Shock shoulders

Here are the shock shoulders. 

They comprise of a go kart axle bearing attached to the body, a bicycle seat post clamp, some hardware, a few CNC bits and very soft skate bushes.  The body bit is threaded plastic.  The leg side is ali.  The 4 long studs go through the bushes, allowing the kart bearing limited movement.  The kart bearing also allows a little off axis movement and the bushes help allow that too.  And they can be popped off if needed. :D

The 2nd set of holes allows the legs to be put on in 2 leg mode.  Just in case. ;)

The blots shown here have now been replaced.  But James earned that update. :)

Big thanks to James Kitson for doing me the 3D printed surrounds. :D

Bantha Tracks

First up were the Tracked feet. :D  The Track drives are RC Sand/Snowmobile Buggy Conversion kits.  We are running these via a custom mount and gearbox powered by a modified NPC motor.  Roger has done us proud they are a beautiful piece of work.  We modelled the feet in Cubify with a 40mm ride height and Roger helped make our dreams come true.   They are geared to run at no load with an approx. 4mph top speed.

These will not be used alone, we have some other things we are trying in combination with the tracks to change the dynamics of the forces.  We hope for the better. ;)

The testing so far

First run highlighted how different this build would need to be.  Rattles everywhere!

So stripped and fixed or removed or taped up the lose bits and any easy fixes needed.  And tested again.

Was good in the garden so we went out and about, apart from the centre noise, it was pretty good.

After that testing and playing with the base, we decided we needed to redo the shoulder mech a little, to take out play, that is now done, but we wont be able to test again till he is back in 1 piece.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away. . . .

As you may have gathered we are part way through this build, not far in, but a lot of the planning and buying is done.  So time to try and catch you up.

So far we have built and tested the feet track drives, shock shoulders and MK1 of our centre foot mech.  After that testing we have applied a few upgrades and the tracks and shoulders are done. I will let James update you on his stud farming exploits.

The centre foot is on to Mk2, we were using a Rotacaster, but too loud.  So we are about to test a 100mm skate wheel on a custom caster base.

We were very lucky to get a Crash droid base.  This is light and strong.  Perfect for our needs.  The centre of gravity will be played with in this droid, we are using ali feet and adding weight to them, and then trying to reduce the weight of the rest of the droid.  The hope is he will act like a droid half his height.

One of the major factors we wanted to address was the rigidity of the structure, any impact currently carries through the solid structure and makes an already unstable robot really prone to tipping when abused.  So the Shock shoulders (again James may want to update here, our concepts, my design, his work to create it, and he did a beautiful job) allow the legs to move in plane of the leg, pivoting on the centre of the shoulders and absorbed by soft rubber skate bushes.  They also allow the legs to be easily removed.

Other nice touches so far include magnets to hold on the horseshoes, boosters and dome.  But im really falling in love with this little droid, he already has a character and he is only a pile of bits at the mo.  He is a little more relaxed and not as formal as BHD, im really looking forward to giving him some real abuse and testing him where no droid has gone before. :P

I started painting a couple of weeks ago, for the green i chose Rover Brooklands Green, it is a really nice late 70s green, very suitable for ANH droid. :)  Most parts have required 3-4 cycles of fill sand and prime before 3 coats of green and 3-4 of clear.  I am currently unsure if i will polish the paint, or leave the orange peel, the slightly satin look is actually quite nice.  I hope to have all the leg elements for all 3 legs painted and drying for Monday.  Then on to the body. :)

The droid will still be an eventing droid as the main purpose.  It will have 9 dome doors on servos, and HPs, and 2 body doors and utility arms and a few other extras.  But at half the weight of BHD and a lot more practical to drive anywhere, im hoping X2 will take the chore out of eventing, and the risk of a bad back. :)

The new droid!

From the creators of R2-B4, and R2-BHD...

A Brad Robot productions...

R2-X2!

It was time for a new challenge.  Being the geniuses we are, we decided to get to work on a new project, something we hadn't seen done before.  A top loading droid! An off road droid!

Most droids, including ours, are designed to run in perfect surface conditions.  A gym hall floor for example.  Nice, flat, hard surfaces.  But when did we ever see R2 in the films limited to a gym?

So there was lots to consider.  Suspension, traction, shock absorption etc.

We were in two or three minds about what to do for the feet drives.  2 driven wheels as fat as we could go, with suspension built in?  Caterpillar tracks seemed ideal, but where were we going to get...

Oh ok, sweet!

One evening searching the web and we happened across these bad boys.  They're designed as an upgrade for remote controlled cars, to make them drive on sand and snow.  Perfect!

Looking at the measurements, the fit inside one of R2's feet seemed too perfect to ignore.  So we took a punt, and what do you know?

These even have suspension built into the them.

Now, with the perfect fit inside the foot, where do we put the motor?  Well, the usual NPC wouldn't work, the drive shaft on that would be too high (we wanted a high ride anyway for clearing all the crap we're going to drive it through).  But NPC's are reliable, and bullet proof.  But maybe a little slow on a direct drive.  

So, chatting with the father in law, we ended up with this!

Custom gear box anyone?

I'll leave you with that for now, I'm sure Brad will chime in soon :)