It has been a long, productive, long, very long weekend! I took advantage of the long President's Day weekend and loaded up the Jazzy 1113 Power Chair in the very tiny Scion xA, bound for the home of my friends Aaron and Michele. (Thank you very much for the great time) I realized early on I'd have to try and get Aaron in on the design of the Dalek. His camaraderie, skill set and mig welder (As I expected) have proven absolutely indispensable. In short, from this past Friday night until early this afternoon, we lived in Aaron's garage, burning our respective candles at both ends. After a hard work week's worth of hours in a single weekend, we have made an incredible step forward in the build. It's epic really, as you're about to see. So, let me elaborate upon what we did this weekend by posting a series of pictures and giving you the nickel tour.
Here is where we begin. A trip to Home Depot, a lot of careful measuring and some holes placed to allow the as yet to be designed frame to rest against the fender bottom while allowing the wheels to contact the ground and roll freely. I'd like to note that such is my experience that at this point I was already excited to see the build beginning to resemble a Dalek. And also a startled Tiki Mask.
This is an early picture of the angle steel frame, which Aaron welded using some leftover stock he had in the garage. These are the wheels and motors from the Jazzy. The only difference is that we mounted them upside down for additional ground clearance. We didn't want to build a Dalek with a 1 foot clearance. They aren't classically "off-roaders".
In order to show you what most of our time was spent doing, I'm putting this one up here. Each piece of the frame was cut to length and placed one at a time. We just kept plugging away at it, and by the end of the first day, we had a little something like this:
This picture shows the completed base frame. It's a very simple and very effective design and I give credit to Aaron for putting it together on the fly and coming up with a killer result! We can stand and bounce on it without any trouble. If it will hold up to the abuse we dealt during the build, it will do just fine when cruising about looking for inferior beings to exterminate. The only modification to the wooden base that we made was to widen the wheel holes considerably to allow for them to flex and to keep them from rubbing.
Here is a picture of Aaron on one of our many test drives during the design and building process. We had yet to fasten the wooden bottom firmly to the frame and it dragged a bit, but once we tightened everything down, it ran like a champ.
I must take a moment to note that the voice modulator was also completed this weekend and the Dalek's first words were spoken. The best part about this experience is that the very first thing that my Dalek ever did vocally was to sing "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who. This was completely unintentional, but we realized the next day just how appropriate the song was for a Dalek to sing. Voice clips of the Dalek in its true voice (meaning me speaking through the box) are forthcoming. As soon as I can get a good speaker/microphone setup we're in business. I also have a clip of the Dalek's very first "Exterminate!" but I need to clean up the clip. Soon, though!
I'll jump ahead to the completed fender. I say completed, but what I mean is, all the pieces are cut and nailed/glued into place. There is a lot of body filler and sanding to come here as well as a rubber overlay. The observant will notice that we had to alter the front supports for the pivot wheel. We were going to run into issues with the skirt if we didn't. At this point, the wood work was done and we got started on the portion of the project that would take the rest of the time. The skirt skeleton:
Here you can see the beginnings of the skeleton base. We were moving along, cutting each piece to length and making it fit just inside the footprint of the actual skirt measurements. The idea is to bolt the panels onto this frame and eliminate a lot of need for bulky internal wooden supports as dictated by the official plans. As a result, I believe we will definitely have a lot more breathing room inside.
This is a shot of the skeleton beginning to take shape. We were very particular as we went along to make sure that the angles of the ribs were correct. If you get this part of the Dalek right, not only is the rest easier, but if this part isn't right, then it doesn't really look like a true Dalek and you end up with an approximation. Needless to say we were careful. As we went on, we fell into a pretty good rhythm, with Aaron on the ground welding and marking pieces of steel, and then I'd cut them to length and grind edges. Before it was over, we were looking like a pair of seasoned Dalek builders. Just ask Aaron's wife. She was absolutely blown away by our skill. Yeah. Sure she was. ;)
And here you have it. This is a shot that I took just before I left Columbus. The skeletal frame even has a removable panel for accessing internal electronics and the like. Initially it was for entry as well, but we discovered that it was quite fast and easy to step over the back and onto the seat to enter, and a little troublesome to work the wing nuts from the inside.
So you can see that we accomplished a lot of work for one weekend. I'll be adding everything up and updating the hours along with linking
Aaron's gallery of the weekend. Everything went very well. I'll be making another trip to Columbus again before too long to do another (shorter) weekend with Aaron. He's every bit as excited about the project as I am so he's agreed to work with me some more on it. We work pretty well together and it was demonstrated more than once this weekend that two heads are better than one. The only big issue this weekend was that I couldn't fit the completed portion of the Dalek into my car. I should have seen that coming, but there you have it. I had to leave it in their garage, and I'm now considering how best to transport a project that is bigger than the back seat of your car. I'm looking at trailers and hitches and hoping to find a deal. As many accommodations as have to be made for the Dalek, though, I'm still very much looking forward to continuing and finishing. I absolutely can't wait to unveil him this summer.
More to come!
-Scionic
