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.
