Not dead

I really need to try and get a good handle on this blogging thing...anyways, I've been kept busy with a number of things, which I'll outline

• Helped a friend get a Ness costume together (and by helped, I merely said "buy those over that")
• Learned to crochet! Picture attached below for proof
• Working on a Wind Waker (the baton, not the game)
• Working on a Dr. Stein screw for another friend (which needs to be done by Friday...)

So. Yeah. Not dead. Also: Mr Fish hat!

Thomas sub visor

Just got back into to town after a trip to see a friends wedding, and decided to start polishing up the subvisor boards for Thomas' helmet. 

The two boards will be held together with some allthread and nylon spacers to keep them at their set distances. There will be grooves/holes cut into these boards to hold the sub visor. The main visor will be held into place mostly by friction. Or, at least, thats the plan.

Collin and Foam fun

As stated in a previous post, I've been working on my Companion Cube (who has now been dubbed Collin). Firs picture is of Collin.

Basic construction is a 18" foamboard cube with cardstock corners. I had the templates for the corners yanked from a site that is now no more, so I can't post the link to them. Anyways, the corners were tapped onto the cube, and then one of the flaps lifted, as to allow me to spray some expanding foam inside to give it some support. As you can see in the picture...I put a touch too much foam into one of the corners...

Oh, and the expanding foam? Yeah...I failed to clean the bottle correctly, and had to try and dig out the set foam from the nozzle. Sadly, while I was digging at it, I managed to break the seal inside the bottle. The following is the result of that.

Misc. Things

I don't have anything of major interest to show this week, however, a few things have changed as far as projects go!

First off, I was able to get new blades for my 3D magic life counters! I'll be posting a picture of those in the next few days as I make progress on them.

Collin (the companion cube) is coming along nicely! I need more foam, though, to feel the corners.

I also bought a bunch of Halloween makeup stuff, and have been testing it. Mostly just to ensure I don't break out in hives from anything.

And, as an aside, I've been busy working on my car. Personal followers will know that I had to buy a new car a month back, and I've been slowly working on small things with it (fuel filter swap, seafoamed the engine, cleaned some sensors, and other small things)

More of foam-core prop

So I did a bit more testing on foam core prop stuff.

First off, the original  test part. It was (as you might recall) was done on a small hunk of foam with two layers of cloth. Now, the two layers was enough to make ot pretty sturdy, but I decided to add two more layers: and that thing is rock solid now. I think I could get away with three...but overkill!
Anyways, the reason I bring this up is that I was able to add more cloth to the test piece without ruining the part (ie, making more ripples in it inadvertently). This means that if you put too little onto the foam core, then melt out the foam core, you can still add more to the part without ruing the shape you may have had with the foam core there!

Second off, I did more testing on melting the foam core. I wanted to try and cheapen the cost of the melting by seeing is a diluted mixture would still work. Short answer: it doesn't. I first tried a 1:1 water/acetone mix (which I have in a spray bottle for Percy [my 3D printer]). This literally didn't do anything but make the room smell like nail polish remover and make the foam wet. Next was a 1:2 water to acetone mix. This did a bit more, but not enough to actually be useful. So, Short and skinny of it: you'll be better off sticking with a 100% acetone mixture.

Which brings me to the last point on this last run of tests: straight acetone will get...cloudy. I'm sure that you can only use so much acetone on the foam before the 'melted' foam inside the acetone ruins the acetone's ability to eat at the foam. However, at this time, I don't think this is a massive issue as the acetone pot I've been using is a 8oz jar, and the foam bits dissolved inside that pot look like a pinch of blue sea salt. I'll probably do more tests on this to see just how much foam I can melt into an 8oz jar before it [acetone] can't melt no more.

Proof of concept: hollow fiberglass shell using insulation foam

I had a rather clever idea last night that I decided to test: a quick, easy, and [realtivly] cheap way to make hollow fiberglass shelled parts.

The idea came to me as I was working on Collin (my companion cube [picture of him soon!]) as I was using Great stuff expanding foam. I had my resin near by and thought "Well...since I plan to coat Collin, might as well run a test on what the resin will do to the foam board and Great Stuff!". Before I ran the test, I remembered I had some insulation foam I was going to use for a proton pack (basic idea was to make the pack from foam, coat in resin for toughness, and paint). So, while I was testing stuff, I cut off a small chunk of the board.

Shortly before I mixed the resin, I remembered that a friend is looking to make a gauntlet (one that wraps around the forearm). As such, it needs to be hollow. So the idea set in: see if the insulation foam melts in acetone. 

Tested the foam against acetone: and whatda know, it melts! Step two was to ensure the foam didn't melt with the epoxy. So I brushed some mixed resin on: no melting! So I figured "lets step up my game" and put two sheets of fiberglass cloth on top. Still holding up!

I let that dry, and came back today: no damage to the foam, and the resin was set!! Finaly test: resin against the acetone! Below is that test video.

Hint: it works!!

Thomas helm 'sizing'

I call it sizing do to the fact that there really is no way to make it smaller/bigger now. However (it hard to tell from this...) but it does fit really well!! It bigger then it should be, both in the sense that it is bigger then the original (as I am bigger then Thomas [token fat joke!]) and it is bigger in scale (IE, if you were to scale the original to my frame, this one is bigger then that). I will be buying plastic in the nest few days to start work on the visors. 

Daft Hands

More work on the hand plates for the Daft Punk get up! With any luck, these should be done next week and all prepped for vacuum forming.

Also, in the background, you can see a Hannibal Letter mask I tossed together for a friend. Not quite done as I need her for strap sizing.

Thomas helmet

So here's an updated picture of Thomas' helmet. It needs quite a lot of sanding. So much, that I'll need to do it outside. So progress may be halted for a bit...

Guy Manuel Test

Finally got around to uploading a [rather crappy] video of the Guy-Manuel light code. It's taken on a phone while I was at work, so you'll have to rely on the description to make sense of it all.

For those that don't want to open more links, here is a copy and paste of the YouTube description
==
This was taken at work, so, sadly, I am not talking to explain the parts your looking at.

So, from left to righ:
-Main Display
-Ear
-Upper chin
-Lower Chin

At about the 24 second mark, you can see me grab the pink wire and press a button on the board. This [button] is to toggle from the pattern mode to VU Meter mode. You should be able to hear me blowing on the mic (which is at the end of the pink cable).

Again, this is a TEST! I will be cleaning up the code a bit in certain areas, and, when it is in the helmet, replace the button with a toggle switch.
==
Also, for blog purposes: this test bed is just that: a test bed. It's being used to test the code for the Guy-Manuel helmet and for the proton pack, thus the reason for all the excess LED's. The whole thing is being ran off an Arduino Micro, and (for testing purpose) that is being powered off of my laptops USB port.

Quick test of photos

And now a quick test if uploading photos from my phone direct to blogger (on the computer). Just to show how bad the powder release is from sanding down my home-made body filler is.

Video Embedding tests

Quick test of embedding YouTube videos.

Proton pack light test!

I've been throwing a log of my down time at work to coding. I already have the core of the guy Manuel helmet code done (which I'll be posting soon!). And, since the test bed I was using could easily be quickly adapted to support proton pack lights as well, I decided to just throw on the lights needed.

I'm kinda sad that I can't embed the video via mobile, so I might change up how I post videos...in the time being, here is the link.

Proton Pack test: http://youtu.be/mVhxknl4ZqU

Testing the app and photos

Just a quick test to make sure that uploading photos from my phone works. Short answer: yes. I just uploaded two quick ones: first one is the mess I made cutting some MDF in my apartment for a vacuum former, and the second is a picture of myself wearing the [work in progress] Guy Manuel helmet.

Jumping ship!

So, what with all the other blogs I follow for prop making, designs, and arduino related nonsense already being on Blogger, I'm jumping ship on Tumblr as my blog of choice.

I will now be using this for my project blog, and I will (hopefully) keep on top of updating it this time round.