6 posts tagged “diy”

J.R. and I discuss Little Sprouts trick-or-treating adventure then digress into a discussion of the movies.


You can watch a slide show of photos from the build and trick-or-treating while you listen.

You can check out my Flickr set of the robot build and Halloween here.

This is one of the first books to inspire my love of robots and a
desire to build them. It is the story of a kid who builds robots out of
old Cambell's Soup cans and junk parts to help him with chores around the farm. I remember one robot had hooks for hands so he could carry buckets down to the river to fetch water. ...Boy, that Andy sure was
clever.

After I read that book in the second grade my dad and I built a "robot"
out of a cardboard box with a Folgers Coffee can for a head. Dad rigged
up a couple of flashlight bulbs for eyes wired to batteries and a
toggle switch in the back. I took it to show-and-tell. You should have heard the "Ahhhhs" when I lit up those eyes. I guess kids were prettily easily impressed in the early 70's....

When I was a little kid and my brother was a young teen, he picked up extra money working for a guy down the street. I'm not sure how this neighborhood tycoon fit into the publishing industry, but whatever he did involved ripping off covers of magazines that didn't sell and sending them back to the publishers.... The guts of the magazines, comic books and paperbacks were mere waste by-products and Bro was free to bring home whatever he wanted. A few found their way home with covers intact, like this beauty. See a resemblance between the T-450 and Rex here?

I can still remember a part in the story where Rex damages his "Refractor Bulb" and has to replace it with an obsolete black and white model. Rex was much on my mind as I created the T-450 suit, refractor bulb included.

 

  The robot costume was a big hit. Little Sprout was a real trooper about wearing it too. It had to be uncomfortable and difficult to maneuver, but he had fun and only fell down once. Even then he just took a knee and we caught him before he pitched over face first on the sidewalk.

We got a late start  because true to form, I was still putting finishing touches on the darn thing as the sun began to set. The paint wasn't dry yet when we loaded up the kid, the suit and his flashing pumpkin and started on the 20 mile journey to Brownwood.

By the time we got to town trick or treating was wrapping up for the night. Sprout only got to visit half a dozen houses, but everyone who saw him was delighted. I was pleased as punch at how the suit turned out, happy that Little Sprout was happy, and tickled at how cute he was walking around in the thing. The voice changer and voice activated flasher "mouth" really enhanced the effect. You should have heard him screeching out "Trick or Treat!" He sounded like a Dalek.



I was satisfied with the end result. The suit had good ventilation, field of vision and range of mobility. Although we got the arms in the wrong sockets at first and one of the LEDs on his power pack refused to flash, nothing fell off, everything else worked and we required no repairs in the field. We returned late to May exhausted but happy with our little robot crashed out in the backseat. All in all a successful field test.

I'll post some video when I get it edited.

Here's a little banter from the show regarding the robot costume I'm making for my six year old grandson for Halloween. I'm also posting a few pics from the build. Little Sprout is excited, although he can't quite picture in his mind how it will all fit together. I'm enjoying the project, but dying from sleep deprivation. I can't wait to get it finished.

Sometime around 2 am I evidently decided that what the T-450 really needed was a pair of detachable hand grenades in his left armpit.

After weeks of planning and gathering materials I've started building my grandson's Halloween costume. He will be terrorizing the neighborhood as the T-450 Lil' Devil Battle Droid. I'll blog the build in more detail as it progresses, but I wanted to get a few pictures posted of the work so far.

I've gathered strobing LED light sticks for antenae and ordered assorted flashing LEDs off the Internet for buttons and indicator lights. I picked up an inexpensive voice changer and found sound activated LED pendants to create a Lost In Space robot style light up voice plate. A three LED stick-up light makes a great cyclopian robot eye. Bonus-- it blinks red when you turn it off.

I'm constructing the body out of foam core. No cheap-o corrugated cardboard for my Grandson!  The arms and legs will be made from dryer vent hose. For the rest of his suit I'll attach layers of silver-painted foam core detail to a pair of black sweats.

I started last weekend with the arms because they are the most complex components. I've got one arm completed and ready to attach to the torso, which I built (and rebuilt) tonight. I found some great toy robot arms at Big Lots, but they were too long. They would need to be cut down and modified or the Little Sprout would be dragging his claws on the ground while trying to trick-or-treat.

The unmodified arm is at the bottom, the cut-down version in the middle and the finished arm up top.


The retaining ring and cuff are made of foam core and poster-board, painted with acrylic craft paints. For adhesives I'm using plain old Elmer's white glue and, much to the detriment of my fingers, hot glue.

I also got some work done on his power-pack last night. He'll be an unstoppable trick-or-treating machine powered by his "Mr. Fusion" Cold Fusion Reactor (and five pounds of sugar.)

The reactor chamber is a groovy piece of packing Styrofoam-- I think it was from an Areo Garden my wife ordered. The transformer looking thingies on the sides are what's left of a couple of cheap solar powered sidewalk lights. They are lit with flashing body jewelry LEDs glued into a hole in the end. The base of the LED is glued into the end-cap, which was actually the reflector insert for the lighting unit. To turn the blinking LEDs on just turn the end-cap like a knob until the light comes on. To change batteries just unscrew the end-cap. The reactor chamber will be attached to the back of the torso and the non-blinky bits will be painted silver to match the rest of the suit.

That's what I've gotten done so far. I'll post more as I go along, including video. Stay tuned!