As you have probably already worked out, the Steampunk, style will heavily influence this build. It will be similar to Zoe in that it will be fully see through, no body skins, however the difference will be that it will focus on the engineering and mechanical nature of a robot. I have decided to move away from MDF and instead this build will be Ply wood and alloy. As yet the Droid does not have a name, I am not really that sure what the final design will be but as the build develops I am sure, so will the character.
The motors are from a seriously retro wheel chair. One thing I want this droid to do is be able to drive over grass and very rough surfaces like my Dalek. The Alloy legs were cut some time ago when I made my R4, I just never got around to doing anything with them at the time.
Three 18" Plywood circles will for the basis of the main body. The Ply is 18mm thick.
The threaded rod is M8 though out providing a reasonable amount of strength
There are going to be a massive amount of fabrication to do on this droid and a great deal of cutting and grinding metal. All the bolts are cut to size from the threaded rod
18mm Ply side panels are glued and screwed in place. These will support the main arms.
You can see from the mocked up arm how it is all going to fit together. Each leg has two main plates and the bolts separate them The should hubs are made from two 18mm Ply rings again connected up with bolts.
Leg mocked up in place to see how it looks.
The horse shoes are fitted in the same way as the main part of the legs, threaded rod and lots of nuts.
Both legs mocked up and in place. They are held in place with some M8 rod which will not be used in the final system, something much heavier will be needed.
The motors are fairly large. They are not going ro be built into the legs as a normal droid build would do but instead the main drive will be at the base of the main body. The motors will effectively fit where the skirt would go on a normal droid build.
Nice big retro wheels will add to the final Steampunk look
With the wheels in place I can check all the clearances and make sure it looks the way I wanted it to.
The small wheels where of another old wheelchair. To mount them I simply cut the old mounting bracket from the wheel chair and bolted it in places, with a few modifications With the wheels fitted like this direct to the leg, no ankle joint or foot as such makes life much easier later when I fit the system that will sit the droid upright.
Steampunk look is starting to come together. I am now getting very excited with this droid build.
I have always wanted to do a 3:2:3 system on a droid so here is my take on it.
Uisng this very simple system the piston will lift the droid to either an upright position of laying back. It works very effectively and again is in keeping with the Steampunk style with the piston being visible. The 8M rod I used will not be strong enough and a heavy bracket will be fabricated to tie the legs together and allow the piston to act on the centre point lifting both legs together
Adding a simple pice of 18mm ply to support the lasy susan bearing which will move the head.
Adding a tie rod between the motors. I will eventually add three of these
Brackets made up to support the linear actuator.
I find it easier to build and fabricate as I go mocking up the droid so I can see what I am building. Now that the main parts of the body have been completed I will strip the whole build down and start to work on finishing the metals and wood. All the wood will be sanded and polished and given a very Victorian look and the metal will be highly polished. The wheels will also get a make over.
There is still a massive amount to do. It seems like loads has been completed in the last few days and it has been nice to see what the final Droid might look like.
The next step is going to be sanding and finishing the metal.
Next the rest of the metal parts need to be cut, bearing mechanism for the head built and covers fro the feet fabricated.
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