Monday, March 30, 2020

SBS - Six Leg Robot - Installment 1




Six Leg Robot / Walker Step – by – step (SBS)

The Kit

The kit was digitally sculpted by an amazing artist and friend, Miguel Guerrero.  You can find this and other fantastical creations at his site, La Bestia Studio.  Full disclosure, this kit was donated by him for me to paint and is actually seen on his site and may still make the rounds with him at his show booths.  Please take some time and visit his wonderful site and check out all his creative offerings.  There’s sure to be something there to catch your eye!
Clean Up and Prep

This kit comes in 7 pieces cast in a light grey resin.  The body and six legs are sturdy and clean with little to no flash.  There are minimal, and sometimes easy to miss, seams running up the legs and around the body, but mild sanding and scraping should take care of those


fig.1: 7 major pieces which are cleanly cast and quite robust.
A word of warning, fine resin dust is a health hazard so practice caution by using filtered masks, good ventilation and “wet sanding” while cleaning the resin pieces.  I kept a bowl of water near me and used emery paper dipped in the water to confine the dust.  I wore Nitrile gloves as the fine dust can be a skin irritant.  If you experience any reactions while working with the resin, stop and contact your physician.
            Each leg comes with a pyramidal key at the head of the leg that fits snuggly into one of the 6 holes at the base of the body.  I decided to pin each of the legs for extra strength and stability as I knew I would be handling the model quite a bit during the painting stages.  I had some small nails at hand which I used as the pins.  After cutting off the heads of the nails, I measured the diameter of the shaft and picked a drill bit slightly larger.  I used a twist drill and hand drilled holes into both the leg keys and the body receiving holes, and then test fit the nails.  I was allowed some wiggle room by using a slightly larger diameter drill bit, so the placement of the holes weren’t so critical.  After test fitting all the legs to determine which leg fits where, I proceeded to mark the holes and legs so I could easily put everything back together.


fig.2: Prep work for pinning the legs to the body
            One thing that came up was that all six legs do not sit evenly on a flat surface.  If you want all six legs to touch the ground plane then additional tweaks must be made at the top of each leg.  I suggest first gluing the two opposing central legs, then decide the pitch of the overall model.  Adjust each leg by scraping and slicing the leg’s mating surface, little by little, until you get the legs comfortably touching the ground.  Sanding the foot pads against a flat piece of sandpaper will also help to ground the robot.  I actually liked the look of the robot rearing up so I left everything as is, except for sanding the foot pads that touched the ground. 


fig.3: The model with its legs in place. Note the raised front legs. Introducing "Scale Guy"!

That's it for today.  More to follow soon.