Hello Internet

Today nothing industry/model related, but still a lot of fun for me - Hello Internet podcast, done by Brady Haran and CGP Grey. Take a minute to listen (first ones are shorter than one hour), and see if you like them. I enjoy both works of Brady (Numberphile channel) and CGP - a lot of fun videos. And podcast seems to be great - I'm at episode 7 now.

http://www.hellointernet.fm/

Best,

K.

Chromehounds - do you remember?

In 2006, Sega released 3 paper models for Mecha from game Chromehounds. It's not easily to find, since original website is down, and re-uploads are gone, but wayback machine has saved the page, so you can get it, at least for some time.

What I found interesting, is the design of these mecha - not standard 2-legged walkers, but something more fun. I haven't assembled them yet, but they are waiting on my to-do list. I also find it amusing that instead of "Heavy weight", these robots are "Heavy wait" - so you cannot make them fast, I suppose:)

Grab them: Link

Best,

K.

Important step done - flats finally finished

I have finished links 4, 5 and 6. As usual, small geometry mistakes slipped in, but it turned out fine. In general, it's ready for print and test assembly, but currently I do not have workshop for models set up - so test assembly will have to wait a little bit. Anyway, plans for now are to print flats at sensible scale, in few copies - one for assembly, one for making notes what has to be fixed, and couple as spares for making changes on the fly. I think (but not decided yet) that I'll export all flats to .svg and start coloring, in the meantime making test build and all changes, which then will be incorporated into .svg. I do not know how it will turn out, so for next model maybe I'll do full test build and changes before export. We'll see.

Future plans - I do not feel like making another small robot for now, and since my modelmaking capacity is low, I will start some more complicated 3D model - ABB-IRB2400, full sized, low payload handler.


Best,

K.

2 and 3 done for now

Links 2 and 3 are flat now. Couple of geometry issues had to be fixed, but nothing really major, so it went rather nicely. I still haven decided how many lines will be left on parts - for sure guide lines for other part, and most probably all lines where surface is broken - either on bending line, or on line where curve starts, which then I would have to check in print - probably light grey, as thin as possible to avoid visually breaking model. Maybe I'll skip some of them for clarity - we'll see. Anyway - work is progressing quite nice, but in awful hours - almost everything I do is done way too late for me to comfortably sleep, but I do not want to skip any update. In 3 or 4 weeks I should have more civilized time for working, so it should get better.

Below are links 2 and 3, flat and draft instructions.

Best,

K.

Flying probe tester

Check it out - flying probe testers for PCB - I haven't seen them in real lifer, but they are awesome.

Best,

K.

And works goes on

Link 1 is flat. Some mistakes in grouping were found, and fixed. Also, there is something finicky in way that Sketchup makes surfaces, and on flats I want to have specific surfaces to easily manipulate shapes, and also to make nice pictures - to post something. Right now it's not decided yet how exactly I will proceed further, but it seems that I'll keep flattening links until the end.

You might notice a lot of parts are 1mm - this serves two purposes. One, it let.s me get away with small geometry which is flat - some parts just need to be that thick. Other purpose is to have something to glue on, when joining two pieces at 90-ish degree, but where tabs are not feasible - on arc especially. Hopefully test run will explain it better.

General remark - updates are rather smaller than I initially intended for two reasons. One - I have a off-work project going on, which is consuming nearly all of my time, and second one is making content in advance - I have couple of posts (not enough in my opinion) scheduled in advance, so even if I have some days when I cannot do any work, I will still keep with update schedule. When situation get's better, and I'll have more time, and content made in advance in sufficient quality and quantity - updates might get bigger if work is going on fine. Hopefully it's ok for all of you.

Best,

K.

Mistakes were made

So I made couple of mistakes, which today I tried to repair. What was the problem:
1. Base was not grouped properly - in flats file it's already done, in main file with 3D model it will be eventually fixed, but I do not have a lot of time, so I'll skip it for now.
2. When I made flats, I did not include intersection lines. In the end, they will help a lot during coloring/assembly, so I re-did whole base to have them
3. I did not left anything from 3D the model - right now you can see that I kept exploded view of base, which will be used in the future for instruction images - my idea is to have instructions as graphical as possible, so language will not be a barrier.

This is how it looks now - all elements will be included in flats file.

Best,

K.

Nuclear power plant model

I stumbled upon this nice model (unfortunately I think you cannot purchase it anywhere) couple of years ago, and now I found it again. Take look at pictures (Page 5 from Konradus forum), or go to the first page to see whole build in progress. Even if this model is not available, it was super fun to watch photos of it being built.

Model itself presents nuclear power plant, from Olkiluoto in Finland, and was made by Kemot (Tomasz Grzybowski).

Best,

K.

GitHub

Sometimes, instead of update from work in progress, I will post updates to GitHub repos. If I will have enough posts in advance, I might double post on that days, but for now I'm hardly catching up with schedule, so GitHub update gives me some breathing room.

Anyway - started GitHub repositories, with first being for ABB IRB120:


https://github.com/IndustrialPapercraft/ABB-IRB120



My plan is to have each model in separate repository, and for now I'll upload 3D model made in Sketchup, flats from Sketchup, probably .svg after coloring/painting, and finished pdfs. For most purposed pdf will be enough, but just in case someone wants to check my 3D/flat models, they'll be available, and I think GitHub will be better that blog to put these files on.


Best,

K.

Pancakes

Started flattening already. Plugin which I'm using is sometimes finicky, but it gets the job done, so I'll stick to it. Flattening should be straightforward, but time consuming - unfortunately I cannot do anything about this. After everything is flat, I'll do painting/test assembly, most likely in parallel, so I can adjust non-white elements accordingly, especially if position will matter.

This is only the base. Decided to split cylinder to 3 parts, as this generally makes cleaner assembly afterward. Some parts would be impossible to assembly as small boxes with 1mm height, so it's better to put them on 1mm cardboard and then to cut them. In test run I'll try 0,5 cardboard also, as this might look cleaner.


Best,

K.