Goodbye Coors Light Hiker Dude!

Jody got all the tedious miniature barbs fabricated for the barbed wire obstacle course on the Coors Light game.

She used some thin wire, wrapped around a small piece of brass rod, then clipped off each piece, and pulled the barbs out.

While she worked on the barbed wire, I molded the small garden taps, and the posts they're attached to from some Aves sculpting epoxy. I also molded the 2 poles that the zipline attaches to.

While the some of the paint was drying, I drilled out the base for the coat hanger wire poles that the barbed wire attaches to. I purposely made them a little crooked and unevenly spaced. They got a coat of rust colored enamel, and the base got painted in burnt umber for the mud.

We posed the little character to be face down in the mud, and drilled him out for the 1/8" rod that mounts him into the base.

The barbed wire got wrapped around the poles, and painted silver to stand out against the mud. A little clear was added for gloss to make the mud look wet.

The pool and filling hose got installed, as well the bull rushes that have started to grow in the puddle made by the leak!

  The garden hose is also bulging, ready to pop!

But our little contestant seems to not care a bit about the shoddy workmanship of the leaking pool.

We decided to add some waving flags at each checkpoint to dress them up a little.

The final piece was the bent 3/32 aluminum tube for the zipline handle. I screwed a small eyelet into the end to hang it from braided fishing line we used as the zipline.

 And here's the overall final finished game (X2) before the case. I didn't get any good pictures with the case on, as all the reflections made it impossible to photograph!

Goodbye little Dude, I'll meet you at the party cabin!
8)
JWO

Mountain Survival.....It's in the Details!

With the Molson Ring Toss game gone, it left us to completely focus on the Coors Light Mountain Survival game.
One of the requests was a zipline from the top of the mountain to a pools of sorts at the bottom of the game. The additions are just decorative, not functional.....YaaaY!
Being that our hiker is very cartoony, I wanted the additional elements to be just as silly. I thought that if the little pool was being filled with a garden hose, but the water was leaking out just as fast, it would be kinda neat.

First thing was to pull the angle of the game from the drawings, then build the pool to the size of our little guy. I cut the pool from 1/8" pvc, and scored the boards and woodgrain. I also slit the pvc in spots with an X-acto knife, so they could bend outwards, like they were really old.

The garden hose nozzle that will be filling the pool was spun pretty quick on our little lathe. I have a ton of 1/4" clear acrylic rod, so I used a little bit of that. I also have quite a bit of a textured, transluscent blue I'll be using as the water surface in the pool.

I mounted the spray nozzle to some thick primary wire I have, to replicate the hose section. And as a bonus, it was already green! A quick spray job with brass, and it's almost good to go.

 We sliced our little man at the waist, and cut of his left hand as well. This will look like he's standing in the water. We also had to heat bend his hand into a wave. Clearly he was molded to hold something, but we changed that with a cigarette lighter!

Once posed, it was off to the primer stage. The Rustoleum black primer sticks to the material like glue. This kept the water-based finish coats from beading off the plastic.

Whenever I'm out, and see something interesting, usually at a Dollar Store, or Walmart, I try to pick up a couple, just to have. You never know when it'll fit the bill! I had picked up some kids light up shoelaces last year, and filed them away for future use. I decided that the thick clear "lace" would make amazing streams of water coming out of our little hose. It was a little too thick as is, so i heated it with a torch, stretched it thinner, and cooled it with water to hold the thickness. This made it curl quite severely, but it's so flexible, it's not really an issue.

The end of the plastic lace was glued down to the surface of the water. I have a heavy bodied clear glue that I puddled around the joint, then added small glass spheres to simulate turbulence and splashing in the water. The free end of the water will get connected to the hose when it gets installed.

It's hard to see in the photo, but I also added the "leak" that is springing out of the side of the pool. This will terminate into a puddle, with bull rushes growing around it.

The final step was to get the guys glued into their new home, and add the water ripples with the heavy bodied glue. This is going pretty fun when it's all installed!

I also included a short video we shot last week, just to make sure he was clearing the inside of the mountain. There was some suspicious noises coming from inside the mountain, but it turned out to be some crud in the track. We managed to get it cleared out, but it was NO fun tearing the game apart last week!
8)
JWO

The Survival Continues!

We ended up working the weekend, except for the Canada day Monday, that we took off!

It turns out that my plan to get off easy with the chain sprocket mounted to the motor shaft post was all for not! Turns out the shaft spins with the motor, but not under any load. Under load it stays still, so I had to cut the adapter plates anyway!

I pocketed a shallow recess into the rigid PVC adapter that will let the sprocket sit dead center. This will let me drill the sprocket and adapter as one, so the screws that hold them together will line up perfectly, and the sprocket will run true.

The bottom of each sprocket recess got a T-nut.

 I bolted the sprocket from the bottom. The T-nut will hold the bolt, and the sprocket will turn on that. The speed of the game doesn't require any bearings for the sprockets, so this will work fine. 2 nuts and some lock tight were used until all the testing was done, then I'll we'll use proper lock nuts!

Once the chain was run and working properly, I installed the micro switches that will get tripped by the little hiker, turning on each check-point light on the game surface. The final part, before the wiring, was the addition of the spacers that will keep the game perfectly spaced from the underside of the fiberglass shell.

Jody got all the shingles for the little cabin roofs cut and glued up. We went with strips of styrene cut to length, then stacked the strips, and cut the shingle tabs on the small band saw.

I milled some 1/8" brass rod on our small lathe for the post that the hiker gets mounted to. I needed to take it from 1/8" down to .090". The reduced portion replaces the post of a link of the chain. We assemble the chain, and soldered it on. This was about the only way I could think of to get the chain to move the post, without the addition of anything that might interfere with the sprockets or switches.

While I was at it, I had to mill the threads of of the 2 arcade style push-buttons. We used these style buttons as a simple way to turn the hiker's motion on and off. Once the threads were milled off, they easily slid into the 4" length of pvc pipe we're using as the "hand held controller".

The fiberglass bases got their painting started on the Saturday, and were done and flocked on Sunday!

The logo was bolted on, and we just had to wait for Jody to finish the houses.

We installed the finished cabin, and X check-points pretty much all at once. The cabin has tinted windows with vinyl silhouettes of people partying on them. Cause it's a party at the top!!

The little hiker finally got mounted to his post. A few test trips around the course, and he is ready to travel!

Due to our Techno cnc, the table saw, and a palm sander, we had to assemble the acrylic case tops in the office where the dust was as low as possible. The case was a little bigger than I like working with, but with some patience, Jody and I got them cut and assembled in about an hour and a half.

The "Mountain Survival" shield logo was cut from 1/8" white pvc, and got screwed to the game base.

Once the graphic was applied, we cut out the sections that the man drives over, and test fit the acrylic cover. Once the man makes it to the cabin, and it lights up, it also fires off the revolving light mounted above the game.

We got a call at the final hour to add a couple of details to the game base, so we actually have the games until next Thursday for the additions.

These things are a lot bigger in real life, and seem to hog up a lot of space in the shop. But Thursday will come soon enough!!!
8)
JWO

Go Climb the Mountain Little Guy, I'm growing Tired of You!

While I was busy laying out the cut files for the miniature party cabin that resides at the finish line of our little game, Jody got the 2 hikers all painted up. I think she's going to do a bit more, but they're pretty much done.

I exploded the sides off the little model cabin in Hexagon. I actually used a combination of the original building, and the building that was trimmed by the surrounding geometry of the rocks on the base.

After I had the sides exploded, I exported them out as a dxf file for import into corel. I hate dxf files, I think they're antiquated and frustrating. Plus, all the curves get broken into facets.
Once the file was in corel, I quickly cleaned it up, and added the little windows. Lamina design was essential for flattening out the curved roof that rests against the jagged mountain rocks. This "should" be as close as possible to fitting against the rocks. I'll test it tomorrow!

 Once the building was scribed for wood siding, corners mitered, and glued up, I was able to test fit it. Perfect! I had to remove a tiny bit of the mountain to allow the left side of the door to fit, but I was expecting it.

 The next step was to get all the window trim , and roof pieces cut from .060" styrene. The roof will get strip shingles, so it will look thick and very coarse. I want the shingles slightly out of scale for the house, which should look great.

I was also putting off solving the drive motor assembly, but had to deal with it today! We're using power window motors for this job. These always seem be what I turn to. They're pretty cheap, have gobs of torque, and only really need about 5 amps at 12 volts, under heavy load. I was going to make a rigid pvc collar that would fit the splines on the shaft, but by milling down the mounts on the gear-box, I could use the sprocket right on the metal gear shaft.

I had to drill out the sprocket, and tap it for a set screw that will clamp it to the flat spot I ground onto the motor shaft. Way less work than my original plan!

And on top of that, we finished the cleanup of the cemetery sign we were carving for a local sign shop. They want us to paint it now as well, black and white, so we'll tackle that next week when the games are delivered.
8)
JWO

Nice Knapsack Little Man!

We got all of the styrofoam cracked off the bases. It was certainly laborious! The final step was done with the pressure washer I borrowed from the amazing neighbor! This blasted off any remaining deposits fairly quickly.

 There was some air bubbles, but that was solved with some quick bodyfiller magic!
But the rest of it looks exactly like I was expecting to, Woo-Hoo!

After the edges were all trimmed off, the next course of action was to cut the slot that the little man will ride in. The underside of the base gets 3/8" mdf glued and screwed to it, so I used it as a cutting guide. The mdf won't get glued in until the end assembly, in hopes to keep all the mechanics aligned and flat.

Our Techno cnc was able to quickly churn out the 1/2" pvc base plates. These plates get mounted with spacers to the underside of the aforementioned mdf plate. This will be the base that all the lights, sprockets, motor and chain will mount to. That way it will all go inside the game at once.

The sprockets have a fairly large shoulder on them. So I pocketed out the base to have the sprocket sit in the material. This gets the chain as low as possible to the base. The sprocket will spin on the t-nut, with a 1/4 20 bolt threaded in as the post.

2 nuts for locking, and some additional thread locker should keeps this together. Even if the nuts were to spin off, the sprockets and posts are still trapped in the base assembly.

The pvc strips helps solve 2 problems for us. The chain runs through the track, with very little  clearance. This way the hiker man will travel in a perfectly straight line to each checkpoint, eliminating any binding due to a loose chain. They also become strengthening ribs for the base. I like killing 2 birds with one stone!

While I was designing the 3-d portion of the bases, I had to have a fairly accurate size for the hiker. So I went with 2 little plastic figures I got at Wal-mart. We're modifying him a bit, but not much.
Jody re-sculpted his legs in a running position using Avery's Apoxie Sculpt, a 2 part epoxy sculpting epoxy.

And she added a little back-pack. Probably for his little sandwiches and stuff! He'll obviously get a repaint, but he looks really good right now.

It feels like not alot is happening, but when I re-cap everything at the end of the day, we're doing just fine.

8)
JWO