Funny how some projects that you worry about the most turn out to be a piece of cake while some of the ones you think will be easy turn out to be a nightmare. That's how it was with the repair of the fiberglass rear R2 feet. I've been thinking about them for months and thought that it would be a very difficult repair. Yesterday I came up with a great solution that looks good and is a practical solution for accessing the motors in the feet.
So now it's onto the final task which shouldn't be too difficult ... just a lot of labor. It involves removing the rear feet, motors and ankles to install the ankle cylinders and wedges. After this is complete I'm going to redo areas of the electrical some and then R2 will be good to go.
I've been experimenting with metal fabrication the last couple weeks and learning what I can in preparation for the next robot challenge. Renting several movies from smartflix.com has taught me about metal sculpture work, welding and brazing so far. Smartflix is like netflix but with "how to" movies. I want to fabricate my next life size robots all of steel. Yesterday while at northern tools pricing a welding torch I discovered how expensive the tanks were !!! After the sticker shock set in I decided to save up some more money and do a little more research before purchasing. Besides with my attention deficit issues, if I get a new tool I'll be screwing around with that all day and R2 will never get complete !
2 comments:
Jim, I hear you about the tanks, just dont get the little mickey mouse sized bottles, there too small to get much work done. Bottles are high, but you can always get your money back out of them. Keep in mind, when it comes to welding anything thin, nothing beats mig or tig. Gas welding is an art, and I enjoy doing it, but sheet metal warps like hell when using gas to weld it. Its hard to keep the heat level down, compared to tig/mig. I helped put on quarter panels with a gas torch many years ago, nearly impossible to do without warpage. When I got a real mig welder 4 years ago, I was amazed at how easy and versatile it was. It made making my own steel R2 feet a breeze. I do enjoy gas welding though, it seems that not many people are familiar with it these days." Torches, heck they're just for cutting" seems to be most peoples sentiment.
Gary
Good advice Gary ! I'll probably use a combination of a wire feed welder and gas welding for these upcoming projects but I worry about setting my garage on fire with all the sparks from the wire feed. I'll probably have to make a special area with welding curtain or something to contain the sparks. Almost blew myself up once ... after welding looked down and saw a gas can a few feet away and felt VERY stupid. I hope to use the gas for brazing and also texturing the metal with some effects I saw in the metal sculpture videos. As far as the price, I'll keep checking craigslist and see if I can find a good set reasonable. Thanks again for your experienced insight.
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