October 6: I’ve been building the wheel mounts. I’ve been puzzling about what to do all week. I went over to Home Depot to look around. I was considering (1) using a pipe flange, and (2) using a thick cardboard tube or sleeve. After talking to a great plumbing sales person there I got four 1″x6″ pipes (he called them nipples) and four 1″ flanges. When I got home I inserted a pipe/flange combo into each wheel. Then slide the pipe over the oak dowel and I’ve drilled hole in the non-flange end to bolt to the oak axle. I’ll tell you more tomorrow once I’ve attached them to the axles.
October 8, 2007
Car Construction 4
September 30: Engineering problem 1 (band slippage) I think is solved. I added a curved metal strip across all the bands.
Car Construction 3
September 29: I completed the car’s final assembly. The results of which are: Car serial number #2 rolled off the assembly line.
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The rubber bands slip on the rear axle. I’m considering (1) adding six small 1/4″ diameter dowels, probably 1″ long) and then looping each rubber band on one of them. However, the torque on this dowel pin might either damage the band or pop out of the axle. Another idea would be (2) six small rectangular slots in the axle, one for each band. How I’d cut these would be a puzzle (maybe with my router from each side). A 1/4″ dowel would restrict the bands from pulling back through. That would definitely work, but would the axle now be too weak.
The wheels and my mounting system is a total failure. The wheels wobbed. Also the torque on the two double-thickness cardboard tabbed flange pieces caused them to rip. I think the wheels are too thin and should be made much thicker (back to the cardboard saw and the Elmers glue gallon jug). I might have to glue the wheels to the axle, but I would like to still allow them to be removed.
Car Construction 2
September 23: Gluing is underway. I’m using a 2″ paint brush to apply the glue liberally and then weights or clamps to hold the pieces together. I am doing all this work in my garage. I’ve used up 1/3 gallon of glue so far and I have yet to start the chair. All other pieces are glued together though.
Car Construction 1
From September 17-22: I went out and bought cardboard to construct a big (human rideable) amazing rubber band car. There is a nearby company named Eco Box that sells cardboard in double thickness 4’x8′ sheets. I bought 10 sheets, then we strapped them my car roof with Kathy’s help, and drove them home. The next night I created a plywood template of the chair.
September 24, 2007
Amazing Rubber Band Cars
Kathy’s college roommate’s, Annelle’s, husband, Mike, has published a book: Amazing Rubber Band Cars.
September 23, 2007
6085: Black Monarch’s Castle
I sorted, and inventoried the 6085 Black Monarch’s Castle.
Image courtesy of brickset.com
September 21, 2007
Bought a Lego Mindstorm NXT
Today finally I won the bid on a Lego Mindstorm NXT robotic system on eBay.
September 17, 2007
MiniPOV3
I week or so ago I bought a MiniPOV3 from Make magazine, Makezine. Yesterday I purchased a Weller WLC100 soldering iron, a Panavise Jr Model 201, a Z-TECH Helping Hands with Magnifier Model 53-003, some 60/40 rosin core solder and 5 ft. of .075 inch solder wick from Frys electronics.
MiniPOV3 circuit board in vise.
September 15, 2007
Weekend busys
Well I’m trying to keep myself busier on weekends.
I did my 7 mile morning run with my running class. I ran with a good crowd including Chris, Jay, Robert, Celeste, and Glenn. We chatted all the way which was nice. This class and my running continues until next February’s Austin Marathon. Wish me luck. I need it.
After arriving home I cleaned-up and then I added 1GB of RDRAM to my son Matthew’s old Dell Dimension 8100. I had purchased this memory on e-Bay last week. The memory was not cheap, but the machine is a 1.3 GHz Pentium 4 which is better than my old 800 MHz AMD Athlon that I had disk nuked a week or so ago. Next I installed Linux Fedora 7 on it, and I installed some work things (Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit) on it too. Now it’s ready to go and with the additional memory the machine is quite snappy so it was a worthwhile purchase.
I again continued to reduce Lego entropy. Earlier this week I sorted, and inventoried the 8854 Power Crane.
Image courtesy of brickset.com
Then I sorted the hundreds of miscellaneous parts (non-blocks or plates) into groups and put them into baggies. I really need several containers with little divided sections.
This might look messy and totally disorganized, but actually it isnt’t. Each bunch is a group of the same type of piece regardless of their color
Update: My friend Larry P. told me that you can get Lego blocks from bricklink.com. The site says “BrickLink.com is a premium venue for individuals and businesses from all around the world to buy and sell new, used and vintage LEGO® through fixed price and auction services.”