The T60 power armor

What is being worked on right now
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dragonator
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Re: The T60 power armor

Post by dragonator »

Quick recap of the month of March (and some of April). Flu, sick, sick, flu, sick, unmotivated. The past month has been me doing almost nothing at all (hence the silence). I am finally feeling better, and I have been slowly picking up where I left.

I will start with the power armor for several reasons.
1. I feel like it;
2. I need to order stuff with long lead times;
3. It has an actual deadline.

I hope to have the design for the legs finished by the end of April. Then I will order all parts and make the parts that I can. In this time there will almost certainly be a lot of empty moments. I will fill these with HP45 time and some other random projects I need to work on (not all for Ytec).

I have had some progress on the power armor. I installed gas springs (3kg) on the feet. The toes gave too little resistance and walking felt like I was constantly falling forward. Also the toes were dragging on the ground when I walked. The gas springs give a nice bit of resistance. The also do not slam forward when I raise my foot. This would have been a problem with normal springs.

That is all for now, but more is coming.
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ezrec
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Re: The T60 power armor

Post by ezrec »

Nice to see your progress.

I have also been swamped by work, sickness, and ennui.

Hopefully I can dust off the TM-C600 mini-powderbed printer in the near future myself.

Got to get as many projects done as I can before July 21.

(At which time, I will lose a month or two to playing "No Man's Sky")
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Re: The T60 power armor

Post by dragonator »

The flue season is an amazing thing isn't it?

When we reach July 21, do I need to check every now and then to make sure you're still alive? Have you informed friends and family so they won't worry too much?
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Re: The T60 power armor

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Time for renders, the design for the legs is mostly done. All final changes will either come when I have printed up the design (like they always do) or when the changes will be made when I am making it.

A quick overview of the design that is currently defined. In the armor you can see a mockup of me. I am 192cm tall and built like a pencil, so I do not know how well this armor design will fit others, but for me it should be fine. The wooden frame seen here will be covered with panels later on in the project.
FOPA T60 WIP 01.JPG
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The feet have 2 motors. The first motor is in the middle of the foot and drives a winch. This winch winds up the belt and pulls my foot against the Power armor foot. The motor can be pulled from the from the winch as a form of E-release with the mechanism under the winch. The second motor is on the gear on the right, that pushes the locking pins up. This system has no backup.
FOPA T60 WIP 03.JPG
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All of the leg mechanisms can be seen below. On the bottom is a spiral winch. The render does not show it's real shape, but it has a variable diameter. This way it is strong at the ends, but fast in the middle. The winch winches a cable connected to the lower leg panel. The E-release for the lower leg panel is not shown. Moving up the knees have tiny pins that lock them up. Above the rack is the panel mover for the upper leg. It only pushes the upper leg panel shut, it is not connected to the panel, so that it does not interfere with the E-release. On the right is the pinion that pulls the back panel rack in. The pinion can be pulled from the pinion to release the panel.
FOPA T60 WIP 02.JPG
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Parts will be ordered tomorrow and tomorrow I will also design the nesting for the wooden parts.
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Re: The T60 power armor

Post by ezrec »

Every time I start doing mechanical design, I think "Damn, that's Tony Stark's superpower - effortless mechanical design skills!"
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Re: The T60 power armor

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But can you imagine how tedious that movie would have been if Tony Stark would engineer it at a normal pace. The Iron man suit would have taken years to even get a prototype.
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Re: The T60 power armor

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A question I get asked a lot is what happened to the power armor project. (WARNING, big post alert) This is what has happened:
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I lied, only a few people ask me about it. But I keep a record here, so here is the current status of the power armor. One of the feet has both motors in and the basics work. The other foot is still empty. One of the legs is mostly assembled, and has half of the motors in it. It is about 80% done. I still need switches so the leg and foot can operate automatically. All in all I think I need about a week or 2 to get the leg to open and close. After that I need to add the bindings so it latches around my leg.

Now the status, the power armor is currently parked. I am not working on it, favoring the HP45 and Oasis and the reason why is a bit complicated. TL;DR is this. I found a better way. I am still going to continue with it against my better judgement. At the bottom of this post is the gameplan for the Power armor.

Now for the reason. I will try to be quick about it. When I started this ludicrous project, I planned on making the power armor frame (https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mo ... 957383.jpg) in 2 pieces. The under frame, doing all the work, and the over frame looking like the power armor frame. At the end of the project I would make the panels to make it the T60 power armor (http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fal ... 1204105013). This way I could also go with panels missing, a cool look in the game. This plan quickly changed as making an accurate power armor frame open and close was really difficult.

I resorted to a backup and combined the 2 frames into a single frame that did only the function. On top of that frame would come the panels to make it look like a power armor. The frame would be made from poplar plywood, aluminium and 3D printed parts. Panels would come later. This version of the power armor is seen above. It has worked quite well, but making it takes a lot of time and accuracy is not amazing. This way is going to be difficult for me right now.

Thus far I have not mentioned how to make the panels of the T60. This is because I had to figure out how to do it. I had 3 basic options. 1: Foam armor making. A real art, but not something I am willing to start on for a full power armor. 2: vacu forming, for which I need to make the molds and tools first. After the first armor, I can make more. 3: 3D printing on a specialty 3D printer (a BIG 3D Printer).

For the past 2 months I have been investigating between 3D printing and vacu forming, with good reasons for both. Last month, right before I started with the HP45, the choice was made for 3D printing. Panels made either way are about as expensive. Because of the molds, the initial expenses are also about equal, and I fell back on what I do best. 3D printing. I need a 1000 euro 3D printer to make this idea work. A lot of money, but I already have half of the stuff as stock plus it is worth it to me.

Now the problem. I have had a challenging time making the frame with all mechanisms. A few months in and I have decided I am going to build a 3D printer capable of printing a leg in one piece for the panels, and add those panels to the frame...

Why am I not completely 3D printing the entire panel and frame in one piece. It will be stronger, probably lighter, capable of a lot more complexity and bring the amount of project phases to 1. This is why I stopped with the power armor. I needed to think.

Game plan:
  • I am going to finish the leg, if only to test mechanisms.
  • I am going to design the arms on a 3D printed basis. If they check out with strength, complexity, weight and feasibility, I will continue with:
  • designing a big (400x400x600+mm) 3D printer.
  • from there on out I will continue based on how it goes.
First I am going to work on Oasis though. I want to get a good deal of work done there. Do not expect any power armor related updates for at least a few months while I work on 3DP printing.
ezrec
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Re: The T60 power armor

Post by ezrec »

Thanks for the update - I'm very interested to see what your plans for a large-scale printer are.

Most of the 'successful' large scale printer designs are Deltas, so you may want to investigate that avenue.

Let me know if you need any assistance on Delta printer design or calibration.

Also, for large scale, consider pellet feed:

http://3dprintingindustry.com/news/univ ... ing-39696/
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Re: The T60 power armor

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My own experiences with deltas thus far has been problematic. All I remember about them is being a disaster to calibrate. If I do find the courage to work on one again, I will call upon your wisdom.

I was planning on a scaled Ultimaker like design. The bed would be supported by 3 guides and lead screws. The head moves with the nice Ultimaker mechanism.
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Re: The T60 power armor

Post by ezrec »

Delta calibration actually gets easier the larger they get, so long as your nozzle size scales also (I mean, I wouldn't try to do a 0.4mm nozzle on a three meter tall delta!).

The delta error is better than linear - sqrt(error in rod length^2 + error in tower position^2 + error in carriage position^2)

So long as you are using a nozzle aperture > 1mm and a similarly thick layer height, if you get the above three measurements withing a 1mm, you will be good to go.

Smaller deltas have a very rough time calibrating, since people are trying to do 0.1mm layer heights and that means that they have to have very precisely measured devices - or go through a lot of trail and error calibration.

The very nice part about large delta is that the carriages are equally sharing the load (mostly), and you can easily add counter weighting to the carriages so that you can use smaller steppers.

... that said ...

If I was doing a large format Cartesian printer, I would use a core-xy based XY (fixed mounting) with a Z plate that is under the XY plane, and is lifted by an automotive screw jack attached to a stepper motor (a small bit of math needed for rotations <-> Z movement, due to the scissor angle, but not hard).
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