OK!, It seems that all is working ok now!
If you find anything thats not right, please email us!
March 2008 ( addition at the bottom! )
Hello all!
Ok, We know its now March, but we hope you had a joyous holiday season & Happy New Year!
As always, our team has been been working hard on designing and making parts. The robots are really coming on now, a very recognizable image so far.
Terry has been spending all his available time, on making the track units, start to come to life. We have the track side plates done,and the top & rear idler rollers. The drive chain system is now in production. Pictures of this work can be seen on the Update Gallery Page. There has been so much for Terry to make on these, especially for 3 robots - I would say over 200 parts, that totals well over 1000 holes to be drilled & countersunk and or tapped!
During this time, Martin has been on a business trip in Morroco, something to do with one of the projects his employer has been working on, so he has not been about much recently.
While Terry has been making the track unit components, Simon, on the other hand, has been working on the other end of the robot. He has started to work on the Head. The bottom chassis has been prototyped, and is looking pretty smart considering it was `chucked together` just to see if we could make it! Now that we know it can be made, the designs of the head chassis are being finalised, and then work will be done on the rest of the head.
We plan to have ALL the features of J5 head in there. Eye movement, eyelids, iris, red & white lights, air vents, all the antennas and microphones. The eye-pop feature is also being explored to see how it can be fitted into the original head's design. Simon has been working hard on ideas for a long while now to use his VR headset to control movements on the head. Ok, thats a LONG WAY OFF for now, but it does involve putting a pair of camera's in the head somewhere.
The arms have also been looked at. Terry has made a mock-up of the elbow mechanism. Once we are happy, pictures will follow in later updates.
Over the last few months our team has also upgraded our machining equipment and tooling to include a brand new, much larger Milling Machine with powerfeed that was generously purchased by Martin Pinner. It became painfully obvious to all of us that my old much smaller baby milling machine was not capable of producing the larger of the parts we needed for J5. Out-sourcing the machining was also out of the question due to the extremely high cost of a low parts run and required precision tolerances of the entire assembly. Fabrication of all of these parts and assemblies also requires designing and fabricating many one of a kind custom setup jigs.
Terry will be having some required time off over the next month or two, as his work will be getting more hectic, because he is moving location. His new home will have a Johnny Five workshop area that is over 3 times larger than our current facility, so he will be able to work on and test all of our robots without tripping over parts of J5!
It's estimated that its going to take about 6-8 weeks before Terry is fully up and running again with production.
We wish Terry the Best of Luck in a smooth move, so that he can get manufacturing again as soon as possible!
"Another note, Simon has got engaged to his girlfriend, Helen. They have been together since they met at work, when Helen started her work placement year from university, back in September 2005. As a significant month, the wedding is planned for September in 2009. We wish them both the best of luck & congratulations.
News on Simon & Helens Wedding - UPDATE!
The wedding has been moved forward from September 2009, to April 2009. Although September was described as a significant month, the venue chosen for the wedding party was not available then, but only April was available in their busy diary. So 6 months was taken off the preperation time, but things are going very well!.
On a `silly` co-incidental note.... with out knowing it at the time of booking it; the date of the wedding is now exactly 5 years to the DAY from when Terry started his visit to Eric Allard!
And one more thing! - we PROMISE that the next update will be here by mid September - We have BIG news to share!
Thanks,
The Team;
Simon Marston
Martin Pinner
Terry Andrews Jr.
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