BuckyBot

Switched to 0.050" aluminum and the woes go away.  3 brackets usable out of 3 tries... widened the metal surrounding the servo holes and got a small sheet of of 18 ga from OnlineMetals.  The scroll saw sill cuts it, and you can bend it up without breaking it.  Now I can finish the spyder and get to the extruder...

I've been spending WAY too much time making the bloody sheet-metal brackets for the "hip" joints.  The first three (red in the photos and videos of the prototype) are made from aluminum (aluminium for the UK) 0.025 " thick.  There I go again, being an American chauvinist ... uh,  that's 0.64 mm for all you civilized folk out there.

My procedure is to print out the flat pattern, glue it to the metal, then epoxy the metal to thin plywood, then cut out the flat pattern on my scroll saw.   ... drill holes, then bend using my cobbled-together brake.  This is too thin.  they bend and break and are very difficult.   Here is a picture of some of the remains.

It took six tries to get three functional brackets.  Too much..  Adding strength to the pattern and getting thicker metal.

I've been spending WAY too much time making the bloody sheet-metal brackets for the "hip" joints.  The first three (red in the photos and videos of the prototype) are made from aluminum (aluminium for the UK) 0.025 " thick.  There I go again, being an American chauvinist ... uh,  that's 0.64 mm for all you civilized folk out there.

My procedure is to print out the flat pattern, glue it to the metal, then epoxy the metal to thin plywood, then cut out the flat pattern on my scroll saw.   ... drill holes, then bend using my cobbled-together brake.  This is too thin.  they bend and break and are very difficult.   Here is a picture of some of the remains.

It took six tries to get three functional brackets.  Too much..  Adding strength to the pattern and getting thicker metal.

... to release the Gcode file of his head.  Imagine Manhattan Dome as Steven Colbert looking up at the sky.  It puts the Martian "face" to shame.   ... makes the ganglia twitch, fellow monkeyboys ...

... it occured to me (see previous log post) that a big donor-type person could download his coutenance (a 3-D scanned image of his face) to the CPC ... The CPC would then make the BuckyBots put that face ON THE SURFACE of the structure.  Mr. Rushmore, eat your heart out.  I smell a kickstarter ....

I have realized I've not said much about BuckyBot's connectivity -- just waved my hands around while shouting "connect ... connect ...!".  That gave me time to develop a logical plan for connectivity.  In short, each BuckyBot will have an FM transciever to enable communication with a central PC -- which will track and coordinate all the bots working on a particular structure.  That would be a simple FSK modem, mind you.  That central PC ... clever boy I am, I'll call it the CPC ... well, that CPC will be on the internet ... running a simple web interface .   In fact, I had the idea that, when the BuckyBot SYSTEM is sufficiently mature, individuals could log on to the CPC and AFFECT THE BUILD as the bots build it.   ...providing their inputs don't violate certain build rules, of course....  A free-form building, as it were.... the ultimate something built by committee!  That would probably turn out to be a disaster, but hey, it COULD be done.  

The modems need a range >  1 Km.  Many wireless protocols won't go that far.  However, it's pretty much LOS (line of sight), so, FM should work well, and is VERY proven, simple, and cheap technology.  BuckyBot might need FCC blessing (in the US, anyway).

... said Silicon rather than Silica on the video... BuckBot rather than BuckBots in another place... knew better ... to re-dub or not to re-dub?

... to the video and to the "design document"  which is just the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) laying out the tasks necessary to build BuckBot

... complete, assembled, and checked out with the arduino mega I'm using for the prototype...

... BuckyBot V1.0  under construction ...