Skinny laminated legs Part:2

I have done some more work on my skinny legs, but when doing the first dry fit I realized that i'm not happy with the shape/bend of the legs... I've had that feeling for a while but hoped that it change when I did the dry fit. I have decided that I have to make another try on a different shape.

Konst i Påsk

I have been preparing my robots for the Konst i Påsk exhibition in Söderbärke.

I have been building small boxes with lights and fixing minor things with the robots.

You might wonder whats up with the new paint job? I had an idea that I wanted the robot to have a slight greyish look. I went to the store and they mixed a formula that they said would give the wood a slight grey"drift wood" feel to it. I went home and painted the robot and got a awful dark bluish grey that I didn't like one bit. I started sanding to get rid of the paint, but after hours of sanding I realized that I would have to live with my mistake. It would take too much time to get rid of all the paint. I'm going to leave it in "shabby chic" state that it's in now and I just have to learn to live with the fact that I hate it!

Gun sight

I realized that the robot needs a good gun sight! I have always loved the look of the reflective gun sights that WWII era airplanes had. I figured out how to make one with a LED, a small piece of a CD and some transparent plastic (and some cosmetic wood). The pictures below only shows a blurred gun sight cross, but it's pretty sharp in real life. I'm very happy with the result!

Headlights

I been thinking about different designs for my headlights and I think I have found a design I like.

I wanted the headlights to have a classic car/ hotrod look. I made a original in Super Sculpey clay that I cast in Smoothcast 310. I used thin aluminium to make the mounting brackets. I will later paint them and make headlight glass.  

Skinny laminated legs

I have started working on the robot legs.

The War of the worlds robots have three long skinny legs and so will mine. To achieve long curved legs I had to build a gluing jig. I glued together thin 1x12mm pine wood in the jig and I now have the base of what will be the legs.

Vacuum forming plastic

I wanted a round 50s style canopy for my robot, and since I have been thinking of vacuum forming plastics for a long time, I decided to give it a try! First I had to construct a Vacuum forming machine, in this case it's just a box with alot of small holes on top and big hole in the side for the vacuum cleaner (to provide the vaccum). I used Super Sculpey to shape the plug for the canopy. 

I used a sheet of 0.5mm Petg plastic and used a staple gun to fix it to a frame. I heated the plastic sheet in the oven at 140º C for about 1.20 min. I pushed the heated plastic ontop of my plug on the vacuum machine and the then vacuum pulls the plastic tight against the plug and when the plastic cools it's finished! Sounds simple, but it took a few tries before got the plastic in exactly the right temperature and I was very surprised when it finally worked.