The octoports are turning out nice. The octoport on the right still has the masking tape on and the octoport on the left I've removed it to show the finished piece. Now the tricky part is installing this on the skin which isn't so easy. Most of my building now is only on the weekends as I'm backing running 5 miles a day to keep fit.
Here are both skins sitting on some cardboard. The octoports are ductaped into position. The I used of course, JB weld on 4 of the 8 sides. I gently used a heatgun to speed up the curing process, but can't use it much or it will warp the resin parts.
JB weld takes 24 full hours to completely cure so you'll need to baby sit this during the process. Every 2-3 hours go and check and make sure the octoport hasn't slid out of position you need it or there's going to be problems. Another issue is the octoport won't want to stick tightly to the skin. It will want to lift off, which is why I'm using gravity and pressure to attach them.
So to keep this curing tightly to the skin I put a brick on top of them. That's right a brick works perfectly. Not too heavy to crush the resin and not too light and it did the job. So ductape, JB weld and a brick are how I attached them to my skins. The next day I took off the brick and they were in installed perfect. I then JB welded the other four sides of the octoport and will paint them black the next day.
New amp arrives! The amp on the left I just took out of my droid. The amp on the right will replace it. Its very tiny and just as powerful if now more powerful. This not only saves very valuable space. It saves a whopping 4 pounds because there was a steel plate the amp was attached to that's no longer needed now. That's a lot when your droid weighs 200 pounds. When means its more efficient and will result in longer battery charges than keeping the same priced amp which weight a lot.
Its always a great day when servos come in the mail. This is about $100 worth of servos and attachments. What we have here are 2 servos that will be attached to the utility arms to open and close them. Then I have 1 heavy duty torque servo that will be attached to the CPU arm. I got one that was rated about 3 times the weight of the arm. However I never weighed the arm but I assume it don't weigh 8 pounds. Making this arm work is my next major project to complete this summer as you'll be reading updates on this blog with my progress.
Here is my basic plan. I bought his 10 dollar aluminum part to attach to the servo. That will then attach to the CPU am and when the large door is opened this servo will move the CPU arm 90 degrees up and down when I put the proper parameters into the JEDI code. I think my next step is to paint the tube. I don't want to get this working and then take it apart and paint because its not going to be easy to get it the exact position needed.
Here is a closeup of the parts. The hole in the CPU arm is already taped and the plug is taken out and laying next to the silver thing on the servo. So I'll need to find out what exactly I need to tap or whatever its called to match the silver thingy with the groves so it screws into the CPU arm. Then the servo must somehow attach to the black breadpan and must be in the exact spot for it to clear the door. This is going to be one of the funnest things I ever do on this droid. This is my plan going forward and we'll see if this expensive R&D works. If it does I predict several dozen builders will copy what I've done if it works.
Much credit to Paul and his 2-3 droids as I ripped him off forwards and backwards. Paul you can copy my brick construction work I listed above:)
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