A little more body is all I need.

There hasn't been very much building at the shop this week, I'm doing a fair amount of 3d work, but our vacuum former is almost done! Just kinda waiting on heaters.

I did manage to get the octopus body built, but it's little tiny bits here and there.

As our big Techno was cutting Vacuum former pieces, I cut the octopus on our tabletop machine. I really like this machine, probably because it doesn't take as long to clear the crap of it when I need to router something!

I didn't get any progress pics of the assembly steps to the octopus, stupidly enough, but I did get pictures after it was all put together:

Most of the final finishing was done at home, between emails, and such.

Soon, soon there might be a finished contest entry from us!
8)
JWO

Stupid Octopus!

A lot has happened in bits and pieces on the octopus over the last little bit. My time to work on it gets smaller and smaller as other projects come into the shop. Our next job has us building a vacuum former to pull a bunch of parts for that.

All 160 pulleys got their patina paint job on them. As well as the bronzed sections that hold them together.

I was really hoping not to have to run the pulleys through the lathe, but it quickly became apparent that it needed to be done :(

It's a little hard to see, but every pulley assembly got a little guide pin installed. I hope I get to use it, but the time is quickly running out on the deadline, but it's there if I need it.

The tips of the tentacles got cut as well. I have no idea how I only cut 71/2 of them, but I did. So one more to cut for that tomorrow. I also need to add a bit more to it to make it look a little bit better, so I'll cut that as well while I'm at it.

The turret gear plate that all the tentacles mount to also got machined. 3/4" pvc for this bad boy! The holes around it are for screwing and LED lighting.

I also built the mounting arm assembly for it as well.

As the pulleys don't actually turn, and are strictly decorative, I used hair elastics for the belts. They hold the tension really well, and look nice and beefy.

This was the single most frustrating assembly job ever, in the history of frustrating jobs ever. Each pully assembly alternates all the way down the line, and the belts have to go on in a certain order. I actually had to make miniature belt pullers to assemble this stupid contraption. As it usually goes, the first arm took about an hour to assemble properly(on goes the belts, off goes the belts, on goes the belts in a different order!) The last tentacle took around 6 minutes. Another job I'm a skilled craftsman at now, and another skill I'll never use again!

But in the end the assembly looks crazy awesome. A ton of detail to look at. I have to stain the white of the pulley grooves, but other than that these guys are almost done! I'm going to work on them on Saturday, and hopefully get to machining the rest of the body!
8)
JWO

8X the Fun!

I finally got away from the computer for a while yesterday, and was able to start cutting the mechanical tentacles for our competition entry.

A little hard to see white, on white, but the cutting went well

By the last linkage of the tentacle, the parts are getting a little small!

I just did up a parts count for the tentacles. There are, including spacers, 10 individual pieces per link. There are 10 links per tentacle, times 8 tentacles!
That's a total of 800 pcs. PLUS I still have to design the tentacle mount to the body, Probably another 80 pcs for those.

Stoooooopid Jamie says "Let's build an octopus"..........Pffff!..........Stoopid Jamie.

BUT.....I think it will be WAAY cool when it's done:)

However, during assembly, it seems I forgot to trim the tabs of the side in the computer file, so I ended up having to do that with the table saw after. It wasn't too bad, as I could run the brass rod through the holes, and cut 8 of them at a time.

The assembly was pretty fast, and everything ended up working out, except for the aforementioned trimming mistake. Each one of the pulley's will get a belt that connects to the next one down the line, with the big and small pulley's alternating one side to the other.

7 more to go!

8)
JWO