Beginning to paint some #miniatures starting from a grey primer with white zenithal highlights and some Brown for metal weathering Seeing then in broad stroke paint helps tie together all the parts and shows the character #kitbash #orkdeptus #electork #servitork
Continued from Pool restoration pt3
The next step was the epoxy injection.
Basically this is a two part foam which needed to be injected into the cracks, where it would expand into there to fill any deep spaces and fill/prevent any leaks.
The way it works is you cover the surface with a surface seal epoxy, and attach injection ports every so often;
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These are the places to inject the foam, so its important to block/seal the rest of the crack and be sure the foam will fill/flow inside.
Also interesting to note how the stale’s epoxy has changed color over the last week as it cured;
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Lots of ports mounted, I did this for all the cracks in the pool surface as well as the split at the bondbeam;
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Then I injected the foam itself,
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I used three kits and did it in several passes,
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The foam/epoxy made a big mess, but I think it got everywhere it needed to be (and then some)
This was in the middle of applications, as you can see the top near the bondbeam needed a bit of patching;
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More injections!
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I also started doing some testing with hydraulic cement; patching over the exterior of minor cosmetic scratches, in gaps near the bond beam, and on exposed gunnite.
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After the foam had cured for a week or so, I started removign the ports as well as the surface seal;, first pulling the ports and chipping away large chunks;
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This is what I wore while doing that, feeling like a sci-fi character
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Then hitting it with the grinder to knock back more of it, and leave a sort of ‘keystone’ shape and roughed up surface so that the plaster/cement over top the epoxy wouldn’t be able to pop/shear off.
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It seems like everything near the pool has become covered in dust from the grinding, bit it was starting to look a lot better!
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This took way longer than I expected/planned, I’ve now officially lost track of how many bucket loads of debris I’ve carried out of here
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I knew better than to do too thick a coat of the hydraulic cement, its more there to provide a non-shrinking plug and seal, rather than structural strength, so I tried to keep it around 1/8 inch, and wet the surrounding area to prevent it drying unevenly
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I couldn’t stand thinking of looking at the epoxy for another week, so I worked well into the night, patching and coating it with hydraulic cement.
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Ended up using three buckets, about 30lbs of hydraulic cement
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Its come a long way!
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In case anyone is reading along for knowledge, I should re-state; I’m not a professional, I’m just learning as I go, and doing my research online as well as speaking to a few pool guys while gathering info/estimates…
So I’d left off I here;
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Hydraulic cement patch/seal over the cracks and epoxy/foam. I figure the thinness of the cement will futther seep into the cracks and seal it more, and I made sure to leave a rough texture, so that the next layers would have something to grip.
Looking at the surface I started to notice a bit of discoloration;
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A bit of a yellowish tint and some hairline cracking in there;
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NOT GOOD.
I knew the hydraulic cement wouldn’t be structural, but this isn’t right, and as soon as I started tapping it with the mallet/chisel I could see what was happening as it sheared off and crumbled;
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I’ve never heard of this happening before, but the yellow seemed to be oils leached out of the sealing epoxy, which weakened the hydraulic cement, as well as the cement did not bond to the leftover epoxy much at all, so I set about knocking off all the problem spots to grind down the epoxy even more.
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Very discouraging, but I kept at it, removing the bad material and going back down to get the surface epoxy off too. Very discouraging, but I keep telling myself, its better to go through this now then later when its filled with water…
Next I repacked it with a portland/sand mix, which should prove to be a lot stronger, and with the epoxy residue ground away it should provide a much stronger patch;
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I left the texture pretty rough so the replaster would have something to grip.
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Already feeling a bit better about this, and the portland/sand mix is pretty close to what I’ve been thinking of plastering the whole pool with, so I can see how dark it would end up being, also note the root that’d been hiding under the old deck, no wonder this was beginning to crack!;
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Continued from Pool restoration pt2
Now that the plaster was clean, the weak parts removed and cracks exposed I was ready to deal with them. I ordered a few different kits of materials; staples and epoxy.
I went with two kinds of staples, basically to reinforce the areas that I was worried may be weak and eventually crack again.
Carbon fiber from Leaktools
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Steel from Torquelock – these ones interest me the most since they are engineered to apply pressure to the crack in addition to holding it.
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I planned these out where I thought they could do the most good;
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Masonry cutting disks in my angle grinder worked well for the countersink, but after drilling for a solid day and having my hands go numb I realized why a regular drill even with a good masonry bit is not the best way,
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So I ran to Harbor freight and picked up a rotary hammer drill, which was AMAZING, so much better! Made the rest of the drilling a breeze in comparison. It was like the difference between when I was chiseling by hand vs when I got the air chisel.
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A lot of staples… just cutting, drilling, and plotting them all out first;
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Might have been overkill for some places, but figured its better that way, than not doing a spot and having that be where it re-cracks;
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The staples were set with a special epoxy;
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Starting with all the carbon fiber ones;
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Then the steel ones, the epoxy is harder to see since its just on the inside, but it was applied to the posts and face surface, then pressed into place. After that I twisted the cam to apply more pressure by drawing the posts closer together;
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Continued from (http://isdrab.com/2014/07/29/pool-restoration-pt1/)
Once we got the old tiles knocked off and a couple rounds of pressure washing in it was time to see hom much cleaner it’d get by acid etching the surface.
Here I’ve started the acid wash,
I was just doing it by hand, using a spray bottle and scrub-broom,
this was after the first gallon;
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halfway done;
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after etching through the dark/black stains I could see more to do, and I found the Anthony Pools tile;
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It was in doing the second half that I figured out a better way of applying the acid; using a super soaker!
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After acid washing the whole thing, and continuing to remove old/bad/delaminated plaster, basically anything that sounded hollow, was stained/softer than the rest;
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When I bought my house back in March, I knew it was a foreclosed fixer-upper and there were a lot of things that had deteriorated after years of neglect, but I’m a sculptor at heart, have worked in construction before, and love getting my hands dirty.
In the listings the pool looked like this;
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either the previous owner started, or the leak drained it partway, because when I got to it it looked like this;
GOPR1748 by bradisdrab, on Flickr
Note the giant tree, which I suspect was the cause of the cracks;
GOPR1595 by bradisdrab, on Flickr
That and years of bad chemestry had left the plaster in pretty bad shape, a lot of bad staining, and softened corroded areas, especially around the cracks. The areas of blue/green aren’t paint, it was just eaten from the old/bad chemestry I think. That discolored plaster was softer and crumbly.;
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So the first thing was the tree, it had to come out;
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Sad to see such a cool old tree go, but there was no point to restoring the pool if the tree was just going to continue breaking it up.
I drained it, knocked out the old tiles, and got a better look at the damage. About half the coping had seperated from the bond beam, and some of the cracks went pretty deep, through the gunnite,
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Then a couple rounds of pressure washing, my fiance got in on the action as well;
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I’d started by hand, but got an air-chisel to chip out the old/bad/delaminated plaster, and open the areas around the cracks;
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It took a few solid days to chip out;
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After the worst of the plaster was removed and a couple rounds of pressure washing it looked like this;
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But I could see that simple patching wasn’t going to cut it, a couple of the crack were pretty bad;
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I’d come up with a plan to fix the cracks, but first I needed to finish preparing the rest.
( continued in part 2)
Continued from: http://isdrab.com/2013/04/30/cambot-pt4/
I haven’t been 100% satisfied with the movements I’ve been getting from the Pan/tilt head so far. Its promising, but there is some play in the parts which introduces some counterbalancing and wobble. That and the motors turn a bit more quickly than I’d like, which makes small, controllable, incremental, movements a bit tough.
Time to take it apart and rebuild.
I couldn’t get good results with my hand drill. It was just too sloppy, I needed a better way to do it. I wish I had a milling machine, a full machine shop would be amazing, but I can make due, and make whartever I need.I tried pricing out mini milling machines, but they are just too expensive, instead I looked into small drill presses. I found one for a good price and Kyle and I put it together with a vice and the cross slide and rotary table, I had been using as the camera mover previously. I ended up mounting the whole thing to a metal stool I found so it can be wheeled around the shop. Totally custom and it works great.
Thankfully getting better tolerances from this drill press. The right tool for the job. Cambot is reassembled, now with everything fitting together much tighter, and swapped out the motor in the pan for a slower one.
The basic blocking for Cambot’s pan and tilt is finished and working, so I’ve started planning and working out the mechanics for the next two axes. The first of which is pictured above, the rack-focus. This is likely the easiest of the axes; simply a pinion gear mounted to a mini robotzone gearmotor, which will fit with the len’s focus wheel’s teeth. I mounted this motor to a little arm attached to the 15mm rails on the P/T head, so it will remain adjustable for different lenses as well as remianing in position with the camera.
Next comes the Jib, it needs to be able to crane up and down. The Jib is well counterbalanced so won’t need a lot of torque, but with nothing there at the moment it tends to drift slowly.
I spent awhile thinking about ways to hold that axis, and looked at a lot of options, eventually deciding on a timing belt. Also I learned that parts can be ordered in bulk to save money from ebay, so I picked up a bunch of timing pulleys, and bearings. Unfortunately they weren’t as easilly matched as the parts I got from Servocity, so I had to do a bit of work on them to get them assembled.
View this post on InstagramBearings and timing pulleys mounted to frame. #cambot #moco #drabfuture #motioncontrolcamera
I fit two idler pulleys and one to drive the belt. Looking pretty slick now, just needs a motor.
Here you can see how the belt will feed in with either end leading back to the Jib arm on either side of the axis.
With 4-axis nearly in play, and two more on the way, I’m going to have to start thinking about how I’m going to control this thing. My current testing methods the MX2 and can manage 2-axes at a time
This new MX3 from dynamic perception looks interesting, it can control 3 axes, and includes a MoCobus port which could be very promising in the near future, afterall I’ve been loving the Mx2.
My other option is to customize something from scratch using an arduino. I’ve been pouring over tutorials and it actually sounds totally do-able. I’ve been calling that “The Magic Box”, basically a controller that does anything I want/imagine, from stop motion, to live control and follow modes, with programmable control of dynamic lighting, and the ability to import/export 3D camera moves from the computer. One can dream.
Gotta walk before I can fly, so far I’ve learned how to make a led work.
Its been a long road, from prototypes to molds/casting/assembly and painting, but I’m proud to announce that the new Drab future toys will be available through the Zerofriends web store this Friday, (Tomorrow!) and I can’t wait to see what everyone does with theirs.
I’d hoped to do a full write-up including tutorial videos for each step of the process, but sadly my phone was stolen before I could unload all the material I’d been recording. Fortunately I did manage to document a lot of the process and am able to share that with you now.
I created prototypes for each of the seven characters in Drab Future. These began as kit-bashed models based from various toys, won from skee-ball games, purchased from grocery stores and randomly aquired.
For each I sculpted their costumes over top the base model, and built accessories to show all the details.
For John Henry I began with a firefighter toy which was a skeeball prize, won from a local arcade.
needed to completely resculpt the face and mask, and add the straps and elements of his space suit.
I spent hours sourcing the best parts to match the character’s costumes and props.
I looked awhile for the a good way to mimic the texture of Casey Jones’ ghillie suit, who also began as a skee-bll prize firefighter, and eventually I settled on using gauze, treated with wax and liguid sculpy, and resculpted with a soldering iron.
When it was time to make the molds I produced elaborate vent/sprues to direct the flow of resin and prevent air bubbles.
I used around three gallons of silicone for the full set of molds.
Most of the prototypes did not survive the demolding process.
One of the most exciting stages was seeing all the molds set up and preparing to pour resin for the first casts.
Two gallons of resin later I had an army of raw castings.
Next came clean-up, each toy needed a bit of time with the dremel and x-acto to have it’s sprue and flashing removed. I decided to leave the slight imperfections such as air-bubbles as a mark of their creation, a bit of character to each one.
Then primer for basecoats
Weathering and washes of powdered pigment
And a bit of hand-painting
The finished set
