Tuesday, April 28, 2009

One Leg Done

Well, that's down... I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I still have to finish a couple coats of paint sometime this week, but other than that, I'm calling this part done. I'll be ordering parts this week, including the layered shoulders. I'm waiting to hear on a resin supplier so I can order the booster covers, among many other parts needed for the body. I have styrene left over, and I'm still deciding if I should work with plywood for part of the ankle or layer styrene and follow Dave E's plans. It's going to come down to what material is stronger.

Here's the updated pics.






Monday, April 20, 2009

More Leg Work/PIC Flash

I continued a little further on the legs. The shoulder area is skinned as well as the under shoulder detail and part way down the leg. There is a break in the skins for some detail and I think I'm going to stop at that point until I order and receive my boosters. I'll get the front and rear skins mounted to those details and call it quits on this one. Time to start the other leg, now that I know what I'm doing.



As requested, here is a photo of the PIC flasher board. This was taken prior to testing and only one power source is connected (2nd 9v power was added later during testing - one to run the LEDs, the other powered the PIC) When testing, output was working on 4 of the 8 outputs (I think r1, r2, r7 and r8...). I'll have to test again and document prior to calling Carl's - if it comes to that.


Friday, April 17, 2009

More leg work and electronics

I was holding off on this post until I had something more complete to show. I've been working and continue to work on the first leg. Ran into a minor problem as I followed some plans for the styrene build, but didn't take into consideration that the weight of my frame would be somewhat heavier than a styrene frame would be. I've been debating back and forth and bouncing questions off of other builders (thank you Calvin and Cole for your help!!) to get a direction. I've decided to move forward with my existing part and try to strengthen it, rather than start over. I've started reinforcing and filling areas of the leg to beef up potential stress points and make the leg more solid - well, literally.

I doubled the bracing around the top of the shoulder and added additional bracing to create pockets within the leg to fill with spray foam. By feel, the leg has some more weight to it and the foam adds considerable reinforcement to the bracing. Here are some pics:





After letting the foam set for a couple days and noting that the expansion has stopped, I was able to mount the top (outer) panel to the leg and let is sit under weight for several hours until the glue set. I then glued up the first styrene strip around the shoulder. I'll let that set over night and continue tomorrow on some of the other skins. I will need to spot putty this when done to correct some cutting mistakes, but so far, I'm happy with how it turned out.

I assembled my first pic flasher and ran into issues there too. I have proper voltage throughout the pic but I'm only getting output from 4 of the 8 traces. I've only connected a couple LED's and tested with a meter. Not sure if this is at all related to the defective crystal issue that was going on, but I may be calling Carls.