How would you build a 20ft robot?

Seriously, if someone said "Here's 5k, make a giant robot" where would you start? I'm fishing for ideas because the opportunity is real. Safety in windy conditions is critical.

PS: If you live in the SF Bay area and would be interested in helping with this project, PM me.

For 5k you are most likely going to be making it out of paper mache.

Some links to help you:
[www.mechanicalspider.com]
[www.strandbeest.com]
[www.youtube.com]

Love that guy's work :)

So, I'm talking about a static sculpture...car parts, plastic drums etc. 5k really isn't much....maybe scrap wood? That would be fun cuz then we'd burn it down after the party.

Mike Parisi Wrote:
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> Seriously, if someone said "Here's 5k, make a
> giant robot" where would you start? I'm fishing
> for ideas because the opportunity is real. Safety
> in windy conditions is critical.

A scrapyard. One that has not only car wrecks but also other machinery and metal junk. One that might allow you to take things for free if they are beyond repair.

thomas Wrote:
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> A scrapyard. One that has not only car wrecks but
> also other machinery and metal junk. One that
> might allow you to take things for free if they
> are beyond repair.

Good luck with that. The last "you pull it" scrapyard I visited was well over 20 years ago. And why would they let you take busted things for free when they could make money selling them to recyclers? Metal recycling is of the biggest industries in the world today.

You could probably make a pretty cool inflatable robot for 5k especially if its a super robot.

edit: I'll bet you could even plan out the pattern as if it were a paper model. You should talk to a company that makes those inflatable party jumper house things.

edit 2: Make it a 20 foot Scopedog in honor of my awesome idea.

edit 3: I'm in SoCal and I'd fly to SF to be involved in the making of or to see a 20ft Scopedog even if the design ends up being modified to be fugly and bootleg-looking as hell.

--------------------------
I want YOU for Moé Sucks Army



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2012 10:44PM by Scopedog.

MSW Wrote:
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> thomas Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > A scrapyard. One that has not only car wrecks
> but
> > also other machinery and metal junk. One that
> > might allow you to take things for free if they
> > are beyond repair.
>
> Good luck with that. The last "you pull it"
> scrapyard I visited was well over 20 years ago.
> And why would they let you take busted things for
> free when they could make money selling them to
> recyclers? Metal recycling is of the biggest
> industries in the world today.

In that case, find some place that gets rid of used company furniture (and that allows you to pick that stuff up for free as long as you do the transportation), or sells water-damaged goods at low prices, or bad quality wood and metal scraps for low prices/free. Don't tell me those don't exist anymore in the US?

Some welded-together 2 meter tall metal storage cupboards could make some excellent legs.

edit 4: Whatever you end up making (if its not a Scopedog) it should be a 20ft faithful adaption of a design from the fugly thread (although I think there's a fugly Scopedog in there).

--------------------------
I want YOU for Moé Sucks Army

oooo....I like the idea of giant "3d puzzle" bot made of wood, at least as the primary structural component. That might be the ticket!

A wood Scopedog is def possible...

20 ft. is pretty tall. I guess I'd make sure the base is really wide.

You could make it out of wood for that price. I've built pretty large decks for $1k in materials so $5k would take you a long way. It would be heavy as hell though so if you need to move it maybe do it in sections that you can later bolt together.

This'd be so fun to do. I just built a jungle gym/clubhouse, would love to have made a robot instead :) So what are the requirements? Static, doesn't need to move anywhere, can be burned down after completion. Does it have to hold people?

I really hope you do this and post pics.

Me to Ted. It just needs to stand, and we can burn it down as long as it's all wood.

Going back to Ted's post, the idea of a robot based piece of playground equipment sounds interesting. Is this thing staying for the long haul, or is it going to be blown up?

I am also a do-it-your-self-er, put up 120 feet of 3/4 inch thick fence with 10 foot 4x4's, alternating between finished carriage bolts and lag screws, plus manually post-hole digging the concrete footings (also mixed by hand). Did all of that for just under a grand.

They have all kinds of modular playground sets that given some imagination could be incorporated into a robot looking playset, especially with a custom head on top.

Anyone wanna hear the details of how I build the first "robot" dog house?

No? Okay...here's what I did.

The best suggestion I would give is to go to a large home improvement warehouse type business, take an inventory of the large pieces you might incorporate into a design, then look into how you could weigh the pieces down when combined (think jumbo machinders with bags of sand in the legs, etc.).

Twenty feet lends itself to difficulty in creating a biped that won't fall down, but possibly consider a bot on an expanded base, such as one on treads. (late editory note: I had glanced over the earlier responses and likely plaguerized Ted's posting from above in this aspect.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2012 11:28PM by Supersentai.

Yeah, the main thing is IT DOES'T KILL PEOPLE. Easy to haul, set up, and tear down woudld be nice. And then, it needs to look cool :)

As of now, my buddy Michael Leeds is going to build it. He's made robots before but nothing this big. Check out his stuff....


[www.blastolene.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2012 02:53PM by Mike Parisi.

Yikes, that guy is likely to build an actual transformer!

Supersentai Wrote:
> Anyone wanna hear the details of how I build the
> first "robot" dog house?

uh, YES

-Paul Segal

"Oh, the anger is never far, never far." -SteveH

Actually it was just a normal doghouse built for a dog who pretty much did what you told it to do, hence the "robot"-dog house monicker. I guess without the hyphen, you were probably expecting a robotic doghouse, or something to that effect. Sorry about that. Sometimes I just want attention, albeit negative attention. I likely have issues. BUT, I also have tons of great IDEAS!!! Such as a robot-dog-house.

Mike, you know the Blastolene guys!?!? Their stuff is amazing. I love the Big Bertha and the Blastoline Special. They look like they were made for giants or something. They should be able to make something truly insane. Will you be working with them?

Supersentai Wrote:
> Actually it was just a normal doghouse built for a
> dog who pretty much did what you told it to do,

yer breakin my heart here

-Paul Segal

"Oh, the anger is never far, never far." -SteveH

I'm pretty tight with Michael Leeds. He's a master fabricator for sure, but his old-school art skills are unbelievable. Think Maxfield Parrish meets Rick Griffin.
If we move forward on this project, Michael will be the primary driver, and that's a guarantee this robot will kick some serious ass.

The short story is, we won a 5k grant from a Burningman foundaton to build a giant robot, but the process of actually creating/transporting/securing such a thing is a bit intimidating. We shall see.

All suggestions are welcome, thank you all so much for the input so far.

MjP

Sounds groovy, man. It's been well over a decade since I've strolled through my statics/dynamics text books, so maybe one of the younger guys like Anavel might have more useful feedback, but I think that if you guys have access to enough scrap iron, you'd be able to fashion yourselves a pretty simple/lightweight framework of 3-bar-linkages to form the skeleton of this thing. That's the critical part.

Then, simply build everything else off of that using plywood panels or whatnot.

Ha...if you lived here I'd so be roping you into this madness Jeev. Yeah, that idea is def on the table.

Here's one of Michael's previous robot creations, made in 1984!:

Something to consider is scaffolding. The kind they use for construction. It's modular, readily available and extremely strong and a proven tech. You won't have to do any complex engineering design. Oh, and it goes up fast, so you can kind of sketch with it and iterate.


Check this out:
[www.thesun.co.uk]


Maybe just build a skeleton like this and then build a shell around and on it, maybe plywood or light gauge metal. Could be really cool :)

This is where we are at....suggestions for head/fists?

I'm still trying to recover from the case of "snortles" you sent me into, which was triggered by the garbage can feet. I'm still crying.

But seriously, you're pretty much 80% on the way to Tetsujin 28.

If you aren't "sculpting" hands out of anything, large plastic/rubber balls of some sort with the fingers drawn onto them might work.

As for the head, you could use another one of the arm pieces, seems like it would be in scale if you built it up around one.

Supersentai Wrote:
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> If you aren't "sculpting" hands out of anything,
> large plastic/rubber balls of some sort with the
> fingers drawn onto them might work.

Well, how about a big-ass beach ball as the palm, then string together some of those generic cheapie rubber inflatable balls (those basketball/soccer-sized ones) to form the segments of each finger? That could work...

Oh, and this guy's gotta have big, obnoxious wings! :P

Its gotta' be pretty resilient to abuse...the inflatable option is on the table, but best case would be something plastic, industrial & pre-made that *looks* like a closed fist.

That looks awesome! Thanks for posting some in-progress shots. For the hands and head. Maybe stacking, bolting together a group of plastic gas containers? They have cool shapes and bevels to them and come in all kinds of sizes and you can cut them up pretty easily.

Mike Parisi Wrote:
> This is where we are at....suggestions for
> head/fists?
>
>

Hahaha, holy crap! This is the Dairugger of barrels and trash cans.

-Paul Segal

"Oh, the anger is never far, never far." -SteveH

digging the gas containers!

What are the pallets made out of? Seems like they cut fairly cleanly.

Is there going to be a lawn chair in the chest cockpit?

Same stuff they make shampoo bottles out of ;)

Next time we def need to make room for a pilot!

Very cool to see the project taking shape!

Are you going to add an outer shell/skin type dealie to smooth the form out, or is is just getting painted up as is?

Some of that shrink plastic they wrap boats in when winterizing them (you CA guys prolly know nuttin bout that though ;0p ) would probably work really cool, but may be unnecessary expense if it looks good enough already. Maybe just for key areas, like the feet, and chest, to hide the individual parts?

Supersentai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm still trying to recover from the case of
> "snortles" you sent me into, which was triggered
> by the garbage can feet. I'm still crying.
>
The "windows" on the garbage cans should be painted blue. Seriously, the molding on the bottom of those things remotely looks like the front end of a truck...

Is it supposed to be a combiner? If so, then it obviously is built up out of tanker trucks or weird floating rafts.

Needs some painted details.

Still adding stuff...abandoned plastic play stucture parts rule. Recyclotron?

Have the neighbors freaked out yet and called Homeland?

Mike Parisi Wrote:
> Recyclotron?

Yup, pretty much the perfect name.

-Paul Segal

"Oh, the anger is never far, never far." -SteveH

Progress.