Tag: casting

Paw-pads:
Well, the Shore 75 rubber is now here, the 60 has been returned. I’ve not yet caught up with the orders though. There’s a rare collective motivation going on in the house right now that’s saying “Yes, let’s actually clear stuff out!”

Workshop:
Over the past few days I’ve filled one of the wheelie-bins all by myself just with stuff from the workshop. And there’s more yet to come!
It’s been a really harsh thing to do though. I’m a packrat, and I do tend to use the things I pick up sooner or later. But it’s best not to dwell on it all. The space is far more important atm.

Reprap:
Ordered some more Bonsai prototyping bits, but the aluminium tube was out of stock in the end, so I’m going to have to go with stainless instead.
You see, the first simplification I’m making to the Mendel layout is to use the frame as the runners by wrapping the studding with push-fit tube. It should also have the benefit of making assembly and adjustment easier, if I cut the pipes to the correct lengths. Just assemble and tighten.

Art-bike:
Also stripped down the big bicycle frame someone dumped in the alleyway. The front fork stem is the same diameter as the stem on the unicycle I picked up last year. Will have to do some careful grinding and welding, but fitting the unicycle up as the front wheel should be fine. And the frames pedal cranks look like they’ll swap with the unicycle ones, so I can hopefully get the mechanism I was after working alright.
It should make it all into a nice half-horse and buggy. Eventually.

Blacksmithing:
I’ve got a rough forge assembled, but I still need to line it with refractory. Have fire cement and perlite, but think I need to pick up some dry sand too. Well, and some charcoal.

Video:
Got some footage from the digital camera that needs editing. Also haven’t yet tested the capture machine I assembled last week. It’s on my to-do list.

T-shirts:
Seeing who’s interested in what types and sizes. Think I can afford to get one atm. No reply from supplier atm. Will call them in the morning and make an order for the large blue UKFur shirts.
Also converted the carrying case that came with the shirts into something more like a portable shop by chopping down an Ikea hanging rail and mounting fixings inside the case. Now I can store the rail inside the case and use the case as the base of it.

Art:
Yeah, I’m behind on this. But I am catching up.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

First mail-order UKFur shirts have been posted.

Got a reply from the manufacturer, so can calculate more accurate prices now.

Also heard back from TOMPS. Will hopefully have the correct hardness rubber tomorrow. Just have to send back the Shore-60. Little suspect of them saying it should be fine in regular post, since they state it’s not when they’re sending it. Can understand they’d want to keep the postage cost down since they’ll be giving me a credit note as postage repayment.
Will pack it well and send as Recorded.

BIG clear-out is in progress here.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Busy busy bee.. or ladybug, since they’re everyfuckingwhere

Old 1.7Ghz machine is out of storage. Running diagnostics to see if I can isolate where the hardware problem is (I suspect the 80Gb boot disk), before installing Win2000 and a capture card on it. And nothing else.
Will also put the old 5.25″ floppy drive in it and see if any old disks still work.

Yesterdays castings are de-moulded. Unfortunately two sets show small areas of unmixed pigment. Will have to double-stage mix it from here on. Still, getting closer to high-resolution shots of all sets, as well as having display sets.

Called TOMPS, still no word yet. Sounds like the boss is out of the office a lot these past few days. Still, have someone wanting a footpad order, and won’t be able to honour it until I have the shore-80. It’s been a week since I emailed them about this.

Up to 9 Mendel brackets cast. Should have the rest needed in an hour or so. I’ll lock up again for a bit after that, get some artwork done, before casting some more pads in the evening.

Had a reply back from the connector company, wanting to know the pitch of the connector image I sent them. I thought I’d included that in my description. Yep. Ugh..

–

DorkBot London was very entertaining last night. My main point of confusion had always been that I’d never found where they talked online. Simple answer; they don’t. You go along, meet people and then communicate one-to-one. This seems surprisingly traditional for such a techno-arty field.
I suppose things like the 2600 meets are the same though. It just feels a little upside-down to me though, having mostly gone to groups or forums which then sparked real-world meetings.

EDIT: 5.25″ drive seems to be working intermittently. Will have to strip it down and clean it.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

More macro shots

Another batch of pads is packed up and ready to go.

First took the opportunity to re-photograph them all in macro mode properly though. Here’s the winning shots so far, cropped and resized to 75%.

About to go upload them to my DA and FA accounts.

More will be cast tomorrow before I head out to Dorkbot London in the evening. Means next order will ship friday, most likely.
Will also be casting up 12 reprap-Mendel frame brackets for the Bonsai Repstrap prototype. And I’ll get photos of the new colour mix.

Still no word from resins supplier. Will be phoning them tomorrow to get this Shore-80 situation sorted out.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Cleaning, casting and picture-taking

Some photos of a wax seal and some notes on casting.

Straight to the workshop this morning, and finally managed to dig out the custom wax seal I made for Ash!
I had to modify it because last time I wasn’t happy with my own piss-poor engraving and due to the fact I didn’t reverse the text or images. So the stamped text came out backwards! D’oh!

It polished up pretty well with rotary tool and felt wheel though.

Also checked on the paw-pad castings. Was a bit worried since the part-A had settled out and I used a portion of the surface fluid by itself on the first run.
I’ve since scrawled “SHAKE BEFORE USE” on the side of the heated cabinet.
Regardless the elastomer seems to have set and cured pretty well. No areas of unmixed dye, and a glossy surface finish. I’m still going to give them another 24hrs before they go in the post though, just to be on the safe side. They should be fully hardened at 7 days, but they can be used an manipulated as-is.
Texture’s good too. Feels very natural.

Bit miffed that TOMPS haven’t gotten back to me yet regarding the order cockup, where they sent me Shore-60 instead of 80. I had intended to make up the “tire-tough” footpads with the new 4″ wide velcro embedded in them, and strap them to the bottoms of my shoes to test them at tomorrows LondonFur meet.
Really I should have checked the order contents when it arrives, but I assumed that they were correct because I’d been told the 80 was in a larger set than the 40, due to new suppliers. There were two sizes in there, so I assumed. I should have asked for the product numbers, rather than the descriptions.
It’ll get sorted eventually.

So, spent a little while here, setting up the ghetto Ikea light-box, and getting some much improved publicity shots of my works.
I really need some bigger, brighter lights though. Maybe my welding halogen..
Also depth-of-field is a bit messed up in some. Should be resolved with more light and using Macro shots, rather than regular with zoom.

Some unedited, resized shots below cut..
Continue reading “Cleaning, casting and picture-taking”