Thursday 16 August 2012

Robot construction Update

Problematic legs
First I cut some 1 3/4" tubes (12 X) from a length of plumbers waste pipe, once cut the raw edges had to be sanded, I then covered each section with aluminium ducting tape (this part was ok)

Next I wanted to make foam spacer joining pieces to go between the tube sections so I cut all the disc's from a 10mmm foam exercise mat (all 40 of them) this I intended to cover with black tape but it had the desired effect of either distorting the disc shapes, not sitting flat or coming unstuck
(this stage didn't go well and was scraped).


Rethink
I decided to make a mould and cast the joints from black silicon (this is working very well) 
the first step was making the joint out of sculpy, once baked and cool I made a central line through where the joint will be then I made a two part mould from fine casting plaster,
moulding with the silicon has proved straight forward
see image below.
Robot body
I have had to bolt the hips to the legs (for constructional reasons) and the hip section to the body to make the waist swivel.
shoulder caps have been made from ping pong balls
and dome head from empty pop bottle (doing my bit for recycling)
see image below.

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Twins....................Robot X2

I have been busy making a start by building my robot puppets.
I started by making strong ball & socket armatures for the core of the legs and then constructed the bodys from styrofoam sheets and mdf, the puppets feel relatively light up till now so thats a good thing.

                                            Robot body parts
                                                  Hips & Legs


More updates coming soon.