C-3P0, Terminator and other stuff

I've been slowing down my work on props lately and collecting parts. When I'm not working on my astromech droids I'm collecting parts or planning out how I'm going to do my next two robots. There is still much to do with R5-D4 like put servos and other things in the dome. I won't touch that dome until I have my R2-D2 or R2-Q5 finished. It took me 40 years of my life without a finished droid and I want to keep one on hand at all times. When I finish 2 of them. I'll take R5 apart and upgrade that.

My next project I'm collecting parts for is a full size C-3P0 that will be a wearable costume and also animatronic from the waist up. I got the head parts today and it was a great deal for really well made parts! I'm quite happy with the bang for the buck here. The builder is very good with vacuum formed props.

It also includes the rest of the head detail pieces including transparent lenses and LED lights, resistor and everything you need. You have to trim and sand and do your share of the work to get the head ready for the chrome plated look. 

I also ordered some feet. These feet need to be trimmed and then you can wear them over a size 10.5 narrow shoe. Which sucks my feet are 12-13:( I have no idea what the part next to the feet is for. I saw my first real life 3P0 at Phoenix Comicon and that pretty much cemented my on/off decision to do a project like this. This robot is frakking cool!

I could have bought a complete 3P0 off ebay from some recasters painted and done for half the price of going this route. I'm not that type of nerd and will only do business with decent folk that work sometimes with LFL that offer parts, not completed robots. A good deal of the fun is putting some elbow work into these projects. Another reason is learning of new skills you didn't know when you started this stuff. By the time you finish a droid or large scale robot. You'll probably be pretty good at painting, polishing, a dremel master of all things, soldering and medium level electronics, familiar with LEDs and china, and how CNC machine basics work. You'll end up knowing enough about nuts and bolt sizes to get hired at Ace Hardware if you don't the guys in the store on a first name basis.

That's valuable experience you'll never get if you hit 'buy it now' on ebay for a finished robot. There will be times your robot will break and you say. 'No big deal I built it once its easier to fix that part the second time. People who buy a finished droid have no idea what kind of electronics are inside, where parts came from, part terminology of what's what.

Anyway, when I'm not working on droids I have this evil Terminator T-800 robot I'm working on. This is the first of many skulls. I'm going to later replace with this a chromed out fullsize head. This head won't be on the finished Terminator but I needed a Terminator fix so I bought this to piece to place around with until I can afford a 1:1 head like this head in the photo below.

Eventually I'll buy the head for a small fortune. That will most likely be the only part on this build that I buy. The rest I'll build from scratch as you really can't get in on T-800 part runs as there aren't any. I think I'll finish the C-3P0 first and servo up that droid to figure out how I'm going to to this moving T-800 robot. This will be my masterpiece of a robot out of all of them.

I also got two of the most powerful Hitec servos servocity.com has to offer. This will beef up the power to move the Gripper arm and CPU arm up and down. The servos I have installed are 133 oz of torque. The new servos above are rated at 403 oz of torque. Each servo is so expensive it cost more than the 3P0 above and the Terminator head also. By the time they arrived I checked servocity and they had just published newer more powerful servos making mine obsolete by the time it arrived:(

Two of  best servos they offer cost about as much as an Xbox 360! Ouch! I'll need tons of those to animate 3P0 probably enough to pay for a small used car.

Working on the Gripper

It was 118 degrees outside so I just stayed in doors and worked on my droids gripper arm.

My L16 Linear Actuator came in and I had planned on using it in my CPU arm. In the photo its positioned where it should be in the tube. As you can see the L16 is about 1 inch too long. Sure I could cut out the breadpans to accommodate.

However I noticed it seems to be about the right length for the gripper arm's tube.

The L16 fits inside Tom D. Waterset gripper tube like a glove. This is a pretty good pairing up. Even the hole around the black nylon tip is the exact size!  The next step was to use the existing hole  you see and drill it wider. Then tap it for a 1/4-20 thread.

The thin aluminum I just tapped isn't going to be enough to maneuver this later with a servo. So I took a low profile 1/4-20 nut and sanded it down so I could slip it in between the tube and the L16 .

Hopefully this is going to be strong enough to muscle the arm up and down hundreds of times without failing.

This is going to be very tricky to pull this off. It has to be screwed in just the right amount. If you go too far you start eating into the plastic of the L16. 

Upon further tweaking of this build. I decided I had to push the L16 further into the tube and remove more aluminum material I marked with black. I used a dremel to cut remove the material.

Then I marked a squarish area I'll need to file away until the front of the L16 can slip through it.

Now it sits flush when its fully retracted. Otherwise you don't want it to go inside the tube and snap off the gripper.

I cut this small tube off to act as a shim to make a tighter fit for the gripper to attach to. Its not my idea method, I'd rather drill and tap something but I'm not in the mood to take the L16 apart  yet.

Now its ready for some test fits in the breadpan. This next tass is going to be difficult to do when you mount these for your first time. You have to make sure it don't hit the skins when it goes up and down on its right. At the same time on the left you have to make sure on the other side it don't hit the hinge on the door. Which is usually fine when the door is open. When it closes check to make sure the hinge don't hit the tube and closes properly. So you gotta find the sweat spot in the middle of that and have your hole on the breadpan drilled in just the right spot to clear the left, right and up and down or this arm won't work right.

I added a short threaded rod during test fitting that I'll use to mark where I'll need to drill a hole in the breadpan. Since I pushed the L16 into the tube deeper the end of the tube is hitting the back of the breadpan. So I marked the area I need to remove and its off to the Dremel. Its pretty hot outside cutting this stuff. So far we broke a ten year record of 116 to 118 outside! Ouch.

Now its shorter and ready to install. I'm not sure if this would fit inside without removing some of the back it barely fits in after I shortened it.

This is how I mounted the gripper arm in my breadpan with the servo. Now its time to install it and hope it works. Without the gripper on the tube worked electronically clearing where it needed to. 

In this photo I'm using a tube to hold up the arm. The reason is I have to take the photo and can't operate the transmitter at the same time. The other reason is it didn't work:(

It took 6 hours of work to get to this spot. The bottom line is the servo couldn't handle the weight. I had to remove the gripper and now it barely works rising up. I don't know why it worked fine in the tests before this. So this is version 1.0 of my development of getting the gripper to work. 

The next phase will involve upgrading the servo to something more heavy duty. I might also take apart the L16 and change how it attaches to the gripper. The ultimate thing is to have the gripper open and close. I have a couple of ideas on how to do that. I need to do that because as you can see in the video. The door won't close unless the gripper claw is also closed. Its very tight in the box but over all I'm happy I have gotten this far in my astromech build.

I'm going to order a shorter version of the L16. This one is servo operated instead of using a Styrene 10 motor controller for it like I'm using now. That comes with an advantage of being able to limit its travel via coding. Another thing is I can shove it further into the tube and have more meat for the servo to screw into the tube so its not so flimsy. I might get a slight thicker tube and start over. Its basically a simple aluminum tube with a nylon plug is all.

CPU Armed Painted and Misc stuff

I haven't updated here in a while but I've been busy with some parts and waiting for things in the mail.

I'm pretty much done painting the CPU arm and I have the servo attached! Painting the arm was much easier than I thought. Here's some of the basics so you can get an idea on how to paint yours.

I masked up the tube and painted it black. I didn't use any primer on these parts. I don't know why, I just didn't.

You do the same with the tip. Cover up everything with blue tape that you don't want paint on. This section I'm painting anodized blue, same can I'm using for R2 blue on the droid. Clearly some areas will have over spray. Take a Q-tip and Acetone and clean that off. If you happen to mess something up or don't like how it turns out. You can just wipe the paint off with a rag and Acetone, its nearly an idiot proof.

 

I painted 2 sections a day until I had the tip done. It took about a week or so to get it how I liked it.

It turned out pretty cool. I might add a few more color details to the arm. I tried to but couldn't get the paint how I wanted it. Eventually I want to add the wall section that this tip plugs into.

My idea of putting threads on this servo rod also worked in my favor. I hooked it up to my droid and tested it out.  The servo is able to move the tube around, so far. However when doing that I realized this particular servo isn't going to work. Its a default clockwise servo. I need a counter clockwise servo so it move up. I might as well buy one with more torque while I"m at it. This servo will end up moving the gripper up and down.

Yesterday we had a local R2 build day. We focused on R4 domes this time. Droid Welder has a styrene R4 dome from a small limited run years back. So we copied that or he did for several builders in town. It will take 2-3 people to bend one of these and hold it and glue it together. I think before I try that I'll copy this onto some sheet metal and bend that up and see what happens.

As if I didn't have my hands full already. My other JEDI control kit for R2-Q5 is here and ready to activate that droid. I haven't really thought out where and how this will go in that droid yet. I'll need to let that simmer for a bit.

My droid hasn't worked for a while because I'm upgrading some electronics. Here I have one of Dan's power distribution boards mounted to an aluminum plate I painted blue. It powers the JEDI control and what you see on the other side.

This is the other side. It has four Syren 10a Motor Drivers on it. They power the dome motor, CPU actuator, Gripper actuator  and dome lifter. I don't have all that stuff quite yet, but when I do I have the electronics to power it already installed inside the droid. All you have to do is plug in the red and black wire to each Syren 10A and its ready to go and control with the VEX transmitter.

Upgrade complete! Power is restored back to the droid via the power board. I also installed a new Pittman motor so the dome is spinning again.

I also installed the new amp on the back side of my electronics panel. Its not quite loud enough, not as loud as the previous amp. I wonder if there is something else I can do?

CPU Arm Painting

I'm waiting on tools and motor controllers and always something in the mail. So I'm painting the CPU arm as I go.

Here is today's coat of yellow,  yesterday I painted the black rings. Tomorrow I'll do a run with red and black on the tip. If you screw something up you can always remove the paint easily with a cloth and Acetone. I'm not very good at hand painting things like this where you basically need a magnifying glass. I'm used to 'can't see it from my house' level of quality.  I did some research on this part before I jumped into paint it. There are a couple of different tips of the arm from different movies. I'm going with this photo below.

So I'm on my way to make my CPU arm like this one during the end of A New Hope. But my tip is different but maybe in the future I can machine that type of tip and upgrade. You can always upgrade as you never finish a droid. You just keep upgrading them with better parts!

Misc work on various parts.

Another Don Jar part breaks. During the break down of R2-Q5 while taking the legs off the taped screw that holds these leg struts to the ankle cylinder failed this piece fell 14 inchs and hit the floor and the center piece broke. Sorry Don but your parts look nice but are made out of *#&@. Nearly every single part I ordered has failed, cracked or is in the garbage. Superglue will fix this but for how long? I need to look into getting quality parts.

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:)

Back to work droid building

Post Comic Con its time to do a total droid break down. Install new parts and fix things that have broken and get to work on those servos.

I got my EL wire in. Interesting stuff to mess with. Here is a quick test as it makes this tinted dome more interesting.  I plan to change all the brains inside this dome. I thru this together to have some electronic details of something for the con. 

Turn it on and its looks like glowing speaker wire. It looks cool when you blind them in different patterns. Maybe I'll get some more of this stuff and get the thicker versions. I love to play with this crap. I'm just a big kid with a checkbook now.

Since I ended up super gluing my last Octoports to my hands and mashed them I ended up with these new resin Octoports. They are a bit warped from shipping but no big deal that's easy to fix.

I cut a piece of scrap aluminum from a messed up footstrip to widen it. Then just used a heat gun so it bent back into shape. Then I through it in my freezer for 15 minutes. A round or two doing that process and they're ready to prime. These will be primed, painted silver and then black:)

Dome failure: My dome seized up on Friday at the Comic Con. It noticed it suddenly started turning slowly and then stopped completely. Being a rookie I thought the batteries must be dead. After recharging them it never worked properly that weekend again. So during a tear down of the dome drive system I found this after taking the wheel apart. Under the dome it was scrapping onto metal from the looks of this and that caused a pile of debris.

Before I got to this point, looking at the Pittman in this bracket there was a pile of aluminum dust around the drive shaft of the motor. That worked its way down I think and gooped up in the grease and seized the motor. I could be wrong but that's the best I can tell right now. 

Maybe the stress my spring has on this motor slightly bent the center shaft. 

The gears inside the Pittman show no sign of damage. I wonder if you can just buy the center drive shaft because that probably gets chewed up the most. So I cleaned this up and greased it all up and its nice and smooth spinning like its brand new. I think I brought this motor back to life. But my dome is too heavy for this type of motor and I need to look into upgrading to a new motor system in the future.

I also made a servo bracket since velcro won't work for the job I'm trying to do. This will mount onto the back of the breadpan for the Gripper side of the droid's large door. This servo has an aluminum arm so it can withstand heavier stress for these doors. 

I've been working on/off on this for a few days now. You have to have the arms in just the right spot with just the right mounting system. If you don't either it won't work at all. Then if you get it to barely work you need the rods at just the right length with everything tweeked just right. Fun stuff to do, I waited a year to get to this spot and its cool as hell!

Now I have done a test fitting of my servo and screwed it to the back of the the breadpan. I cant' believe it works! Its not perfect and took a few tries at it but it opens and closes. 

It didn't open and close perfectly. You have to really, really, really tweak it to do that. I did get it working by writing some stuff in the startup file. Now I have the weekend to do this to the other large door, and then write a script that links them together so they open when the scream effect happens.

Phoenix Comicon Day 4 (Sunday)

 Only half the amount of people on Sunday than we had on Saturday. But there was still a full day of ahead of us.

 R2 took a trip over to the AZ Ghost Busters for a photo op.

If somebody asks for  photos we never turn them down.