Category: Accessories

More prep progress

Pink rubber nose has come out perfectly. OMFG it’s so cute. And soft like real skin.
Need to make a black one next.

Think I shall make a poll for CF. Currently I have some rough nose prototypes sitting here. Let the users decide what I should do next? Generic triangle? Squirrel? Small or medium canine? Others?

Rainbow selection also come out well. And replacement velcro heel-pad is done, cut and fits with the rest of the set.

Have trimmed up Razor moulds. Will cast more shortly. Gonna add the three Razor sizes to the main claw display first tho. And get on with the special order display.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Power, lathes, wings

Reprap prototype PSU is done and ready for the stepper controllers to arrive now. All boxed up nicely. If memory serves, it didn’t have a fan when it was in the fax machine, so should be fine in the enclosure. At worse I might have to drill it some extra air holes.
Mains lamp, some (vintage) terminal posts, switch and IEC C14 socket.

Even took the engraver to the front panel to mark out the various terminals and added a couple of ferrite beads to the lines to be on the safe side, and used some cable wrap to keep the wires tidy.

Today I also finally removed the piston and cam off the old compressor pump, and filed down a pully to fit. I’ve hooked this up to the 3rd party headstock from the Black and Decker extruded aluminium wood lathe I found last year. It’s meant to be run by a type of drill they no longer make, so the compressor motor should be easily powerful enough. Currently getting a head speed of about 3200rpm, so it’s currently about twice as fast as it needs to be. Will see about swapping the headstock pully for something larger (I have one, but getting the old one off will be a pain).
It’s not urgent, but it’s sitting around and there’s a friend who should be able to use it once it’s basically working.
Also made a control box for it, currently a simple latching safety power switch (see background of first image) from a broken garden shredder and an old RS project box. If I find a spare suitably rated rheostat I may add a limited speed controller.

Also the sewing for the set of “Navi” wings was mostly done today, but one of the blue plastic rods snapped while trying to flex it into it’s “pocket”.
After some considerable swearing and therapeutic angle-grinder time (see above compressor pump), I will tomorrow attempt to construct a coupler out of clear perspex rod and use it to join the two broken ends, as the stress on them will likely be more than any other repair would take. this may mean purposefully breaking and repairing the opposite wing to match.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Some progress

I have not been coping well today.

Footpads haven’t bonded correctly. Gluing method hasn’t worked very well. I guess the rubber chemistry changes while setting. Unset won’t bond to set.
Going to have to try slashing the velcro to get rubber to bond into it better.

Still, one set come out acceptable.

More casting tomorrow. May catch up yet.

Also roughed out the folding mechanism for the Bonsai Repstrap..

A portable 3D printer is certainly feasible.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

De-potted pure-red claws, sanded and drilled. Posted the small set, long set ready for collection at next LF meet.
Shore 80 castings came out nicely. Not all fully attached to velcro however. Not surprising since it’s stiffer. It’s not flexing enough to make full contact. Think I’ll cast the Shore 80’s separate, then mix a small amount more and use it to “glue” the pads to the velcro. Will take longer, but will be more reliable. Should also let me use the velcro more efficiently.

Doodled some in SAI. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3685774/
Also progressed some other works a bit further.

Bedding down now. Edging sleep back toward normal.

Will see if I can rig my business site to incorporate this journal as a separate blog-line from the one on the front page.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Busy busy bee.. or ladybug, since they’re everyfuckingwhere

Old 1.7Ghz machine is out of storage. Running diagnostics to see if I can isolate where the hardware problem is (I suspect the 80Gb boot disk), before installing Win2000 and a capture card on it. And nothing else.
Will also put the old 5.25″ floppy drive in it and see if any old disks still work.

Yesterdays castings are de-moulded. Unfortunately two sets show small areas of unmixed pigment. Will have to double-stage mix it from here on. Still, getting closer to high-resolution shots of all sets, as well as having display sets.

Called TOMPS, still no word yet. Sounds like the boss is out of the office a lot these past few days. Still, have someone wanting a footpad order, and won’t be able to honour it until I have the shore-80. It’s been a week since I emailed them about this.

Up to 9 Mendel brackets cast. Should have the rest needed in an hour or so. I’ll lock up again for a bit after that, get some artwork done, before casting some more pads in the evening.

Had a reply back from the connector company, wanting to know the pitch of the connector image I sent them. I thought I’d included that in my description. Yep. Ugh..

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DorkBot London was very entertaining last night. My main point of confusion had always been that I’d never found where they talked online. Simple answer; they don’t. You go along, meet people and then communicate one-to-one. This seems surprisingly traditional for such a techno-arty field.
I suppose things like the 2600 meets are the same though. It just feels a little upside-down to me though, having mostly gone to groups or forums which then sparked real-world meetings.

EDIT: 5.25″ drive seems to be working intermittently. Will have to strip it down and clean it.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]