ROBOTS 4

I decided to cut the last robots blog in two- no, not the last blog 'spark and the studio', but the one before- ROBOTS 3 - just because it seemed to take too long to load on my computer, which is basically HAL 9000 with a less engaging personality- so I think there were too many pics in one blog for most people. So here's the second half again, and I'll go back now and chop the this section out.
APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE- NORMAL SERVICE NOW RESUMES.

 I went back to basics also with the hand, and took it totally apart- I had another set of palm plates built, and they looked to have better registration than the last hand. I took the last hand apart, and checked each finger for wear and tear- I also filed each finger down significantly- they had been a bit horribly blobby with JB weld- I filed them flatter, and repaired where neccessary.
 This is the basic jig my Dad was kind enough to knock up in the shed for me- saves a bit of time and effort, for creating palm plates, and the finger plates- we can improve this further yet.

Below you can see the finger joints in their various states, and the raw barbells they were built from- the balls are 3mm diameter, and they are fiddly to cold weld- they also require a specific 'bar' that is smaller than all other body piercing bars- which is a bit of a pain- and a shame you can't vary the length of the bar. Lighter shown for scale.

The hand once assembled again, and all the fingers sorted out - I actually decided to put another bolt into the palm, and it made a big difference to the finger tension reliability.

The entire hand arm once reassembled- once again, I'm much happier with this- my only concern is the extra weight I have added to the arms.

Rig gets his new shoulders put on first- with the new allen key screw fittings...now, where did I put that Allen Key?

 The gun arm goes on next.

 Then the 'hand' arm- immediately I can see the shoulders are going to be much more expressive, and less of an obstacle to have to work around- during the corridor test shots I'd found I had to cheat with perspectives a bit in order to make it look like the two arms were in the precise position for the 'story'.
These will be much better, as long as the weight isn't too much of an issue.

 Stick 'em up!

 A few more bits to share with you- the 3 various metalwork boxes I keep to hand- there is a lot more metal than this sorted into plastic drawers too- but these bits get used a lot, so they stay near to hand. First box contains all the balls I've got to hand- most of them are body piercing barbells, ranging from 3mm diameter, all the way to 10mm I believe- some brass threaded balls too. All discovered thanks to threads on stopmotionanimation.com
I haven't yet had the chance to braze these balls into place, but when we get into the studio I'm going to look at moving that way- there are various people there in the building with vast experience of all kinds of welding, so that should be easy enough. I bought in bulk from the body piercing suppliers, so consequently I've got loads of them...

 Half assembled armature components, and likely bits and pieces

 This box is meant to be about plates and rods, K&S tubing etc- but various other bits end up in there too.

Ok that's all for now, but v also check back through the earlier blogs, I'm going to put a few more pics in I've taken. Peace out!