Monday, September 16, 2013


Here is how the mechanism looks and how it works so far!



As you can see, we had only enough time after soldering the final wires to the board to tape it into position for demonstration. I will just create a housing for the electronics sometime next week after getting back from NY.

For right now, there is only one lock set on the left side of the calf as you see here. However, with both sides locked there won't be any play when force is applied pulling apart. Awesome work so far from our computer and electronics engineers on the team! :)


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Well, we were able to successfully display at the Mini Maker Faire on Saturday! The lock mechanism was soldered just in time and it worked to demonstrate an auto locking function. Here are some pics from the start of that day. Five of the eight of us showed up for the event, which was good because we had to address the huge amount of people coming to ask questions. Kevin also showed up later on (who is working on programming a voice command "e-butler" system). I will take some more pics of the finished boot tomorrow, as I had no time to do so this past week in cramming in prints and assembly.

Setup time at the little 10x10 booth.



Matt and his girlfriend programming the gauntlet control for display.


I demonstrated the locking and movement of the boot all day, so my arms got red sun burnt!


I let kids try on the V1 boot and walk around in it. They were so excited!



The team, (minus Kevin who showed up later).


Monday, September 9, 2013

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Here are some pics to show the scale of the boot, which actually looks much smaller than it is in my hands or on my leg! I am 6" 1" and the top comes up closer to my knee joint.

Yea I look tired, its been early mornings and late nights with two jobs and this project.


Off to get some good sleeeep...
Earlier today I was able to sand and weld the calf together (looks somewhat rough from slurry). Tonight I decided to just try out the calf adhered to the shin with the dampeners installed. It works great! I have yet to CNC the slider arms for the calf and still have to get the complete circuit for the lock, which I also completed the pin and housing for earlier today.


Taking a full step with articulation! 


Here are the installed dampeners which give a much more rigid motion to the shin.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Some people may consider creating the 3D prototype for this suit is a waste of time.

Well, check this out! Lets just go ahead and imagine Titanium replacing any of the plastic I design!

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/05/elon-musk-shows-off-his-crazy-iron-man-inspired-3d-modeling-setup/

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Just this afternoon, I finished printing out the last piece to the calf plate! I just need to work on sanding down the warpage from the mid-calf prints as they warped on the platform, before welding the calf together. I will work on getting it to fit together much more seamlessly with the shin.



Here you can see the mid-calf pieces are warped from where they were on the platform and their combined warping made the gap you can see here. That will be done away with when I sand both pieces flat on that seam.
Yaaaay! Now onto getting the mechanics installed!







Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Printing out the calf since yesterday afternoon, when another spool of plastic came in. Here are a couple pics of newer pieces. The section between the mid calf is printing out today.

The two mid calf pieces here are taped inside on the seam but fit flawlessly onto the shin!

As usual, a bit of cracking happens and needs to be filled in. Beside you can see the temporary piston for the shin to operate with the calf. Hopefully I could get ahold of some linear actuators if pneumatics is less than satisfactory. 

The mid section there is actually going to set the lower calf down a bit further but it is just balanced on the shin.

Sized and screwed in the heel joint here. it glides perfectly with the axis being the outside of the heel.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Hope everyone's Labor Day weekend was great! I worked some on creating these parts yesterday. Just need to thread the metal shaft to screw into the printed parts on the larger dampener/ pneumatic piston.

I printed the pneumatic piston parts last night and just need to scale them up a bit and reprint.

If we decide to create pneumatics on this peice I can redesign the plunger and how the air would force into the chamber.
20x60 Banner ready for the Maker Faire, along with the poster of the boot and a poster of the actual MK 42 suit.