Thursday 31 January 2013

Hydraulic maintenance

The hydraulic cylinder on the middle leg femur has a piston seal leak, this means the leg droops when it is powered off, and it also looses power when working. As the middle leg needs the most power I decided to switch the middle leg femur ram with the front leg femur ram..



Tuesday 1 January 2013

Foot mould tests..


Having failed to find anything suitable for the foot of the mantis I decided to try making a mould and creating my own foot pads from polyurethane. This was the first mould and the first pour I tested. Unfortunately I got the quantity wrong, but it was a pretty successful test. I poured two types of hardness, shore 70 and shore 60, initial thoughts are that the shore 70 will work best.



The product I'm using for these feet is PT Flex 70. It's a fairly easy product to use, although the pour time is only 5 mins, so you need to work fast! De-mould time is approx 1 hour.