I Like to Move It, Move It

Motors came in today! YAY!! Haven't done much with them yet, but I'll hook them up soon and get some video. Still waiting on the replacement battery...

Battery Fail!

 Well, I got my batteries in from Amazon the other day, but one of them looked like some kind of power hungry zombie took a bite out of it (see what I did there?). After emailing the original company who shipped it, they are sending a replacement out for me, so I'll be waiting for that before I can move forward. Wish me luck that the new one gets here with waaaay more bubble wrap. =]

p.s. Motors are ordered and will probably arrive next week when the new battery gets here. Can't wait!

Picking up the Pieces

Ladies and gents, I'm getting back to this. After getting a little over my head, I've decided to take a step back and regroup, and now I think I'm in a good place and working at a good pace. I've been slowly (very slowly) buying the parts needed for this huge project, and I will list below what I have/need. I'm definitely going to make some mistakes along the way... I'm just trying to make sure I don't waste any money. But I probably will, lol.

This is what I have so far...

2X 12V 12AH Batteries wired in series

24V XLR Charger

XLR Outlet

Cheap Transmitter. May need to upgrade

Sabertooth 2X12 RC motor controller

T3-M4 Progression: Day 4

T3's Rear feet have been assembled! He's really starting to come together now, but he's quite hefty. I'm going to attempt to install the RC motors that I have to drive him  but I have a sneaking suspicion that they won't have the power to move him much... if at all. Still looking for some 3mm styrene sheeting at < $50...

T3-M4 Progression: Day 3

Yay feet! These were kind of a pain to build, but I got them done and attached. Each one of his "toes" has a small caster mounted on the underside. Hopefully this will give me the rolling action that I want, but things dont usually work out so easily in my world so I have a back up plan. If these casters fail to function, I'll be ordering some ball casters. The only problem here is that I'll need two per toe, which ends up being 8 in total. They aren't heavy, which is good... but they aren't cheap either, which kind of sucks. Anyway, back feet are next, then wheels and motors!!

 

T3-M4 Progression: Day 2

He's got legs!

I couldn't stand T3 laying around all of the time, so I built him some legs. No feet quite yet, but I'm working on it. I can already tell that this PVC is going to drive me up the wall... the fitting just aren't tight enough to carry the weight of the rest of the droid, but that's at least fixable. Eventually he will have some sort of rigid bar that will run from one foot, through the body, and down to the other foot. As long as I can develop or find some means of detaching the legs for travel, but still be able to reattach them without losing the rigidity I'll be a happy camper. I'm just ranting now. Nothing really spectacular to show today, but legs are done and I'm pretty happy about that, and tomorrow should bring feet! =] Enjoy the rest of the pics!

Hope this stuff holds up! 

Skeleton redux

Holds up nicely

Standing all by himself

Starting to look like a big dog, lol

T3-M4 Progression: Day 1

Rock that body!

I've decided to start out by making a prototype T3-M4 out of cardboard and PVC pipe so that I can work out where motors will be mounted, whether I need some sort of skeleton, and all of the crazy things I'm sure I'd pull my hair out for if I were using styrene from the start. This seems to be working quite well thus far. After getting the plans online with the proper dimensions, I just started drawing them onto some boxes and hit it with the razor knife. Little bit of hot glue and suddenly he starts to take shape. Here are a few more shots I took on day 1. If you have any questions, please ask them below in the comments section, and be sure to subscribe!

Hot glue is a builder's best friend

Starting to take shape

First draft of a PVC skeleton

You see where I'm heading?

Meet T3-M4

     The T3-series utility droid was an Utility droid produced by Duwani Mechanical Products at some point prior to the Great Droid Revolution. They remained popular for years to come and were still the most recent of a long line of physically identical models as of 3,956 BBY. Earlier models in the same series included the 3C, IT, and T1 models. Designed to function as a maintenance droid for a variety of mechanical and electronic systems, the T3 was internally more advanced than its predecessors. -Wookiepedia

     This will be the style of droid that I will be building. From an engineering standpoint, this shouldn't be too difficult as he mostly made of very boxy parts. Only a couple of pieces are round and would require a routing table, and also, he's pretty sweet looking.

• Box-like design should be easy to build
• Rear wheel driven (casters on front feet)
• Head rotates as well as tilts left and right
• Front legs pull in and out changing his height
• Only three lights to worry about
• Built-in speakers and mp3 player with a shuffled playlist (including some silent tracks) should be sufficient for audio.

Here is a vid that I found of a functional T3. Very nice work!

KOTOR Jedi and T3-M4 droid build

Here we go again... again!

     My next project is to build not only Jedi armor, robes, and a lightsaber, but a full controllable T3-M4 droid to roll around with me. This is going to take quite some time, so I'll try and document my work, as I go, here.

• All armor will be created out of EVA foam.
• Lightsaber is mostly built. Not sure if it will be functional or cosmetic.
• T3-M4 will be built from Polystyrene (if I can find a good price)

     That's all for now, but check back here and there to follow my progress. Hopefully videos will follow!