Bender vs the competion

I finished the eyelids a few weeks ago and they just do not look quite the way I want them to look. So after being cheesed off at the lack of success with Bender's eyes lids I have knocked him back to a priority #2.

However work on my new project is coming strong, the legs and torso are all together and there will be lots of hand sanding in my future.
I have made plans to what he will do....
The electronics will be taken care of easily. I will use some of the PCBs I created for the scale Dalek I made.
The PCBs were designed to have several functions
one was to control a couple of servo motors and interface with the SRF05. others were just more generic input outputs. More information about these can be found on my website (look to the right for a link to geek white north website) I will be adding in some other generic lighting effects.

Possibly sound and possibly a voice recognition feature. These two have yet to be worked out and they would be more for my own personal fun than anything else.

Bender will certainly continue but I hate spinning my wheels so much. So it will not be continued for a while.
If you are interested in other versions of Bender ...check the links to the right.

All revved up and no time to do!

I have so many things I want to do at the moment and it feels like the days have gone from 24 hours in a day to about 18.
The fall TV line up has meant that at least 1-2 nights I am watching TV, I want to do more with Linux, been playing some PS2, and working on 2 projects is all taking it's toll.
I have about 3 or 4 more ideas in my head.

So progress is slow but it is moving and progress is being made.
Eyelids were glued.
Legs are also progressing.
Some pictures of both hopefully on Monday...

Thanksgiving weekend sticky times

This was the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
The weather is unseasonably hot humid and well.. sticky, yes this is October.

I love it when the weekend feels like it was 5 days off and not 3 days.
We segmented the weekend into chunks. I watched TV\Movies, Slept in,
watched Podcasts listened to numerous podcasts, played PS2 video games.
Went to the mall to do some shopping, cooked a batch of Chili, cleaned up the place, web surfing, reading played around with a live distro of Linux Mint on my Laptop and worked
on my projects. WOW!

So with all this segmentation I did not get a huge amount done on my projects but because I am gluing things waiting for glue to dry works with the weekend. I glued strengthening ribs on my new project and I worked on the eyes of my Bender. So next week Benders eyes should have eyelids.

Time off for good behavior.

Benders eyelids are still not complete, they are not coming out quite how I want them to.

This week I took some time off from thinking about my Bender project, progress is a little slow at the moment and I find taking time away and thinking about something else helps refocus things.

My mind was on perhaps a useful model and I think I have come up with an idea for something cool.
I do not want to say what I'm thinking of, all I will say is it is a bit old school, but I have a rough plan.
The upcoming weekend is a long weekend and I am going to see what materials I can find.

If I do work on something else I am planing to see what I can do on two projects at the same time one being major and one being minor, so when the eyelids are working I will add pictures.

Don't just stand there, make yourself useful too

I saw this link on Friday http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bender/. It is a Bender prop that contains his brewing equipment in his stomach.
The only thing more apt would be a cigar humidor. No cigars here so that would be pointless.
So I was thinking if my prop robots could also do a useful job, as well as just standing there on display... So I have come up with a side project. Not sure if I will move forward on it. Need some careful thinking first.

Progress on my Bender is slow, eyes are taking a lot longer than expected to complete. Hope to have pictures soon.

D'oh, it was a busy weekend.

It was a busy weekend (again)
As well as installing Hard drives and Mint Linux,

I also saw the Simpsons Movie. Which I thought was way better than I was expecting, now if they could bring the regular season up to that level....

Work on Bender started up again. Working on the head, specifically the welding glasses area.
No pictures yet, mostly preparation for adding eye lids.

Doh! It's Bender's head.

I have a very basic Bender head with the welding glasses and mouth.
This is only a dry fit, nothing is glued or finalised yet.
There is a lot of sanding and filling to do.
I am going to work on a suitable placement for the servo motors.
At the moment I need one for left/ right movement of the eyes as seen in previous post.
I have been thinking of adding expression to the eyes by adding eye lids. I cannot do the angled open and close so it will probably be straight up/down action (2 more servos).

the more I look at it the more I think it looks like Homer Simpson.....

Dome, ray, me, far, so, lar, tee, dome.

I just got this dome delivered. I plan to use this as the mould to create the head dome of Bender
So if you can imagine this.....



But all in the same material

Benders shoe size is 58?

No this is not a photo of the moon....

I have got my first foot or is it shoe for Bender. It recently came out of the mould.
I used a large sieve as the mould.
The material used is instant paper mache, the type you buy from a hobby shop and looks like a brick and you just break some off paper away from the brick, add water in the proportions given and no ripping of newspaper required.






The craters will need to be smoothed out. The plan is to fill the insides with something heavy to stop him tipping over.
Will be doing a second foot soon.

Flossing was never this easy

So my concept on how to move the teeth in Benders mouth, is based on some dental floss and elastic.
There will be elastic for each of Benders lines of teeth and by pulling on the floss up and down it should look like he is talking

I am just trying to figure the mechanics of it all when mounted in the head

Bender what a Doll

OK so I have officially passed the point where I can announce my newest project is a full scale Bender from Futurama.
I think I can do it given the materials and concepts I have tried out. The biggest issue is that Bender has whatever gadgets the animators give him
Here is my initial scale model of Bender this is being used for scale and size.

Blinking and gnashing of teeth

I have been so busy working on different parts of the head.
I seem to do a little here and a little there and not really accomplishing anything

I have been bogged down in the mechanics of teeth, eye lids and heads.

I am trying various materials to cover the eyes when the eye lids close, so far no luck, It has to be soft, flexible and not bulky when retracted (eyes open).

I now have the teeth moving in theory, in practice it would take 4 servo motors.

Plus 3 for the eyes that is a lot of power and synchronizing to do.
Well It seems I'm getting close hopefully there will be some pictures soon

I have my eye on you

Well I have been busy working on the eyes


here is a picture

and anticipated movement.

A series of tubes just like the internet

Well Christmas is over, and because the weather has been so mild those cold bugs have been out in full force. I had a cold over Christmas and I have not been able to do as much as I wanted on my latest project.
Here are some pictures of the head and body of my next project.
Yesterday i got a care package from my favorite robot store packed full of servos and Ultrasonic sensors.


The head



The body


Head and body together

more pictures soon....

So much work so little time

It has been very quiet in my blog for a few reasons
1) I went on a road trip to Chicago at the end of November
2) After returning from Chicago I have been very busy at work, crazily busy.
It now looks like I will get some time back from all that extra work. I hope to have some free time just before and over the Christmas break and make up for lost time.

Before my trip to Chicago I had actually made a start on my latest project.
I am not going to announce what it is yet, but I will have some pictures up on here soon.
I had also been working on my web site which will be up very soon.