Packing Up... Driving to Indiana

Today the family and I packing the car and driving up to Indiana Dunes to meet some builders. This should be a fun and interesting weekend as this is the first time we have packed the kids in the car for a longer then 2 hours drive.

Horseshoes Part #1

Once the kids got sidetracked I decided to assemble the horseshoe leg details. It is hard to see in the picture below but some of the holes in the plastic did not get cut all the way. So I grabbed the drill and fixed the three holes that were blocked.

The horseshoes were layed out before any glue was applied being careful to ensure that the pieces were correctly laid out to ensure I had a left and right horse shoe.

Once glued it was time to clamp everything down. As you can see from the picture below I am quickly running out of clamps and deskspace. If you look closely in the picture below you will see my IPad... Which I think is a builders best friend.

Leg #2 Assembly Part #1

The boys and I got up this morning and decided to work on the other leg a bit this morning. So we cleaned off all the parts, broke out the JB Weld and clamped the parts together. I used the same dowel insert technique I did for the first leg. The only difference is I also installed piece #8.

I am a little nervious that I stacked the pieces in the correct order so that I have a proper left and right leg. Time will tell.

Leg #1 Current State

Once I removed the clamps I tested the bond and it worked fairly well. I then reinstalled the #12 screws. Since I drilled counter sink holes the screws poked out just a bit on the underside. I then grabbed the Dremel and grinded the screw ends until the underside of the leg was smooth. Later I will fill in the holes with some bondo and sand it flat (Although this will not be until later).

I am going to have a fair amount of cleanup work todo on the leg to get it in prime condition as seen below.

Leg #1 Glue Results

Tonight I am going to re-glue the white pieces of leg #1. I will be using Goop and Gorilla Glue.

Glue Experiment

Results of my initial glue tests were as follows:

Gorilla Glue - Worked well, bonded tight easy to clean-up but I get the feeling that if I pulled with some pliers hard I might be able to separate the pieces.

Gorilla Glue 2 Part Epoxy - This epoxy did not mix as well coming out of the tubes and did not bound very well.

Amazing Goop - This worked very well, however it was hard to cleanup the run over.

Permatex 84101 General Purpose Epoxy - This did not bond to the white material at all.

I think what I am going to do to re-secure #9, #11, #11a, #11b is use the goop on the center of the components and the gorilla glue on the near the outside of the pieces. This way the cleanup will be a lot easier.

First Failure

So I have experienced my first failure of my R2 build experience (well not my first but my first on the A&A frame) it seems that JB Weld does not bond to the white ankle pieces. Very strange because it made such a great strong bond on the black elements.

When I removed the pieces from the clamps before attaching the screws I started to do some minor cleanup work with some sandpaper and much to my surprise all of the white components slide right off of each other. It was amazing because the JB Weld did not bind to either side so now I have some nice flat JB Weld models (thin ones) of the ankle components.

So now it is time for more R2 Experiments (as my boys like to call it) so I have grabbed some other types of glues and epoxy. Next I located some scrap pieces and bonded them together (hopefully) tomorrow I will check on the status to see what works and what did not.

The adhesives I am experimenting with:
Gorilla Glue
Gorilla Glue 2 Part Epoxy
Amazing Goop
Permatex 84101 General Purpose Epoxy

Tomorrow should reveal to me what works and what does not. (I hope)

Leg #1 Assembly Part #3

I have a little bit of free time tonight so I decided to attach the White pieces of the A&A leg (#9, #11, #11a, #11b) using the same method. So i grabbed another pack of JB Weld (man this stuff goes fast), then I cleaned, clamped the parts.

I was not thinking when I put then together that I should have countersunk the screw holds on #11 before I mounted them so I am going to try to be careful and do it while it is in the clamps.

I do not want to do to much without my boys so I am going to stop here for the night.

Tomorrow (if I have time) I will un-clamp clean and inspect the parts. If all looks good I will be using 2" #12 wood screws to secure the pieces together even more.

Leg #1 Assembly Part #2

After letting the JB Weld sit all night I wanted to check out how everything set. It seems I am going to have a fair amount of sanding to do to smooth out the side from weld leakage.

After reading the assembly instructions (about 20 more times) I noticed that between part 8 and part 10 there was one less hole. So I decided to counter sink the hole and screw and weld #8 to #7.

I have not put on the ankle bracelet yet so I will not be installing #9, and it feels like the garage is above 100 degrees with 90% humidity so I think I will call it a day and buy a fan tomorrow.

Leg #1 Assembly Part #1

After the boys cleaned all the parts for the legs and I spent a few hours test fitting parts, removing them, making notes etc... It was time to assemble the first part of the a leg.

I went to the hardware store and bought some very small wood dowels to ensure the holes were lined up perfectly. Once I was sure everything would line up I applied some JB weld between each layer of the legs, and started to clamp them down.

Having never worked with JB Weld before I was not sure how much pressure I should place on the components or how much time I should wait so I placed more clamps on the legs, removed the dowels and decided to call it a night and check on the components in the morning.

Putting the boys to work

Now that we have a space where we can all work together and not get hurt by sharp pointy objects. I put the boys to work cleaning up the A&A parts with using a multi-step cleaning process of soapy water, dry, goo off, dry, soapy water, dry, rinse, dry.

They did really well until Zach got tired of cleaning at about 2:30. I can not complain they have been out here helping me since about 9am

Cleaning up the work space

The A&A parts came in this week and before we started to work on R2 we needed to clean up the work space aka my garage. We did not have enough room so the boys and I rearranged everything to make some room and then spread out our A&A parts

Package Arrived

I just received my A&A parts from R7Dude last night and I am very excited to start boxing them tonight.

I received Skins, Frame, Skirt, Legs, Feet for the styrene/plastic build. This model will serve as a prototype for each of the circuit boards I am going to design for the electronics.

Hopefully the fedex man will deliver my COM-8-A aluminum frame and my laser cut 300mm dome soon.