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| 28 Feb 2005 | |
|---|---|
| - Earle and Intern Matt Freund wallpaper 300 sqft, a bit over half of the rec room.
- Reclaimed the Panzer from the mud/lake that has held it prisoner for over a week. - Two more grinders arrive that were on backorder. - Earle and Intern Matt Freund finish the majority of the wallpapering left in the rec room. | |
| 27 Feb 2005 | |
| - A team effort installs 132 sqft of ceiling in the barracks. This leaves about 40 sqft to go.
- Earle, John, and Intern Matt Freund finish up the barracks roof drywall. - Intern Matt Freund does touchup on the maint bay roofs while the rest of the team concentrates on resolving automotive woes. - Intern Matt Freund cleans and prepares the rec room for wallpapering while Earle and Izumi purchase materials. - Pete reports he has designed, implemented and tested to read the A2D channels on the RVU, and has the temperature sensor mostly working. New parts are on order to finish up the last of the component mounting. - Earle and Intern Matt Freund begin wallpapering in the rec room. | |
| 26 Feb 2005 | |
| - Justin Luecke arrives, and fixes the waterline to the MCF.
- A Team effort raises the roof completion on the maint bays out to the fourth bay. - John adds ceiling support braces while Izumi and Intern Matt Freund install a large storage shelf. - A team effort installs 88 sqft of ceiling in the barracks. | |
| 25 Feb 2005 | |
| - Izumi arrives, and joins Earle, John, and Intern Matt Freund installing another 72 sqft of ceiling in the barracks. | |
| 24 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle, John, and Intern Matt Freund install the first 72 sqft of roof in the barracks. | |
| 23 Feb 2005 | |
| - Interns Matt Freund and Jeremy Hardwick assist John and Earle in completing all but the last 30% of the maint bay roofs.
- Intern Jeremy Hardwick returns to Indiana. - John, and Intern Matt Freund find homes for new tools, and safety equipment, respectively and hook up the replacement stereo. | |
| 22 Feb 2005 | |
| - Intern Jeremy Hardwick arrives from Indiana to tour the facility.
- Intern Matt Freund arrives from Canada for his stay at the MCF. - Visitor Timothy King visits the facility. - An muddy day of Labor from Intern Ryan Marlow, Earle, and Izumi moves the Panzer slightly closer to dry land. | |
| 21 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle, Vernon, Intern Ryan Marlow and Izumi take turns trenching out the lake around the BMW, and return home, joining John to finish up some patchwork on the maint bay roofs. | |
| 20 Feb 2005 | |
| - A team effort recovers enough wood to finish all five maint bay roofs.
- Earle and Intern Ryan Marlow plant some ornamental horticulture. - Izumi and Will weld the support bars for the torso rotation plate onto the support box. - In the process of doing cleanup, we managed to stick Ryan's truck and the BMW in the mud. For a desert, we seem to be getting a lot of rain. | |
| 19 Feb 2005 | |
| - Intern Justin Luecke arrives and cuts templates for his cockpit layout, finishing with proper marching orders for the mockup to be completed next week.
- Vernon starts a long day with a mad rush to set his office back straight, and wires the first and second floors into the punchdown panel. Not satisfied with 24 ports of connectivity, Vernon brings the B network online. The B network is a physically separate, unhackable network, that will be used for internal development as well as hosting the test networks that will be used on the mech. - John helps clean and organize with Vern and is eventually is assisted by Intern Justin Luecke in finishing off more of the maint bay roofs, the rain and cold be damned. - Earle pitches in his lunch hour to square off the roof, and apply sound seals to the doors facing the mech bay. If you close all the doors behind you, and end up in Vern's office, the computer fans almost drown out the stereo, so long as you do not have it above '3.' - Heidi skates out of hard labor by running errands all day (including mailing two CDs of content to the fine folks who may get us on the Terminator Special Edition DVD). - Ryan arrives for the night shift, and prints a mockup flier, and helps get the conference room's projection system online. Now that we have a portable display setup, we can take our presentation anywhere space allows. - Will and Izumi start the day out of the rain and stay there, maxing out the welder doing multipass re-welds on all the brackets and braces for the swayrails and caster wheel boxes. They finish off welding up a new design change from Earle, which makes the swayrails less permanent and more maneuverable. - Vern finishes the day by upgrading the fileserver (40 more gigs, and 768mb of ram), bringing another workstation online, and making fried rice to serve 10. | |
| 18 Feb 2005 | |
| - Continued work on the new website.
- John and Earle add trim and plywood to the maint bay roofs. - Vernon arrives bearing 100 gigs in 7 harddrives, 11 sticks of 256mb RAM, and okonimayaki. - Izumi arrives, inventories hardware, and cobbles together a mock-up for his Alpha series cockpit layout. | |
| 17 Feb 2005 | |
| - Continued work on the new website.
- John and Earle put up 2 halves of the roof on the first two maint bays. - John marks cut lines on the wheel shrouds for the swayrails. | |
| 16 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle and John start the morning shift at midnight exactly. John cleans up the wood scavenged form this weekend, and Earle affixes the first 6 roof beams, completing the roof superstructure for the first maint bay.
- Day shift has John organizing and labeling tools in the maint bay, and touchup paint. - Earle and John affix 8 more support boards, finishing the roof structure for the second bay. Covered about 1/3 of the roof with plywood, and put up 20' of trim. | |
| 15 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle does more touchup paint on the maint bays.
- More stuff arrived today from a previous tool order. | |
| 14 Feb 2005 | |
| - Stuff arrives from a previous tool order, and Izumi does inventory.
- Izumi does more welding and fabrication for the swayrail mounts on the walking platform. | |
| 13 Feb 2005 | |
| - Morning shift has Intern Justin Luecke cleaning the mech engine inside and out, showing paint on the exterior and purging the waterjacket channels of gunk.
- Earle cuts and Izumi welds some hefty brackets to extend the mech platform to fit the swayrail mounts. - Izumi purchases 6 more rotation wheels for the upper part of the mech's torso rotation. - Earle, Izumi, and Intern Ryan Marlow collect several truckloads of wood to finish off the maint bay roofs and walls. - Intern Ryan Marlow submits concepts for four more fliers. - Izumi and Earle do clearance adjustments to the walkingplatform design, cut parts, and prep brackets and the walkingplatform for welding. | |
| 12 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle cuts metal and machines while Richard assists with oiling duty.
- Richard and Intern Ryan Marlow file down parts for Izumi to weld. - Izumi completed 3 of the 8 box structures that will be machined into housings for the swayrail rollers. - Intern Justin Luecke takes razorblade in hand and cleans all the gasket surfaces on the mech engine block. - Day shift brings more of the same with Richard and Intern Ryan Marlow filing down parts while Earle cuts and Izumi welds the remaining box structures and brackets. All parts for the sway rails are welded, leaving only machining and finally welding or bolting parts into place. - Earle and Richard paint while Intern Ryan Marlow uses 6 tubes of caulk to cut the wind out of the maint bays. All three then affix the roof header boards for all 5 bays. - Earle cuts a 3/8'' steel plate for a base mount for the torso rotation hub to rest on. Richard assists while Intern Justin Luecke de-rusts sections of the platesteel.. | |
| 11 Feb 2005 | |
| - Cut the only missing part for the lower sway rail couplers, the platesteel bases.
- Wrote up the designplan for the aforementioned. - Izumi, Richard and Intern Ryan Marlow arrive. - Acquired 8 each 5 gallon gas containers, lumber for the maint bay roofs, and 120 linear feet of angle. | |
| 10 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle and John test and scrap the plan for driving the torso rotation. Possibilities at this point, is to have the gearbox turned by a hydraulically driven system. We will see what doth arise.
- Broke the drums free of the hubs for the driveline, and painted them. Took photos of the hubs and a few other parts, including 'Insurance' for the powerplant. - Finally got around to posting the mech parts pics to the picture area, HERE. - Picked up the mech's engine crank form the machine shop. Nice, clean, and turned 10 over on the rods and mains. The engine block itself is a typical high-nickel content Cadillac motor, so the piston sleeves have no wear. It seems to have held to 4.080 inches as per factory spec, so no boring will be required. Unless something new comes up, this is the end of our machining work on the engine. - John and Earle have a similar experience to yesterdays, trying to recover Toyota strut towers for the toesprings. | |
| 09 Feb 2005 | |
| - The official part count for the mech's walking platform has exceeded 50% complete. Moreover, we have on hand, the materials to complete another 33% of the components, leaving only 10 items still to be purchased, mainly smaller pneumatic and hydraulic rams. Keep in mind; this does not resolve each and every part, but more like the readily observed 'systems.' For example, there are around 70 parts total for the passive leg hubs and torso rotation hub. We are only counting it as 3, since they are complete. Parts wise, we are probably close to 99% purchased or complete.
- In line with previous maint bay plans, Earle and John migrate all the woodworking tools to the maint bay to free space for the impending mech-engine rebuild. Cleared off the machining side of the mech bay's shop tables. - Ordered a complete rebuild kit for the mech's engine. It should be ready for pickup on Saturday. - John measures while Earle cuts the bottom sway rails. - Earle and John pull two starter motors for use in the torso rotation system. Porsche: 2 bolts; 8 minutes; 1 person. Toyota: remove intake manifold, hoses, 2 bolts; 45 minutes; 2 people. - Ordered 4 replacement grinders, gloves, safety equip, tire changer, and some pneumatics. - Located the flexplate/flywheel for the revised torso rotation system. | |
| 08 Feb 2005 | |
| - Cut the drum housing off the wheel hub with the torch.
- Painted the top halves of the sway/rotation control platform and the weight distribution hub for torso rotation. - Morning shift ends and after a brief rest, steel and the replacement -Earle and John pull the head from worktruck #2. - Earle paints the sway/rotation support box and rotation hub while John cuts parts for the sway rails. - Pete reports the RVU is now talking over its serial port to the PC-based flash loader program. Next step after this is to do the first, ''blink the LEDs'' firmware test program (hopefully by this weekend). | |
| 07 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle and John get more paint, and 85lbs of fasteners for the maint bays.
- Took the mech engine's crank in to a machine shop to have it turned 10 over. We should have it back in two days. - Ordered another cutoff saw, which should arrive tomorrow with our steel. | |
| 06 Feb 2005 | |
| - Izumi cuts the first two parts for the sway rails while Earle and Intern Justin Luecke cut the suspension free of the wheel hub.
- John and Intern Justin Luecke work on worktruck #2 (again). - Earle and Izumi work on sway rail components until the cutoff saw dies. - Earle and John finish up the night breaking a section of the drum housing free from the torso's rotation hub. | |
| 05 Feb 2005 | |
| - Earle, John, Izumi and Intern Justin Luecke spend the morning picking up oxygen and acetylene tanks for the torch, misc welding accessories, 35 cans of paint, some tools for the maint bays, wheels for the torso rotation and sway control platforms, and metal for the sway rails; some of which will be delivered Monday.
- Got not one but two massive wheel hubs to use for handling the torso rotation. The extra will serve as a backup. Pictures were taken, and should be released soon. - Earle and Intern Justin Luecke remove the 1 3/4'' lugnuts, separating wheel and hub. - John applies new tools to the maint bays, while Izumi clears paint off the wheel hub and Earle and Intern Justin Luecke remove tire from rim. | |
| 04 Feb 2005 | |
| - John works a bit on worktruck #2 and makes calls on more mech engine rebuilding options.
- Earle and Izumi discuss materials and make a draft for the complete sway rail setup. - A production company in Burbank contacted us about being included in a feature on the Terminator Special Edition DVD. | |
| 03 Feb 2005 | |
| - Canceled the order for mech engine parts until we get the crank turned .10 over.
- Earle and John acquire shelves, cabinet doors, and a few drawers. - U Calgary's newspaper sent an interview request. | |
| 02 Feb 2005 | |
| - John continues repair work on work truck #2, while Earle affixes a spring to the maint bay walkdoor.
- Ordered the rebuild parts for the mech's engine. - After some tweaking, Pete fired up the completely armed and operational RVU Lab Unit. An oscilloscope on the master clock reports a steady pulse. It is running. - Earle and Heidi locate a mil spec wheel hub suitable for supporting the torso rotation. | |
| 01 Feb 2005 | |
| - Pete has finished soldering the RVU Lab Unit, and began testing by bringing each subsystem up one at a time.
- John holds his own at the MCF, cleaning, grinding down the welds on the sway support box, starting repair work on work truck #2, and locating materials for a maint bay vehicle door. | |