Saturday, February 27, 2010

Iowa Rough Riders Hockey game

Here are some photos taken and owned by newly inducted friend of the Legion,
Bryan Humphrey at the game. Welcome officially to the 501st!

Group shot with the cheerleadersTia posing for the camera.
Mom and Daughter meet?
Troopers taking over the ice.
One trooper has a special surprise in store for his girlfriend, he asked her to marry him on the ice. She said yes! Congratulations you two!
Future wedding guests photo maybe? LOL
One of my favorite troops thus far :D

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Boosters a plenty

Got the first few coats of paint dry on the boosters, just one or two more coats on the yellow ones and they are done.

Worlds first working T3 arm welder

Here is a short video of T3's first arm test.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Colors of the rainbow

Went over to Brad's yesterday to do some painting on the droid parts. Here is the first few coats of red on R3.I cleaned off the top of the one booster on Patches that had some problems and repainted it. Just two little mini fish eyes this time. GRRR. Will put another coat on later to see if they go away.
For some reason Dawmer's dome and my R4 boosters were doing all sorts of funky things when we tried painting them. Maybe it was a combination of the temperature, the huried prep work prep, and the light color paints we used. Finally I got mad enough and stripped the boosters all the way back down and shot it again. The second time it came out much better but there is a spot or two I would like to fix. Maybe I should wait to paint till spring on the rest of the yellow parts as they seam to be more temperamental than the red and brown. With the yellow I will need several more coats to hide the primer underneath. Right now it looks a little green threw the primer.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

This, that, and the other

Syrena decided to use aluminum skins for her droid so she could have the doors open. Jen and I stopped by to help her get started on her droid. The black ABS skins I made for her origionally will now go on my R4. Once I showed her the basics to attaching aluminum she took over and finished mounting them herself.
Later on everyone came over to work on their droids. Dawmer did some file work to his motor holders and Jen helped me take the silver tape off the inner skins that Syrena originally put on. I will be painting the skins so the tape had to come off.
I helped get Syrena's motor holders finished as Dawmer's needed some tweaking before getting them ready to finish.
Brad cutting some spacers and filing some rough spots.
When Syrena's motor holders where done she helped me take R4 all the way back apart again so I can put the skins on later.
Nothing like a well balanced droid. LOL Poor R4-ED in pieces again, he was just driving around yesterday.
Jen finished getting the tape off the skins, later I will clean the glue residue off. Thanks Babe!
Dawmer still filing away in the background.

R3 lives

After almost a year of putting R3 off and working on other droids I have finally gotten back to my girlfriend Jen's droid.
She is now up and running with the rest of the Army. Still have to hook up the dome motor which I will do next week.
Here is a VIDEO of her first movements.

Friday, February 19, 2010

R3 and a bad T3

With the snow I did not have time to do much today. I put the outer skin pieces on the arms of R3. Tomorrow I hope to get a chance of putting some skins back on R4.
I also got the programing installed on T3 only to find out I wrote the numbers sequence backwards so instead of waving HI he is flicking people off. Kinda funny though :D

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

R3 rat rod?

Had a full free night so I got a lot done on R3. I reattached the custom skins I made after the paint was set up enough and got the rest of the drive system and omnis attached. I installed the lazy susan and for the heck of it the eye I need to repaint. Except for the outer leg wires she is ready to drive around with all the other ones I built. :D Right now with all that red showing she reminds me of a few hot rods I built in my younger years.

The lighting is not that great but here is the front....

and here is the back.

R3 covered in blood...paint

I finally was able to paint R3's inner skins the right way in the garage today.
Once the sun came out I put it outside to air out and cure a bit more. It will take a few days to cure fully.

Here is what it looks like in the sun...
And Her dark side LOL.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

R4 is alive!......Again!

After gutting R4 late last year for parts I finally have him moving again, at least his feet I mean.
I installed the motors and used R3's leg wires. Then I cobbled together some of the wiring inside and fired him up. It is good to have him around again even though he is now naked. I just need to get his head moving again once the parts get here.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Late night droid work

Did a little more work to the logics. They are starting to look more like the ones on the games.
Did some soldering and chip replacement on a new PICAXE.
Last I put some wheels on R4 so I can move him around. My next order of motors come in at the end of this week so he will be moving soon. I also got a spare pair of motors for back up or for my future K-9 from Doctor Who.

More prototyping

Today I had some time so I made another logic for T3's head.
I also made a prototype of his welding arm. A few bugs to work out but it moves like a snake.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

T3's welding arm

No pictures today but I worked on T3's welding arm this evening and got the major components together and moving. Unfortunately one of the servos is not strong enough to lift part of the arm so I will have to order a stronger one that is close to the same size. So before I order the new one I have to do some calculations and see what the minimum torque rating I will need. I have never had to use more than basic servos until now so let the research begin.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

What to choose

Dawmer came down this evening to work on his droid but the weather was turning icy so all he had time for was a trip to the hardware store. I took him to the paint isle to help him pick out his R2-TD colors. Hard hard decisions...LOL We also got the last of the hardware he needed to get his droid on his feet.

T.A.R.D.I.S. in the house!

This is the TARDIS wall that was at Osfest last year that a friend named Chris made. He has since moved to Chicago. Osfest owner John was nice enough to let me keep it to use as a background to a charity and con events as long as I promised to bring it back to Osfest again this year.

I do plan to build a full scale TARDIS later this year but this is great for smaller events.
I plan to make a fake looking roof for it and put the flashing light on the top to make it look more complete. Here is the light for the top.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Balls and LEDs

The new shipment I ordered of omniballs for R2-Central members arrived today. Just 27 this time LOL.
I put two on R3's rear legs and now the motor mounts are all together.
I also put 5 on R4's legs. Just need some wheels now so I can get him running again.
I also got my Bread board and LEDs in. Mocking circuits up now is a lot easier.
Here is a simple test run to make sure everything works.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Dawmer's sounds

Tonight we worked on Dawmer's sound system. I helped him wire up all the connections he soldered to his 12 button remote only to find out his THINK GEEK system dose not work. We hooked his 12 button remote up to my black box and it worked. Lucky he has a spare THINK GEEK system so he will bring it over next time and start over again.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Making room

With the sound system rewired I decided to move a few other things around inside Patches.
So yet again I am taking all his electronics out and moving them to more optimal locations and cleaning up the wiring where needed. Besides I have to make room for the new servos, speakers, and gadgets.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

R5's final leg work

Today Brad and Syrena stopped over to get R5's legs. I set up the drill press to drill the bottom swivel hole and Brad drilled the first leg.
Once the first one was done Syrena did the second one. Now R5 is ready to be put together and standing.
Also I just got done ordering 6 servos. Two for Patches, Two for T3, and Two for R3-PD.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Rewire

Just got done rewiring my CF3. Now it is more compact and a lot less messy.
It also boasts two speakers now. One was loud to begin with now it is just "WOWtacular".
Here is the pile of old hard wire I took out. I will never use this stuff again for things like this :P
Here is a picture of my Think Geek sound system with Patches old speaker. With a little tinkering I was able to make it play louder but the quality will always suck for music.