpful tips and can be appreciated by simple people who know little to nothing about robots or the book can even benefit the true robot experts that roam this planet.

One chapter I found helpful was entitled "Hot to spot a hostile Robot". It starts out with:
- Be aware of your surroundings - Are you in a robot neighborhood after dark? Always travel with other humans and keep an escape route in mind. (great advice)

And another section says: Be wary of Malfunctions. Whether it intends to or not, a broken robot can be as dangerous as a stick of dynamite. Watch the robot for sparks, melted plastic, or body wracking convulsions. (this happens often in my garage)

The book is chock full of good examples and information. You never know when this information will come in handy .... it could save your life.

I got my copy from amazon.com.

In Quest of Robot parts

Yesterday we took a trip to the greatest place in the world to find robot parts on the cheap. It happens to be a nearby flea market that is filled with interesting junk that look like robot body parts. The problem with the place is I usually buy too much and then need to find a place to store it all.

This trip happened to be a particularly fruitful one. The best find was a couple parts that made a neat looking head for a new robot that is now officially on my "in progress" list. It was just too cool to pass up - made from electronics of the 50's. Certain parts need to be found in pairs. And in the case of bus stop robots, there's two of them so two pairs are needed for a good find. I met a guy with about a dozen inexpensive shower heads for sale. I bought 4 and they work perfect as shiny chrome shoulders for the bus stop robots. Better than my original plan of using standard ugly flanges from the hardware store. I disassembled the shower heads and was able to use some of the internal parts to construct a quick release method to remove the shoulders/arms from the torso in the future if need be.

Yvonne also found a couple of cool retro items from the 50's / 60's for next to nothing. It's one of those nice flea markets where everything is like from a garage sale. You never know what you'll find there. Plus you meet a lot of interesting characters.

Which brings me to something I've mentioned in the past. Anyone can enjoy this hobby regardless of their financial situation.

Bus Stop Bench and recycled "R2 Dome"

I've been wanting to put up bird feeders again in the courtyard so I took a anti-squirrel dome which was originally intended to be an R2 Dome and turned it back into the anti-squirrel dome to keep the squirrels off the bird feeder. It also freed up some space in the garage as it's pretty big and bulky.

On the Bus Stop robot front, I painted the bench I made with Rustoleum Hammered copper. I always love using hammered paint but this was the first time I tried using the brush on hammered. I have to say I like that even better than the spray can. Highly recommended and more economical than the spray can. The copper color on the bench I built a few weeks ago looks great. Things are starting to come together.

The torsos got a final sanding and I believe they're ready for some paint today. It's been pretty humid so I may hold off a day or so but we'll see. I also finished sanded the hips which were made from pieces of large PVC pipe, MDF wood and a coat of styrene over the ends. 1" pvc 90 degree coupler will protrude from this with an electrical "nut" to hold it in place.

I should have headless robots sitting on a bench within the week.

Hot Foam Cutter

The Bus Stop Robot heads are pretty darned heavy so I'm concerned they will be too much for the motors. Someone mentioned foam heads so I've been thinking a little along those lines. Plus I eventually want to create a large foam body for the Rosey the Robot prototype that's propped up in the corner of the robot room.

So ... to work with foam you need tools. But in line with my new resolution of being frugal, I can't see spending $200.00 for foam cutting tools when you can make one for 25.00. Plus the ones you can make will handle giant cuts as opposed to the little sissy tools you get from hobby shops. There's a great tutorial online how to make your own foam cutter. http://www.vatsaas.org/rtv/construction/hotwirecutter.aspx
I will start on that when I get the required vintage train transformer. It's worth trying and seems like a fun project.

But I still may use the wood heads if I can find an appropriate bearing/shaft ... like the fork a bike's handlebars goes into.

Yvonne and I went out to dinner with Paul's girlfriend and her mother last night and then went to their house. It was nice being with them and talking about Paul. Losing Paul is the hardest thing to go through ...it's a crushing sadness that washes over us every day multiple times ... hard to describe. But I do feel Paul's presence and believe he's hanging with me while I work on these projects. It's good to have a helper.

A different kind of garden gnome

This is a project I've been considering and playing with over the past year. I wasn't sure I wanted to put it on our lawn but reason finally won out and I thought ... why not?

It's a life size great white shark in the courtyard area of our front lawn. Kind of hidden from the neighbors. An interesting sight to welcome visitors on the walk to the front door. He's actually only about 10 feet from where the bus stop robots will be camped out waiting for the bus.

Click here for background music

Sand, fill with bondo or glazing compound ... repeat

I'm at that wonderful stage where you spend most of your robot building days gently sanding. I learned a lot of lessons making Bender with styrene and wood. Bender was sanded down about a thousand times before he looked correct in my eyes. Hopefully some of those lessons will cut down the Bus Stop Robot sanding phase to half of that number.

One of the problems with sanding styrene is it is so darned thin. Very easy to go through if you're not careful. And once that happens .... repairs are not always easy. Also I learned to prepare the surface before applying any filler. Make sure all glue / construction adhesive is sanded off before applying any spot putty or bondo. Otherwise you'll never smooth the surface and have crisp lines.

The Bus Stop Robots have all their skin applied to the heads and torsos. So far so good. I started digging around in my junk boxes and found one really neat set of eyes (using 8 different parts) for the girl robot. To me, that's the fun part ... turning junk into something that people will look at and enjoy.

After the sanding and filling phase comes the bittersweet fun part .... applying paint. I say bittersweet because it's inevitable that once a coat of paint (or primer) is applied, the one million defects all of a sudden make their presence known. Ah ... just part of the process. But on the other hand paint transforms the project and that's when they will start looking like a robot

Patience - not

Well, we didn't stay at EPCOT (Disneyworld) long and got home about 6:00 pm. So much for patience. I started trimming the skins and couldn't stop. It was relaxing ... therapy from the crowds of EPCOT which was fairly insane as usual.

Patience

Spent the last week applying styrene skin to the robots using construction adhesive and in some instances premium wood glue. The wood glue doesn't work well when doing styrene to styrene I found but styrene to wood it works pretty good. The construction adhesive also has drawbacks but it fills in areas (curves) nicely and is pretty strong. The problem with construction adhesive is it's kind of messy. I've slopped it on the skins in a few places but I'm pretty sure it can be sanded.

So this morning I got up and applied more adhesive to a few spots that needed it on the torsos and while I'm patiently waiting for that to dry we're taking a ride over to EPCOT to spend the day and get away. I may let the final construction adhesive application to dry for 48 hours before trimming the styrene even as tempting as it may be to start tomorrow. That's where the patience comes in.

Oh and if you do a lot of gluing with construction adhesive I would highly recommend buying a box of those latex (or the blue ones which I prefer over latex) gloves. Getting that construction adhesive on your body or clothes is not good. I ruined one of my favorite shirts yesterday when a glob of hit embeddded in the stomach area.