New equipment

The guys get a delivery on the moonbase.

"How's the new robot coming along?" enquires Tim
"Slowly," replies Carl, the mechanic.  "It might help if the instructions weren't in several different languages!"

1 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

"This thing has to be built as soon as possible, Carl.  We need some help with heavy lifting in the cargo bay."

2 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

Carl sighs and gets back to work.  "Ok, part six goes into part B.  That looks like a foot...  This is going to take hours!"

3 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

Fantastic stuff Peter! looks like the boys have their work cut out, Looking forward to seeing the finished robot?

I’m really liking the picture story Peter, hope we see more of this.

Great pics ... love the moon base ...

Nice photos and diorama, it's like Space 1999, very cool

Carl makes slow but stead progress on the droid...

5 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

6 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

7 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

Pilot Tim Speak and Six-Five-Six, the new droid.

8 by Pete Rodgers, on Flickr

I really liked the pictures of Carl putting together the droid and getting it working. Hope we see pictures of the droid working in the cargo bay.

Fantastic stuff Peter! loving the new robot!

I like a bit of robot, it stems back to "Lost In Space" and "Forbidden Planet", nice android and comic strip, Pete, the background looks great!. Your android looks like it's made of metal?:



I still haven't taken any pictures of my robots, I had forgotten about them.

Cool stuff!

Here's a bit of info on the robot.  It's a Stikfas 14" promotional figure:

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Stikfas, for those who have never heard of them, are 3" to 4" plastic figures which have ball joins connecting the limbs together.  They produced a limited run of 14" figures in black and bronze for shop window displays, etc.  I think there were only a thousand of each large figure produced.  I saw one cheap on eBay and had to have it.  I used to have some of the little figures but they've gone missing, possibly sold by accident at a car boot, or lost during the house move a couple of years ago.

I think the figure is awesome, but it does have some downsides.  The plastic it's made from is very brittle, and snapping the balls into their sockets is quite difficult without cracking the plastic around them.  I've no idea what the company was thinking of when they were produced and the quality control must have been non-existent.  I broke both ankles while building the figure, but managed to glue them so it shouldn't be noticeable most of the time. One ankle is unfortunately glued solid so it can't bend at all.  The other joints I took a different route - I used a small hand drill to widen the sockets so the balls would slip in easier, but tight enough to give enough friction so the figure would still stand up.  This took a couple of hours in total, but worth it.  The picture below shows the arms during the process.

clivvers wrote:

I like a bit of robot, it stems back to "Lost In Space" and "Forbidden Planet", nice android and comic strip, Pete, the background looks great!. Your android looks like it's made of metal?:

The figure is plastic with a sort of metallic bronze paint on it, which seems to come off very easily.  I'm not really worried about this though - if the paint gets rubbed off it would add to the 'worn out' look of a second hand droid for rough work in a moonbase cargo bay!

If I had a 3D printer I'd be making a few of these as a group of binary load lifters or something...!

Next time how about heating up the female joints with a hairdryer, then smear a thin bit of washing up liquid to the male ball joint before inserting, then rinse the joint under warm water to remove the liquid ?

Good post Pete, very nice robots. One day we'll all have 3D printers, I'm already saving for an industrial one to print out a new home lol!

clivvers wrote:

Next time how about heating up the female joints with a hairdryer, then smear a thin bit of washing up liquid to the male ball joint before inserting, then rinse the joint under warm water to remove the liquid ?

Good post Pete, very nice robots. One day we'll all have 3D printers, I'm already saving for an industrial one to print out a new home lol!

Somehow I don't think it's the right type of plastic to heat them up, but I doubt there'd be a next time - the other 14" figures I've seen for sale are well over £100, and I paid less than £20 for mine including postage!  They're that rare that I've not found anything on Google about putting them together apart from a few reviews on Amazon about their figures cracking when they tried to build them, and those were a few years ago.  I wonder how rare my built up figure really is?  If only a thousand were made, and most of them are still in pieces in their display boxes with people too scared to put them together after spending a lot of money on them...?

Pete,

Yes definitely rare, I've never seen them about, I would love to own one. It's such a shame about the plastic cracking when putting them together, the manufacturers appear to have used the wrong type of plastic (brittle). I'm surprised that Airfix/Hornby never went down the plastic model robot kit avenue, there's plenty of robot/Sci-fi fans out here, including me. I was always looking out for robots on my usual Sunday morning hunts, found some biggies in the past for pennies and they were, or are still available in the Argos catalogue in a new colour...

Back to your robot, it's worrying that one day, biological soldiers on the battlefield and the Police will be replaced by these type of robots, probably built by Honda and BMW, the timeline will be about 30 years time from now, so Robocop, Robosoldier, Robopostman/Woman and Robodog will become reality, I dread the thought of a Robot version of a traffic warden.. rants and threats from illegally parked drivers can be uploaded to the Magistrates court database in real time LOL!

How did you manage that whopper sized avatar? it's neat!

The Future Is Bright, The Future Is MAM.

Not sure why my avatar picture is so big! I just uploaded the picture but I didn't actually know what size it was.

As for all the robots taking over jobs, I think we humans have a few years left yet. I think AI won't be good enough for a lot of general purpose jobs for a long time. They'll probably be sweeping the streets in a few years but I doubt we'll ever see robot cops for a while.

Very nice bot!

You all know that feeling - you've spent hours putting together that new droid, start tidying up and find a nut and bolt!  Where should it go?  Is it a spare?!



And then you realise you also didn't turn off the droids' shadow training mode!

lets be thankful he wasn't scratching his butt!

It's a Ikea robot

Great pics!

My space crew is slowly growing!  Got another astronaut from eBay in the post yesterday.  Wife says that's all I'm allowed to buy this year though!!  

peterodgers wrote:

My space crew is slowly growing!  Got another astronaut from eBay in the post yesterday.  Wife says that's all I'm allowed to buy this year though!!  

It’s spacetastic that your space crew is slowly growing . Awwwwww your Wife says that's all your allowed to buy this year though!! That’s harsh , you could always try and sneak them in.