Project Logs

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• Adventures with Tom (and Crow)

  Kenneth Zaborny • 05/12/2017 at 17:25 • 0 comments

  Having Tom and Crow together at a convention got a lot of attention. So much attention that we were invited to the WSRE studios twice for their MST3K events. Here's a shot of my sister and me with the bots at the first event.

  The second event was more special since it included Doctor Forrester and TV's Frank as guests.

  I was able to spend about 15 minutes before the event started talking to Trace about the show and how they did the puppeting. It was a great night. My friend Mark helped me bot wrangle since my sister had her student's graduation to attend. She still made it in time to see the show and have Crow autographed.

• Electronics

  Kenneth Zaborny • 02/28/2016 at 17:09 • 0 comments

  Tom is a small puppet so I required components that had a small footprint. Thankfully the Sparkfun trigger and Sure 2x2 amp fit inside the torso.

  The button panel was created long before I had a 3d printer. I will be rebuilding this with my printer and I will most likely use smaller buttons so I can add more of them.
  

  In a convention setting Tom is very hard to hear. I may rework how his speakers are set up. I am most likely going to buy a second bowl so I can keep the signatures that my sister got from Frank and Trace safe from damage.
  

• Building the body

  Kenneth Zaborny • 02/28/2016 at 17:04 • 0 comments

  I started with a kit from the Etsy shop MST3Kbots. It was worth the money and included everything I needed to make a Tom Servo puppet. The components are either rotocast in resin or vacu-formed plastic. I highly recommend this kit if you want to make your own Tom. You can source the parts but you will be paying a high price for very old and brittle plastic. Also, that engine is still an unknown factor in Tom Servo builds. If you want to build something to carry around at conventions then I would recommend replica parts.

  I pre-assembled everything prior to painting. Thanks to some well placed markers it was easy to know where to drill for the arms and engine.
  

  The hardest part of painting Tom was getting used to the spray can. I've been painting with an automotive gun so long that I forgot how easily spray can paints can run. There was a lot of touching up.

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