Monday, April 28, 2008

FT Papercraft Version 1: untextured



It's not the best model I've designed, but I'm happy with the way the joints came out. Test built using 20 lb printer paper with little confidence in structural integrity. Surprisingly, it holds well. I'll have to make revisions on the head and arms to make it more satisfactory. That is, assuming I can be bothered to. I'll do a new revision once I get more cardstock to test it out.

Scans of the parts. Pages marked where they should be printed in duplicate. Attempt if you like.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0yztw3mwwmc

Things of note, to conclude the month of April

Despite the dismay of the Mechatronics Lab staff, here's my motorcycle! Made of about 12 or so pieces of individual wire, the bike is relatively stiff and can stand on its own. Has a kickstand, mirrors, headlight, spinning wheels and heatsinks for an engine block. Saved from destruction by machining master Evitt, it now sits alongside the rest of my creations.


I've finally pained my m60e4. Acrylics were on sale this quarter, making a nice bottle of black acrylic only $2.16. Much better looking than the plain white version.


One of the side projects I've bothered to attempt was a paper model of a FT Robot.
I personally don't care about the model itself, but decided to do it for the sake of testing out a simple joint system using only cardstock. The testbuild proves stable using regular 20 lb paper, so it's going to be ungodly with 110 lb. There's apparently a paper model of it in existence already, but the creator refuses to share. Too bad mine's not going anywhere. If I ever get it done, I'll post templates here. The shoes right now are rather difficult to model using basic 3D geometry modeled by hand.

Other things of note: Unigraphics CAD files of Hotaru's leg structure have been rendered. They do you no good now, but someday, the rest of the critical structural components will be modeled for your viewing pleasure (and along that note, that means dimensions for each component are actually finalized and recorded).

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Miscellaneous reference posting, April 12, 2008

Given two vectors A and B with coords (x1,y1,z1) and (x2,y2,z2), the angle between these vectors from the origin is arcos((x1*x2 + y1*y2+ z1*z2)/||A||*||B||)

||A|| is the magnitude of A

Original formula is: Dot product of A and B = ||A||*||B||*cos(theta)
where theta is the angle between the vectors A and B

I'm sick of forgetting how to calculate the angle of a triangle inscribed inside a square prism. Not forgetting anymore.