Week 7 now, hopefully it’s a little more organized than last week went.
Painting Update, again
Starting off this post, I’m happy to report that the acrylic paint I applied from last week has dried fully and successfully.
The gray acrylic paint is as dry as the brown oil paint is, in only a fraction of the time.
Of course, I need to thicken it quite a bit so that the streaks and primer aren’t visible, but this is good knowledge to have.
Furthermore, I have found that it is best to paint on the mod podge primer instead of just straight black paint or on to the board directly. The primer is effective in keeping the paint stuck on, and it doesn’t rub off on to my finger like the other two applications do.
I’ll apply some extra layers and see how it turns out, but we finally have a conclusion on this saga in sight.
Mind the Gap
Keeping to the theme of the XPS boards, something I failed to do last week was apply hole filler to the gap of the display board, which I will remedy now.
The seam is a lot smaller than I remember it being, and the hole filler putty I have is meant for much larger holes, but I’ll make it work. I opted to use the tip of a skewer to dip into the putty and fill the crack.
I had some trouble getting the putty to come off the skewer and stick to the foam, but a little bit of persistence changed that up. I also came to the realization that the putty wasn’t just going to fall into the seam on its own, so I opted to place some “little wormy dealies”, as Adam so lovingly refers to them as, along it, and then smoosh it down with another popsicle stick.
While it and the paint dry and set, I’ll do some more digging into cable connectors.
Forming a Connection
After multiple hours of research, chatting with ChatGPT, more research, daydreaming, and finally some experimentation, I discovered that the best option I have, if I don’t want to solder wires together directly, is to readjust my LED block design.
The problem I was facing is just the lack of space to work with. Without any changes, my only option is to have items be custom made for my needs, which I want to avoid. Thus meaning, I have to make some fundamental changes.
While throwing ideas at the wall, I ended up forming the idea of turning the LED on its side so its legs are facing to the left or right of the block, when looking from up top. This would then let me fit a basic 2 pin connector in the empty space.
To accommodate for the changes made in my prototype, I switched the LED leg separator to be on its side rather than facing upwards, which will give me the freedom to lay the LED on its side, while still being supported from underneath, and hopefully also keeping the legs from crossing over each other.
I also added a base to one side of the empty compartment so that I can create gaps in the sides of it without compromising the structural integrity of the block.
I’ll need to make some more tweaks, but a fuller prototype looks as such:
I worked to try and fit this contraption into Matoro’s empty sword, but I had some serious design flaws that stopped me. Notably, I had trouble getting the LED to stay connected to the connector while I was fitting it into the sword.
It frustrated me a great deal, so I opted to take a break from it for a bit. I have something cooking up in the background that will hopefully solve all of my problems here, but I’ll wait until I have tangible results to announce that.
Based? Based on what?
To pass the time, I decided to move back to the display base. I originally intended to paint it now, but I realized it would probably be a better idea to figure out how I’m going to keep the Toa positioned on it before that.
I brainstormed ideas for a bit, and I figured it would be easiest to make use of the pin holes that are on the Toa’s feet already. I came up with the idea of having a custom printed pin with a stopper on top of it that would connect through the foot and into a Lego pin connector that is under, or within, the foam. I also thought of making a web of Technic rods underneath the foam that the Toa would connect into, but I don’t believe it would be very stable.
I continued on the pin stopper idea and eventually thought of a design that was literally just a normal screw, which gave me the brilliant idea to try drilling a screw in. Attempting this with the small screws from the sword’s battery cover yielded acceptable results… Until I gave the slightest bit of tugging which ripped the screws out, as I expected.
To remedy this, I thought back to my small experience with theater set creation and home improvement. When you want to hang something up by means of screws in a wall, you either check to make sure you’re drilling into a stud, or you use an anchor.
I searched up to see if there were any screw anchors I could 3D print, but while browsing through them I suddenly thought of an alternative idea on how to keep the Toa in place.
Anyone who has bought a Figma or Nendoroid before will be familiar with the idea of having a transparent stand that connects to the figure to keep them from falling over. I thought about trying this idea, but I realized very quickly that it still leaves me with the same problem. How do I stabilize the stand? Screwing it in seems to be the only option.
So I continued looking for information about anchors.
That Ship Sailed
I searched to see if anyone had tried putting anchors in foam before, and I came across one blog post where someone was asking about just that. Unfortunately, most of the responses said that it just isn’t going to work, because foam doesn’t have enough structural integrity to keep even the anchors in place.
So it was back to brainstorming. Keeping with the screw idea, I came up with using a bolt and nut style design. My idea is to have bolts that run through the pin holes on the Inika’s feet that will then screw into a nut embedded into a plate underneath the foam.
My thought process for putting the nut into a larger plate is that it’ll add more surface area to prevent the nut from tearing a hole straight through the foam. Furthermore, I’m thinking that I can embed the nut design into a larger plastic plate so that there’s even less of a chance it’ll damage the foam. But before that, we need to try a prototype to make sure the idea works at all.
I used a free nut and bolt model and made the necessary modifications to each of them in Blender.
I ran out of time for this week, quite suddenly, might I add. Next week is Spring Break so it’ll actually be two weeks before I return to this project again. I’m looking forward to the refresh.