Launchpad

So again I’m sorry for such a long time between updates. I have been busy with trying to find work, or at least making a good effort at it. This economy sucks! Which is hindering the progress of this project also. To start where I left off, the spine mold material has been purchased and the master has been finished. I think I have more time in the spine and upper chest than any other part. Oh, I forgot to mention that I broke another compressor! Thank god for a Dewalt warranty! Except I am still waiting on the replacement assembly. I had to take it apart and send it to them as the closest repair place is in Ft. Worth, TX ( a 3 hour drive), so I am doing everything by hand for the last month. Should be fixed in a week or so. There’s nothing like air powered tools! I am also set back on the initial design for the legs as the actuator will not fit in the shell that I made. It has to be correct on the outside first, they are going to make the legs look too wide, so I am back to the drawing board on the skeleton as I need the power of the actuators that are in the pics (let alone the money for them). Next is the upper chest progress, note the metal ruler for size reference. Now the prints for the back. Note again the yard stick for size reference. Thats all for now. The next post should include a completed, very expensive, flexible spine exterior. All mold and cast material are from smooth-on. Expensive, but worth it. Oh, the mold for the feet is completed also. The empire for ever my fellow troopers! Launchpad

So.. It’s been a few days since I said I would post. For all of you that’s been keeping an eye on this thread, some of the pics are of the same pieces but have since been reworked. I have to admit that this is extremely nerve racking. When I go to make the following part and need to make a fit and look correct, I end up reworking the part that the new one fits into. Saying that, out of all the parts that you see, each one has been made at least 3 times each. I just want it to be right, right. Any way here are pics of the spine with remade parts and completed “private parts”. Still need to repaint the shield flaps. The other pics are of the molds for the fiberglass shells for the steel legs and I’m about to make a master set of molds for the feet. The pics show from design in foam to steel skeleton to actual shell. The mold for the spine is about to be complete also. Final step will be fitting the shells over the skeleton. More updates to come. Oh yea... the legs are starting to move. No sequence yet. I can’t wait. I would like to say that I am at 40% after only one year! I will finish this if I have to starve!!! Actual Mine Actual Mine Actual Mine From design to mold of the main thigh... Will post more when the fitting of the shells is complete and the actual mold and shell of the spine are done!!! Yesssss!!!!!!!!! I would like to mention that one of our members in West Texas Squad poured the molds for the leg for me. Smooth on is awesome stuff!!! Thanks Dan and thanks all for you comments and support!!!!! Mathew

Salve!!! Molto Nizza!! Mancanza sicura che radunare con voi!! Ero in squadra sotto zero! Ciao!!

Ok all here is this months update. The wife is back from Iraq so I’ve been really busy. Spent 400 on the muscles (linear actuators) for the legs. 2 are installed and moving up and down. The third is waiting on more steel for the mods needed to install. All hips move forward and backward for taking steps. Only one leg has a foot right now due to a lack of steel around, maybe money issues too. LOL As soon as I have them somewhat synced together I’ll post a link to a you tube vid. The next step is to finish the feet for the other 2 legs, then actuators for them also. Soon, oh so very soon will I show full movement in all three legs. As it sits in its new cradle, it weighs about 95Lb. Not too bad huh?/ Wish me luck! Later all!! Mathew

Here’s this few weeks worth of work. The final molds on the legs are waiting on the linear actuators before completion, but the shoulders and skins are starting to take shape. I’ve been working on the feet some, but not much more to show here but this is where I’m at as of now. Starting to look like one now. Huh? Later Mathew More to follow later.

Sorry so long all for the update. The wife is deployed now and I have had the kids all summer. This is my first attempt at posting with my new Imac. Its very cool but way different than a pc, so I’m getting used to finding stuff. Here are the pics of half of the leg drives installed waiting on bolts to go through the base in the ball. Please note that all hips and legs are finished. I have started on the feet and will be attaching them next, before I can engineer the second half of the drives for the legs I need the feet complete. Next there are the shield generators with mounts reworked. Look at the old ones compared to these and you’ll see how much I had to do. Next is a pic showing all three skeletal legs. Thats it for now. Believe me, thats a ton since my last post. A few more burns from the torch and welder, but nothing serious. After the feet are complete I’ll be working on the molds for the legs while waiting for funds for the actuators for the legs. Thanks for the awesome comments all. This may take forever, but it will get done. Will try to post again soon. Mathew

Hey all. Sorry so long for an update, between the wife getting deployed in a few weeks, an early vacation before she goes, the kids, a major add on to the house, I’ve not had a whole lot of time. So here are a few of where I stand as of last week. The first thigh is now attached to the hip joint, as well as some of the mechanical gearing for left to right motion for the one. A second thigh is already cut and ready to be welded and I have the steel for the third thigh but not cut out yet. Oohhh Yea, and the first shin and foot are rough cut and starting to take shape!!!! Remember this is only the skeleton for structural support, cosmetics will come after function.. I can’t wait to show you all this thing moving! One of our members in Australia was working the “Where Science meets Imagination” Show there and he had access to the droid in the first pic!!!! He sent me over 90 detailed and up close pics of every part of the droid!!! Soooo, I’ve had to rework a few of the other pieces… so for those of us that anal and look for detail, the pics I post next week, you should notice a big difference in a number of the parts. That’s all for now and thanks for everyone’s comments!!!! Mathew

This was last weeks labor of love. It’s not 100% yet, but the mechanics of the hinges are enough to hold the deflector in the pic. Yes, it does hinge at both points, manually adjustable for now, may add servos later for fun. Still some fine tuning to take care of but you get the idea. Not pictured are the main leg hinge pins are welded and injstalled. Still perfecting the final details for the steel skeleton parts of the legs and how to mount the screen accurate pieces to them. That area should be posted next after the wallet gets more money for steel plating. Got the welding wire, now ran out of steel  Post again ASAP Thanks all Mathew PS don't ask what the holes were for in the base sphere...

Well this update is going to include some of the issues I’ve had to deal with since my last post. Manufacturing of the main hinges came to a halt when I ran out of welding wire. I ordered some and while waiting for it to be delivered I did more sculpting on the hoarse pills, mounts and deflector shields (My wife calls them the hips lol). The hinge is 4 pieces of steel that I custom welded and fit for the correct look so far. (No better pics for detail as of yet. The small pills are made from 0.625 aluminum tubing with a nut and bolt magic sculpted into the insides for easier removal of the deflector shields for transport. The deflectors are made from 3 layers of wood glued together then sanded to the apparent shape from the pics. These proved to suck up about 6 hours each to just get them where they are at now. I’ve also been reshaping the main leg joint mold, as I wasn’t happy with the last one, and I’m having to engineer taking it apart into the design while keeping the look as accurate as possible. I will post more pics as I progress more on this. It is the hardest to design, trouble shooting for fully functional legs hurts my head lol. I kept working on the front of the spine base mount. This is a side pic with more ball shapes. These were made from the tops of steel fence posts. The scaled diameter was perfect. I did take them to work and used our rotory engraver to add some of the detail before mounting them. Oh yea when the wire for the welder arrived it was the wrond one, man I was ******. So I had to return it and am again waiting for more wire as of this post. I’ve got more to post just haven’t taken more pics yet so for those interested I’ll leave you with a few pics of me with Aaron at all-con And this incredibly hot girl that would have made your jaw drop during the show Sat night at the con. Enjoy  I will post last weekends progress ASAP Later troops

Well, sorry so long for the update for those that are following this thread. I’ve spent every waking hour on these pieces for the spine. Over 120 individual parts and 4 mains for the stem. Not to mention the mistake I made on the thickness and misinterpretation of the side view of the spine. After another trooper (Thanks Brian) submitted me some pics, I had to revamp the spine base and the main shape of the spine itself. If you look close at the spine base pics before, you’ll notice I had to extend the front angle shape by 1.5 inches to allow for the change in thickness of the main spine. So the spine is almost ready for molding. The main leg pins are installed after engineering the exact set up of the rear leg. Notice the hole cut in the rear ring in order to have a pivot point in the same location as the two front legs. The rear one is inset about 0.875” towards the center, thus creating the difference. Also started on the deflector shield pivots and linkage to attach to the spine base. They look like big horse pills. Lol Made of 1.5” PVC pipe and a wet dry vac ball cut in four pieces for the ends. The small “pills” will be made of 0.625” aluminum pipe, with the linkage as 0.1875” flat steel for strength. So here are the pics of where I’m at as of now. The main CPU is back from the manufacturer, I fried two of the chips on the board with the trial and error hook up, but have purchased 2 extra chips just in case. Now I know what not to do, or better yet how I can’t use the board. Haha Will post again soon. Don’t know if I’ll be going past the spine until I’ve completed the legs. Can’t have a droid with no legs just because it’s the most difficult part. More to come. Thanks for the support guys and gals. II'm patiently waiting to post the youtube link to show you this thing walking, but rememer it won't be the same until I have the top complete to offset the weight for balance. I can't wait. Mathew

Hey, guys, thanks for the enthusiasm! It's not all that hard, just lots of patience, measuring, cutting, re-measuring, adding more because I sanded too much, measuring again, and again and again.... Just taking my time as money permits. The most expensive part is going to be the main joints on the legs, gears are very expensive, and designing it so I don't have gears laying around I can't use is one of the hard parts. I will do my best to keep up with the thread. Hoping that this motivates everyone who sees it too. The empire is soooooo coool!!! Girls like bad, dirty boys the most anyway!!! LOL Later Mathew

This weeks update. Ok troops, you asked for constant updates to this thread, so here is this weeks progress. I thank all of you for your understanding on what a huge project this is and it adds to my motivation to constantly work on it. I thank my family for putting up with me taking on such a task. Well, I’m having problems with two of the outputs on the controller, so back to the manufacturer for repair. Thank god I’m far enough along as I can do without it for awhile and just work on pieces parts. The controller, motor fuses, power switch, and battery charge plug are going in the back for ease of access for troubleshooting. Shaping for accurate size was first done with foam board, then pressed wood for molds. Very easy to work with. View of access hole through spine base for electronics. These next few are the fitting of the mold for the spine to sit in the base for visual accuracy. Next is the process of actually starting on the details for the spine. I haven’t finished it yet as there are a few hundred individual pieces in order for it to look correct. Should have it completed next weekend. As this was a three day weekend, I had enough time to complete the ball and spine base for molds. . I did some other work on the inside of the ball for the battery and other electronics to mount too, but didn’t take pics of that as I didn’t think that all the guts like the battery holder would be that interesting. If your wondering what’s inside the ball, there are 2 17.5” diameter angle steel rings for the main leg joints to bolt on with support plates welded across for the spine to bolt to through the base. I just haven’t drilled the holes yet. I’m waiting on a completed mold of the spine before designing the skeleton inside it to support the top and electronics to go through. That’s it for now. More to follow as thing this takes more shape. If your wondering why the legs aren’t on yet, they have very complicated guts in the main joints, and they are the most expensive. I have the bearings and some of the gears. Still hunting for a special worm gear and another for the motors. Talk to you all soon. Mathew

So this is the most detailed pick of one I could find, from what I understand, this is only a model and does not function (Move).I know according to Wookipidia they are exactly 6' tall so my work is the one in this pic scaled at 2.71 from a poster size I had made. The following is the begginning of the drawing process. Afterwards these were drawn in coreldraw and autocad 2006 for machining of the main leg parts. So I finally got my sets of armor complete where I like them and could troop anytime. As a mechanical engineer, when I chose this I knew I would be in a field I would have to learn on my own, electrical engineering yuk, but not too horrible. The following oic started last oct when our movers still had our stuff so I scaled a life size one to past the time. I then proceeded to gather parts in town and on the net to meet the requirements for a self autonomized Droideka. Yes mobile. No rolling uo into a ball just yet. Maye once I'm over the mound of trouble with walking Vs Balance with three legs. The main legs are prototyped out of foam, bondo, and magic sculpt. The main body is layered fiberglass cloth and matting in layer totalling a 0.25 in thickness. The 18" diameter plastic sphere was layered in sections, then areas were removed so the structure would still be stable' MModing and scaling the lower soins guts are proving to be very difficult but not impossible. This was where I stopped last week. Since then I have started putting together the gears for shoulder movement in the legs which does consist of all directions. Everyone was making R2, so I wanted to build a functional droideka, not RC, but with a TechFX micro controller and Pololu motor controllers. Further update as this starts to come together more. Let me knoiw what you think. I haven't posted in awhile as right after the move I began this secret project. Muhahahah. lol Mathew

Thanks guys, yea thats it. I was like If I see anything else... or don't... I'll mail ya. Nice work too

I went to show my son my deployment status and I'm not there any more?!? Don't know if this has anything to do with changing things around. Please let me know. I am Launchpad TD-2251 THX