The mad robot butcher strikes again

Some days it's better to just find a quiet area, curl up, and read a good book.

Much safer than being in the garage with crazy power tools. Crazy power tools that are too easy to power up and get carried away. Let's just say the poor battle droid was chopped and hacked mercilessly this weekend. Unfortunately, no matter what direction I took, the plan kept degrading worse and worse. So I'm putting the battle droid aside for awhile.

It's funny how some days nothing seems to go according to plan and other days it all just clicks.

Is it just my imagination or does that giraffe have a bit of a nervous look about it?

Giving the Battle Droid a nose job

One of the reasons I backed off on the battle droid project was I wasn't happy with the face. His nose was way too fat and one side was bigger than the other.

So tonight I was aching for an excuse to use the plasma cutter. In a matter of minutes I gave the battle droid a nose job. And I have to say it came out pretty good. It looks a lot more natural. After cutting away the excess material, I pounded the sides to bring them in a little. By doing that, large cracks developed where I had welded the middle of the face. The metal was pretty thin there. I was going to use oxy/acetelene and a lot of filler rod to fill in those areas. But instead I decided to be brave and try to fill those good size cracks with the mig welder. At first I had the temp dialed up a little high and that only made the cracks bigger.

I'm glad I tried one more try at the lowest setting on the welder. After about ten minutes I completely filled all the holes and cracks. Even though it looked like hell, the steel was solid. The handy dandy grinder took care of that.

More Proportional

This weekend I decided to redo the upper and lower arms, the wrists and the shoulders. The more I looked at the battle droid the more I disliked how it was turning out. It didn't look as proportionate as it should. The plasma cutter was a life saver as that allowed me to trim and cut with little effort. About 2 inches was removed from the wrists as well as several from the lower arm and upper shoulders. The wrists were also rounded and made to look more natural.

The backpack was also finished and mounted to the back. Still need to make some details for the backpack as well as the antenna. I made it removable so I can get into the chest area in case I mount any electronics or ??? in the future.

I got some smaller sized electrodes for the arc welder and it is working out very well. Getting very good with that tool.

Speechless

I had so much fun tonight, It's difficult to put a title on this blog entry.

When I got off work today there was a box on the front porch. Oh and guess what was in that box. THE PLASMA CUTTER !!! My new Hypertherm powermax 30 was just sitting on the front porch waiting for me to come home. I'm thankful it didn't mysteriously walk away for that couple hours it sat unattended.

So with very little looking at documentation, I set everything up and then realized the 220 plug didn't match the outlet that was just installed. No problem... it's a good excuse to try out 110v mode. Which worked just fine. I cut straight lines, thick steel, thin steel, circles, free form (I spelled my name in steel) and just plain wild cutting bliss. Yes I said it ... cutting bliss. I must be part pyromaniac because I just love creating molten metal pools.

So tonight I used my new tool to sever the wrists of the battle droid so I can pose the hands in more natural angles than the flat look I originally had. After removing the hands, I experimented with the metal brake to create an outside knuckle area of the hands and wrist. The results were very nice so I welded them into place and will probably do something very similar for the upper and lower arms. The dies in the brake are removable so you can just press down on a part of the part you're working on to make ridges.

I played around with the laser circle cutter but came to the conclusion it would be easier in many instances to grab something (non flamable) circular and drag the plasma cutter around it. So I now have two circles for the elbows which are more uniform than the free form ones I cut by hand. I used 14 gauge steel for them which would have been virtually impossible for me to cut with my tools. Not any more though.

Plasma cutter

After (too) many hours of research, I finally purchased a Hypertherm Powermax 30 plasma cutter. A good quality tool that's made in America with excellent technology. I was surprised you can drag the tip along the surface you're cutting with no problems. Looks like it will work well and as Jay Leno says, "You'll have enough stuff from China soon enough" so try to support American companies while you still can.

Spy vs. Spy

Got a ton of work done on the battle droid today. The head was too long and without the eyes, this battle droid sure reminded me of the old Mad Magazine cartoon "Spy Vs. Spy". The robot snout needed some trimming and a middle trim piece of metal also had to be added. Also added "ears" and semi finished the back of the droid head as well.

A set of basic upper legs and lower legs was created earlier in the week and today I've been working on a way to attach they so they can be adjustable. They're close.

After the body's all together, the detail pieces and a backpack will be attached. It's like building a puzzle. I never have a plan and usually just jump from idea to idea which works well for me. Occasionally that bites me but it all works out in the end.

Oh and I forgot to mention a great tool that I got last week. A 55 pound anvil. It sure came in handy today.

Droid stand

In the never ending quest of conserving space in my workshop, a droid stand was recycled from an adjustable support stand ... something I haven't used in years. This provides a stand to contain whatever project I'm currently working on. And in this case it's the battle droid.

Last couple days, the hips and leg mounting hardware have been installed to the lower abdomen area. And the hip area was also welded to the chest. The welding continues to get easier and it's still a lot of fun. The leg attachment system I devised will make for poseable adjustable leg positions.

It's coming together but at this stage, it's a bare body which needs a lot of detail added as well as shoulders and much work for the head and neck. Also there will be a backpack created soon. And the wrists will be cut off of the arms to be remounted as poseable wrists.

Battle droid progress

There's no good pictures of the battle droid yet as everything is in pieces. Progress is really shaping up and it's turning out better than anticipated. The one thing that was unclear for awhile was how to make the arms and legs pose -able. And I'm still considering ways to cut the wrists off to make them adjustable. I finally came up with a simple way to do that but the shoulders will be now made of sheet metal instead of using the parts I bought at Lowes. The nice thing about that is I can say I built the entire robot from steel.

Tonight I will look at reinforcing the arm pipes and welding them directly to the body. That way the steel rod going from the head into the body can be removed. If this works then the hips will also get a pipe installed for the legs to attach to in a similar fashion. Thin steel can be incredibly strong when bent and formed.

The new 4 1/2 " hand grinder with cutting disc is amazing. It cuts hard steel like a hot knife cutting into butter. Too bad I didn't have this tool when making the other robots. Cutting steel was always a lot of work before and the @$#%@# cheap band saw never worked. I often used a circular chop saw which was living life on the edge. That bad boy always had me wondering if it would to hurl a chunk of metal into a body part every time it started cutting. Even though I made sure to clamp everything down. Plus it would scatter metal shavings throughout the garage. This hand grinder is amazing.

My 36" metal brake is another cheap tool that I need to think about replacing. I made a bunch of angle iron pieces (3 sided pieces) to give the arms depth and strength. But the brake struggled when bending 20 gauge steel and I could actually see the steel on the brake bending which made for some sloppy bends. But they worked ok for this project. It really does pay to get good quality tools but sometimes the money tree doesn't have enough green.