Material of Omnizero's Body?

[Ray]

Hi,

Omnizero's body may be made from resin using tools of silicon and clay.
Here I found a famous "Iron Man 28" designed from Vstone (Omnizero's design home),

here is the company of co-operation:
http://www.robo-creation.com/trial.html

I found it was first made of clay model and then a silicon mask and finally fill the mask with resin. (Material current used in KHR2 ---- hard and light weight )

[limor]

Cool link!

BTW: Although I haven't seen anyone on this forum doing it, you can build your custom plastic parts by using carbon-fiber / fiberglass or through vacuum forming. (google).

[inaki]

Just one question: how they make the very first model ? I mean, they use a model as a matrix for making plastic parts, but how they make the model in first place ? Is it a manual carving process or what ?

[Robo1]

they probably make it out of clay by hand. it would be the easied way. you could also make it using a 3D prototyping machine(3D printer) and a CAD file.

bren

[inaki]

In the picture above it seems the first model is made of some kind of hard paste and looks too perfect to have been made by hand.

On the other hand, if they use a 3D prototyping machine it would fall out of reach for most of us !

If I am not wrong there is some kind of plastic that can be modelled by hand and dries with heat. I have seen this in art schools although I dont remember the name of this material.

[Joe]

If you go to Omnizero's web site, you can see that the builder uses a rapid prototyping machine to make his plastic parts.

However, I believe the clay Iron Man model shown above really was sculpted by hand. Yes, professional sculptors really are that good!

[Ray]

Some motion of this "Iron man 28"

http://www.vstone.co.jp/top/products/ro ... about.html


I think this type of pastic (resin) body is the trend of future robot in the robo-one

[buenodiablo]

What is Omnizeros website?

[Joe]

What is Omnizeros website?

Sorry, should have included that. http://www.1mm.jp/m/robo.html

You can use something like Google Language Tools to translate this to your preferred language (if that's not Japanese!).

If you go to the 2006-06-04 entry, you can see Maeda-san making parts with a "laminating type RP [rapid prototyping] device".

Best,
- Joe

[Joe]

I think this type of pastic (resin) body is the trend of future robot in the robo-one

It's not easy to do at home, though. You need a good mold, and especially if you want the resin parts to be not just coverings but also structural support, this can be quite difficult to achieve.

I bet that the cost of rapid-prototyping services will come down, to the point where anybody willing to shell out $500 for servos will be able to shell out another $500 for custom plastic parts made according to their CAD spec.

Best,
- Joe

[Rblackmore]

The black parts look like carbon fiber to me. In order to cast resin or whatever type of plastic parts, you first need a "plug" or original part, and then you can use it for a positive mold, or make a negative mold from a positive mold. Then, you can either use a liquid plastic, or you can lay up a composite on it, or even use a vacuum table to vacuum form a composite or sheet plastic. Often, clay is used to make the original, or pour foam thats been carved into shape.

[Denise17]

they probably make it out of clay by hand. it would be the easied way. you could also make it using a 3D prototyping machine(3D printer) and a CAD file.

bren

Really? By the way, I just want to applaud my gratitude to you for sharing this information to us.
I am always hoping that this will not be the last post that I could be read written by you.



_________________
Rapid Prototyping

[Robo1]

Hi I'm still around. I have a fall time job designing fall size humanoids for a BIG multinational

So haven't had time to play with my own bot in a couple of months. Thinking about building a new one but I can't decide what size to build it 30cm or 90cm as the one I work in at works 160cm I might just make a fall size one.

Bren

[Mr Flibble]

Robo1: "designing full size humanoids"



Wow very cool! ... Sounds like you have a dream job there! ... do you have any photos or even a video?!

As for the question of making the body, the clay approach does seem the easiest, although its not exactly easy as each solution seems to be a lot of work and time. I've been looking into the home made CNC approach for a long time, but its a considerable amount of work and even then modeling the object on a computer isn't as easy as it at first appears. So the clay approach seems far less overall work.

As for that smooth finish look on the clay, it depends on the clay type. If its the air drying type, after modeling it and leaving it to dry, the artist can sand it down to get very good finishes on it, with some work. Thats probably the easiest solution. Artists seem to have many techniques to learn to work clay in different ways. For example, with wet clay, its possible to just smooth it simply with water on your fingers to blur out ruff bits. You can also try smoothing each bit of it slowly through a very thin plastic sheet (like cling film) as you move the sheet around the object, but the dry clay and sanding it approach is easiest.

Here's an amazing site, with some amazing looking robots. The Android 10 made with polymorph is very impressive and the full size Iron Man head prototype is made out of clay.
http://www.xrobots.co.uk/

[Robo1]

A link to one of the robots we have in the lab. The one I work on is in the early stage and I can't publish any photos or videos of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_Lir-bK8A

Bren