Conversation with Bob May

Today I spoke with Bob May on the phone for almost an hour. For those of you who don't know who Bob May is, he was the person who wore the Lost in Space B9 Robot costume during the original TV series.

I was unprepared for the call and very suprised when the wife handed me the phone. He was calling in regards to the (possible) Robot builders convention that I'm considering hosting next February and he told me that he would love to attend and even do a few presentations for the builders. WOW !!!! That's a big plus sign on the pros side of my pros and cons list I'm putting together in making this decision to host a convention.

Bob is a super nice guy with a great personality. He told me to ask him any question at all about the robot and all I could think of was asking about the time he fell in it and how hot the suit gets. He said the question about how hot the suit gets is the most common one.

That phone call sure made my day ......

Bender Door and C3PO pistons

Another 5 minute weekend. I swear they go faster and faster.

The main goal was to come up with a plan to make a door in the front of Bender. My wife had a good idea to try and form a curved door frame using the leftover acrylic rod from my B9 collar. Cut pieces of acrylic rod, heat in the toaster over until pliable and then press up against the form of Bender's body so you have nice curved ribs. After glueing with acrylic glue (the hard part) I'll cover it with a lightweight piece of styrene skin and add an extra piece of 1/4" acrylic on one side to attach a hinge.

The forming of the ribs was very easy. If you do this, make sure you don't heat the rods up too much ... you don't want to start a fire. And using a lightweight pair of gloves is also recommended. If you don't do it right the first time, you can re-heat the rods. It's fun working with acrylic.

I also cleaned up the pistons of C3PO and mounted them. However one arm fell from my pvc mannequin onto the floor but luckily no damage was done. I'm going to run shock cord through the mannequin in case that ever happens again (especially on a hard floor).

Bender's "First Stack"

In the B9 robot building world, the "First Stack" is usually the first time the builder takes all the parts they've been making for the past couple of months and stack them into something that resembles the robot. It's a momentous occasion that causes you to run into the house and drag your better half outside to admire your work. Pieces of wood, plastic and whatever is stacked on top of itself to form ..... something.

Well today was Bender's first stack. And I'm the proud papa. The project takes on a whole new burst of enthusiasm when you reach this point. The finish line is approaching and you can finally see it. I'm going to crack open a beer after typing this and savor the moment.

Giving Bender the fingers

As often is the case, I have many fuzzy plans in my head how to do something. And once the work begins, none of the plans pan out. So I do a lot of wandering around my garage poking in boxes and looking on shelves for inspiration. Or I'll wander the aisles of Home Depot or Lowes.

For Bender's hands, I considered using my jig saw and make some elaborate wood hands with holes where fingers would protrude. But practically, heavy wood on the ends of arms would weight them down and make arm positioning/posing difficult. So a lightweight set of hands and poseable fingers were what was needed.

The Vacuum cleaner hose I bought the other day had 2 connectors that fit over the arms perfectly. A piece of scrap foam rubber over that fastened with a little duct tape allowed me to position an old duct tape cardboard inner circle over the connectors. And the hand actually looked pretty good.

The problem was I only had one roll of duct tape that was about done. Low and behold, in my junk robot parts box (that has everything you can imagine in it), I found that in my ignorant wisdom, I saved an empty cardboard backing from my last roll of duct tape. That even surprised me.

The fingers were made of some multistrand wire intertwined together. Then some pieces of my scrap foam pipe insulation were slit to form 3 fingers. Some more duct tape over the fingers and then I cut up some old black gloves I also had in my robot parts box. These gloves were leftover from a Target Sale. My wife bought them when I was building my Jawa. These happened to be too big but the price was almost nothing so I kept them.

Of course the hands get some finish and paint but he's definately starting to look like a Bender bot.

New Arms

The arms I did yesterday look like crap.

So this morning my mind was pre-occupied coming up with a new plan to redo Bender's arms. And then that light bulb comes on and a completely different design solves all the problems in yesterdays building. It needed a 2 1/2" diameter vacuum hose with a little plastic primer and a light coat of silver (so the black in the slits shows).

The new design has solid poseable arms. You can remove or replace the outer skin and the structure underneath is flexible. Plus the arms look much better than lame pvc pieces. I also started making skin templates for his torso. Now that the arms are complete it's time to start thinking robot skin.

Bender's arms

Today was primarily spent on Bender's arms. To make them poseable, I used a heavy guage multi strand piece of wire as the base. One piece of wire attached to the torso and extending into the right and left arms. On top of the wire were multiple pieces of 3/4" pvc 1 1/4" long. Over the PVC was a piece of 1 1/8" foam PVC Pipe insulation. On top of the foam pipe insulation were pieces of 2" pvc cut 2" long.

The result was solid poseable arms. I tried about a dozen different approaches before coming up with this combination. I'm still not sure about the outer 2" pieces of pvc. It doesn't look the way I envisioned so I'll keep thinking about it until I come up with a better look.

Being a flexible builder ... VERY flexible is one of the most important aspects of building these things. There's usually many ways to accomplish your tasks. Some people get stuck in a messy part of their projects and get frustrated. It kills their enthusiasm and the project eventually dies a slow death. That may be why you see people selling their partially completed robots. You got to be flexible in accepting your screwups or mistakes.

When I get to that point, I allow myself to deliberately cut corners and compromise ... TEMPORARILY. Go on with something else with the attitude that you will go back and eventually fix or redo the part you were having trouble with. Everyone ... even the genius builders out there ... have setbacks and problems. That's actually part of the fun.

And so that's why I'm leaving the lame looking 2" pieces of PVC on the outer arms for now. It looks just so so.

I also worked on the creature a little. It looks like he was abused because of the tears in his skin. In many areas the latex outer skin was separated from itself. I got my wife to thread a needle for me so I could experiment with sewing him up. It worked ok but it's slow going and I need to get heavier thread. After that's finished I'll brush on some liquid latex and then apply some paint on the finish. Creature needs a lot of work and is an interesting project.

Creature repair

A large mannequin was put into the creature suit to fill him out better. This should make the restoration a little easier.

Lucky there was a lot of leftover dye from the B9 robot legs. Charcoal grey dye touched up a few spots on the creature where the latex coating had rubbed off.

If I'm interpreting things right, it looks like when they made that Camel Cigarette commercial the woman probably damaged the creature costume when the creature carried her in the surf. The latex was completely rubbed off the belly section. Putting a light coat of dye in that area looks very good. The dye was also used in some other areas where yellowish orange color was showing. The darker dye is the first step. Next step will be to add a green/blue tinge to some of those areas.

I need to find or make some latex scales to fill in a few areas on the creature though. After I research how to make and color latex.

Nice people

This entry is dedicated to some nice people I stumbled upon in cyberspace. These people live in England and went out of their way to send me some special paint that is only sold in the UK. They made several trips from their home in the countryside to town to procure the paint and then mailed it to me in several packages.

You hear so many bad things about people and it's easy to get down on your fellow rats in the rat race. I forgot to mention that they did all this and asked if they could do it just as a good deed. They refused to be paid anything other than the actual expenses they incurred. That's the kind of people they are. They make it a point in life to do at least one "good deed" a month.

It's been a couple of weeks since I got the paint and it's just a heartwarming experience to be on the receiving end of a good deed. The best part of it is it renews my faith in people. I get very cynical ... especially with the current state of world politics. Thank you Trish & husband in Shropshire ....

In other robot building news, the last couple of days has reaped a few more parts for the C3PO project. Machined eyes and neck bolts and rods. Also got two sets of these cool LED lights that a person in the C3PO club makes. All good stuff.

Today I also researched getting the C3PO professionally plated with a shiny gold finish. It's more work and expense but the results will be worth it.

Here's a photo of some of the C3PO parts

Robot builder or serial killer?

Weird is the only word to describe the scene in my living room. C3PO is on the carpet looking quite distressed while I work on adapting one of the female manniquins to support his armor. I got these mannequins free so I need to make them work. The pelvis (as is) of C3PO won't fit the mannequin so I need to amputate one of the legs and half the posterior of the mannequin. Also the breasts were too big to fit in the torso of C3PO so they also had to go. Is this starting to sound sick or what?

I made sure the garage door was down because I surely don't want any neighbors to see this grisly scene unfold. The rotozip made quick work on the unnecessary body parts. The holes in the chest area looked embarassing so I wrapped it in duct tape ... kind of like a tube top. Time to take a break,

After I figure what to do with all these excess body parts ....

Three gears are better than two

There was some interest in the torso gear and the vex setup from a couple of B9 builders recently. So I got to thinking and started playing around with my torso motor and gears. It turned into another one of those back to the drawing board weekends until I finally came up with a design I was happy with. An all around good learning experience.

If there's movement in the motor or gear mounts when the motor starts or stops then your assembly will eventually vibrate itself apart. My original design had too much movement in the mount with the torque. Sloppy. Andy (the guy who makes these gears for the R2D2 club) also mentioned that both of the small gears should be used. My original design only used one smaller gear. Using both small gears with the big gear may be better. There's a little movement in the assembly but not too bad.

Also the new design is easier to turn off and on, the antenna is mounted securely and the battery can be easily removed for recharging.

Using the Vex setup is like playing with a super erector set.

Trapped in a home improvement black hole

I now have zero time to even think about working on non home improvement projects (ie robots or creatures).

Recarpeting the entire house has been spawning too many side projects that never seem to end. My garage/workshop is filled with furniture and stuff waiting to go back into the house. Everything is in semi chaos mode still but I finally got my computer back up.

The B9 convention idea is still going strong. There's been a lot of interest from B9 members with offers to help. I appreciate the offers of help and will get back with everyone shortly.

MegaCon is a convention we attended last week in Orlando. It's not likely we'll use that for the B9 convention next year. It was mostly "Anime" (Japanese cartoons?) and very little sci-fi. There were hundreds of people in interesting costumes though. The only MegaCon seminar we attended was a good prop/r2 making presentation. An R2 attended and it was motorized. Another negative mark for MegaCon is the traffic around the convention center in Orlando was totally insane to say the least.

Within a month I should have a ton of new B9 stuff to mess with. Almost enough parts to build a second B9. Don't ask me why. I just follow the obsession where it takes me.