I can't remember if I mentioned Johnny 5 but I got a SUPER COOL hand made Johnny 5 the other day. They are all hand painted and assembled. Mike is absolutely passionate about building Johnny 5 and has a very limited number of these for sale. I consider myself fortunate getting one of these very rare pieces when I did. To inquire if Mike has any left, his email is milwaukeemachineman@yahoo.com
Today marks our 25th wedding anniversary ! We had a great evening.
Yvonne and I just returned from the magnificent Robofest event at the South Florida Science museum in West Palm Beach Florida. This place was packed with all types of robots and robotic displays as well as robot enthusiasts of all stripes. We met many interesting people and learned a lot.
Unfortunately I pulled out my back while loading the robot crate into my truck and so I walked like a robot the whole event ! The great volunteers at the museum helped us unload and set up so that saved the day. My sidekick (the wife) also came down with a real bad cold that kept her in the hotel room much of the weekend but she's feeling better now.
There were two highlights of the trip. The first were all the kids with their robotic clubs and commaraderie. I spoke with many of the kids and the adult mentors in the clubs and can't say enough about the enthusiasm and positive stuff that was happening with these people. The other highlight was meeting robot genius Sanya Gaskell of Jupiter Cybernetics who created A.D.D.I.E. You can log into the science museum and see ADDIE in action and learn about this IP (internet) controlled robot. You can control the camera and even the motors of the robot remotely from your computer. They have the motion feature turned off now as that could get a little crazy if the public were moving a six foot robot throughout the museum. Here's the URL
http://74.164.81.59:8908/cgi-bin/AddieControl2.cgi
. We also got to meet June Lockhart and I spoke with Bob May (the guy inside the B9 robot during Lost in Space) numerous times throughout the weekend.
I also met a cool guy (Bart) and his sister who is "off the electric grid". He converted his apartment to run on solar energy and is completely off the grid. I thought that was so cool. Someday I would like to invest in some of that technology to cut my dependence on the utility companies.
Thanks a million to Elizabeth, Jennifer and Kathryn for being such gracious hosts of the museum! Them and the high energy staff of volunteers at the museum made this event a tremendous success. If you're in the West Palm beach area be sure to stop by http://www.sfsm.org
Even though we met a lot of nice people and had a good time, it's always nice to be home.
Fathers day weekend finds me engulfed in 10 million household projects again. After waxing my wife's car, we installed some really cool hurricane shutters. These are made of flexible and semi transluscent pvc woven shutters. They can be folded or rolled up for storage. Much better than my old plywood system which was a nightmare installing and removing. With the new system I can have all the shutters up for my house in one half hour tops. Takedown is just as quick. Two years ago, I was putting up and taking down the plywood shutters constantly and there are many holes in my outside walls to prove it. Now I can fill all the old holes and repaint the house (another project).
Today I'm taking a day off droid building and will enjoy fathers day with a lot of family (including Dad) over our house later in the day. But first Yvonne and I will head over to to Dollar General to scour the store for parts to build a $20.00 junk robot / spaceship / gun for a fun contest I joined with other robot fanatics. The rules are you can fabricate a robot, spaceship or scifi gun from junk you find at a dollar store. You can spend no more than $20.00 and use your own screws, glue and paint outside the $20.00. The challenge was accepted so I hope I can come up with something creative. It should be fun and a nice diversion since I won't have much time to work on R2 much in the next month with vacation and all.
Next weekend we're taking Bender and C3PO to a science museum in West Palm Beach for their RoboFest weekend. Bob May and June Lockhart will be there with us. It will be a fun weekend. As always I enjoy Bob May, but this will be the first time meeting June Lockhart.
R2 was standing on his own for awhile and was actually fairl stable considering all the connections in the legs were temporary. I still haven't glued/fastened the layers of the legs together more than using a couple dowel rods. So they weren't too tight. I need to run a channel in them so I can feed a couple wires to the motors before I glue them together. Speaking of motors, they were also fitted temporarily.
So after a couple pictures were taken, R2 was completely torn down again to get some leg work done.
Last night I built two brackets for the front ankle to lock the front center foot into position. I used one stainless bolt to secure both of the brackets. Nice and solid. There is a little play in the shaft that holds the front ankle to the frame so I stapled a few pieces of foam to take up a little of the slack. Might need a bigger piece in the future though.
One more item I can check off the R2 todo list.
After taking apart and reassembling the feet about 4 times, I finally put R2 together to get a 3 point standing test. What ended up happening surprised me and has me rethinking some of this. The front center foot pivits and went into a position with the front all the way up and the back all the way down. So unless the wheel is in the exact center and the center of gravity never shifts, it will always be unbalanced. What that means is the pivot point must be locked down so it doesn't move. How I'm going to do that I have no clue at this time so I wedged a piece of wood under the foot to take a picture.
I placed the rear feet by the end of the legs and raised them up a bit with a piece of wood to simulate wheels under them. This was to test how everything is going to work once the motors get mounted. I also bungeed the skins to the frame and laid on my test dome (fiberglass one) to transform the parts into a droid. Looks pretty cool too. I couldn't risk putting my new aluminum dome on this shakey assembly.
It's gonna be one of those weekends where a lot of robot building gets done. The front foot and mounting plates are now primed and drying. I used a rustoleum blue to paint the wooden bottom plate of R2. The color sure looks like it's R2 blue but I already purchased the correct blue for the skins and dome.
Also I painted the lower rim of the C3PO restraining bolt black. While at Keith and Carolyn's the other day I noticed their's had a black bottom rim. Keith said he researched it and found a picture of one on C3PO like that. Last weekend Brad stopped by and made a suggestion that I raise C3PO's head up just a tad because he had an unnatural scrunched neck look. Sure enough the head up another inch or so looks a million times better. That's a wrap for C3PO. He and Bender are ready for the science museum later this month.
R2's ankle was obtained from the same guy who didn't mix his resin correctly and had a stickyness to it which I'm told will be like that forever unless you fix it. So I sanded it down and completely slathered it with thin coat of red glazing putty. After sanding that and priming it, I think the ankle will be ok. Plus the glazing putty will smooth it nicely and fill in the imperfections.
Oh and one last comment about the ankle. Pouring resin into them like I did is not a temporary or undooable action. It's solid and I would venture impossible to remove the resin from the insides of my ankle. So if you do it, make sure everything is lined up exactly like it is supposed to be.
My short term goal is to have R2 standing on 3 feet with the motors working this weekend or within the next week or so. That is if my list of a million home projects doesn't get in the way. Those new hurricane shutters can wait !!!
I was thinking today how lucky I am to be able to tinker and create my R2 any way I want without worry of what anyone thinks. There's a million ways to solve problems and I see a lot of builders (me included often) follow the pack and do what everyone else does. Occasionally it's nice to come up with a unique way of doing things.
Today I had an unconventional idea how to mount a piece of wood and aluminum bracket inside the front ankle of R2. For economy sake, I always try to use whatever is already in the garage. So I pulled a couple jugs with leftover resin from an old project and mixed up a fresh batch. It was poured into the ankle cavity with the mounting mechanisms already installed. I'm guessing that it's going to be a nice tight fit and probably won't even need screws to hold it all together. The inside of the ankles is rough fiberglass. It takes 2 hours to dry so we'll see.
It was kind of a mess as I forgot how much this stuff expands. But I was prepared for a mess this time (remembering the resin incident 2 years ago while making B9 parts). A tray was there to catch the runoff and plenty of paper towels and gloves were on hand.
The pictures are a little rough but after sanding the top smooth, I'll have a system where I can remove the front leg with by quickly removing a single bolt. The floor of the R2 has the hole cut out for the hole mounting mechanism using a couple scrap pieces of aluminum angle iron I bought one day thinking they would come in handy.
The parts in the picture are still rough but once I determine they'll work they will be cleaned up and painted. Also note that under the square aluminum bracket a block of wood is attached and surrounded by the resin.
Last weekend we went to Star wars weekend and met up with a bunch of R2 builders outside of Star tours at MGM. Thanks for the resourceful Trent, a couple of us got to go behind the scenes and meet Kenny Baker so Trent could present him with a miniature R2 builders club jacket. The star wars special presentations and events at MGM that day were great. Even with the crazy crowds.
On the building front, R2 is slowly coming along. Sorry for not posting pictures lately but I'm more into building than sitting at the computer. Maybe I'll post a few this weekend.
Again, working on the frame and remounting the center foot has been a project. I came up with some interesting ideas that may work. Many R2 builders have been patiently waiting on an aluminum frame run but I'm getting to the point where I may just keep working on this A&A frame and get it to work. An advantage is it will be lighter. The disadvantage is it will be tight space wise to mount electronics and all. I'll have to remove one of my rods if I'm ever going to get a battery inside. Speaking of battery, tonight I built a place in the R2 to hold the battery as well as mount the center leg bracket that I fabricated.
The steel front foot I received from Jerry Green is beautiful and I mounted that to the center ankle. The caster I bought was all wrong so tonight I bought a slightly different version of caster and one slightly smaller.
Below: picture of Kent, Carolyn, Kenny Baker (the guy inside R2 during the movie) and myself at Star Wars weekends. Notice C3PO bundled by the building behind us. It's the prop the wookie carries in the parade
