Hi all,
Am between engine projects at the moment, and getting other things done around the house and some travelling in. The shop elves apparently are bored with that, and were surfing around the model engineering sites. They came across this amazing sculpture by Mark Ho over on the Craftsmanship Museum web site:
https://craftsmanshipmuseum.com/artisan/mark-ho/
which is a truly stupendous bit of machining - well worth reading the story over on that page.
The elves got the idea of trying out something similar if a bit simpler, and got into my Fusion CAD app and started drawing up an ElfBot, starting with probably the most complex bit, the hands with articulated fingers. I realized what they were doing when they kept coming over and measuring my fingers and seeing how all the joints work. Kinda hard to miss, especially when they tried to dis-assemble one!
They scaled it down to make a 1/3rd size bot.
While I was off doing other projects around the house, they got started with some machining...
They found the little finger clamp jig that I had made for machining the track segments on the Lombard and Marion models, and re-purposed it into a holding clamp for making the finger sections.
Two seizes of hex bar got used for the large and small fingers sections, slotted at one end and tabs at the other end, then drilled/threaded for 1-72 hinge pins.
Here is part of the pile of pieces accumulated in Dr FrankenElves Lab - they were kind enough to make up parts for two ElfBots, one for them, one for me
There will be a ball joint at the wrist...
Assembly has started, using the little model vise that I made a while back (from the Martin Models casting set, finally got it mounted on a wood base so it can be clamped to the bench)
So far so good! Should be a fun side project until work begins on the Ransome Tree Feller - been plotting out steps on machining the cylinder for that lately...
Chris
