Bender's Beard - or is it Flexo's?

Fans of the show know Bender has a beard, but "never wears it". When we first meet Flexo, the key visual difference between Bender and Flexo is the beard.
To make a beard... When I was making the eyelids for Bender, I tipped any leftover putty into a quick cardboard mold I made.

The mold was basically a triangle, with a thickness of around 42mm (1 3/4"). Since it was done as two pours, I placed a magnet inside with it's poles facing the base of the triangle, between the first, and second pour.

Once cured, I cut the mold apart, and then cut the triangle section apart to form Bender's beard - as seen below.

The followed a lot of filing, and adjusting so the magnet poles were exposed, and the triangle cleaned up so it was even, and had sharp lines at the edges. Once happy with the look, I primed the beard as shown...

Originally I painted it the same light gray as Bender's body and head, but my darling wife pointed out it looked wrong. I checked the disc again, and sure enough it was too light (She is always right, but don't tell her I said that...). The beard needed to be darker than the colour of Bender's extensomatic arms, so I gave it a shot of the Zinc-It.

Front view...

Three quarter view...


That'll be it for a while.. Bender is pretty much complete. I still want to do up a bottle of "Ole Fortran" for him (does anyone else remember FORTRAN?... I can still remember coding in FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90 - first language I ever used which didn't have a "print" statement of some description.)
I digress... I want to do up a bottle of booze for him, and try and recreate the kids' drawing from the orphanarium. At that point, Bender will definitely be finished.

The suggestion has been made that the next project should be the Robot Devil... I'll admit he looks great, and would be a challenge. I think I'll hold off for a while - never a shortage of jobs to do, and I'd like to document some of my other projects.

Bender starts smoking.

To make a cigar for Bender.... Ideally it shouldn't fade, and should look reasonably "realistic", or at least as real as Bender does.
I started with a short length of 20mm (3/4") electrical conduit, with a magnet taped into on end.
I also grabbed some empty chip packets (Samboy BBQ) for the orange colour, and the "sparkly texture"


To simulate the burning/ glowing end of the cigar, I cut the chip packets up to get 50mm (2") wide strips of orange material, folded them lengthwise so no silver showed, and rolled them into a tight roll to place inside the end of the conduit - shown below.


I then rolled a wider strip around the outside to cover the end of the conduit, and taped this in place. The rest of the chip packet was then folded into itself to form a 60mm (2 1/2") wide strip, and wrapped around the conduit to widen the middle portion of the cigar. I then wrapped the whole thing in tape to form the cigar shape, and leave the orange exposed.


Once the taping was finished, I painted it Brown, and let it dry. The photo below shows the painted cigar drying - stuck by it's magnet to a cabinet.


I then added the black spiral lines to the cigar using the gridding tape (see article on teeth) and gave the cigar to Bender - he seems to enjoy it.

Next article will cover the beard.

Bender gets emotional - part 1

For Bender to display emotions he usually has his eyelids change, or his teeth change (horizontal lines only)
To make some eyelids for Bender I cut up the eye molds I'd used - made from Christmas decorations. In the photo below, you can see two halves of a Christmas decoration which were used for eye molds, and one still complete decoration.

I removed the eye-plate (with eyes) from the spare head, and using a discarded plastic tag, made a dam for the putty. I cling wrapped the eyes and plate to prevent the putty from sticking, and positioned some cut decorations on the eyes with their centres at 1:30 for the "sad" look, and at 10:30 for the "frown" look. I magnet was placed at the top between the eyes, and a piece of metal was placed for a handle into the putty before it cured.

Once the putty had cured, and the dam, and cling-wrap removed, the resulting eyelids were filed, carved and generally cleaned up. In the photo below, you can see them stuck (via their magnets) on a metal cabinet.

Once painted black (to match the interior of the eye shroud, and eye-plate, the eyelids were tested. The "frown" first...
Then the "sad" expression...

The next installment of this build log will cover the other emotional accessories I built, teeth plates.

Bender's eyes - the good ones

I discussed how attempting to cast the eyes from cement did not work as well as planned. Ideally I wanted weld-ments, but did not have enough of the pressure cylinders to make that work. I returned to the casting option, but with a different media than cement. If I'd been able to use my furnace, I'd have made them from aluminium to begin with, but that was not an option, so instead I chose to cast the eyes from "bog" - a.k.a. Automotive putty.

I kept the fixtures I made for the cement eyes, and the eye plates.
The idea of sand molds didn't appeal with using bog, so I looked for an alternative mold. Whilst shopping with my darling wife, I found some cheap Christmas decorations. They were plastic balls which measured 85mm across, and had a clearly defined mold line from their manufacture. I bought three of them and cut them carefully along the mold line to get hemispheres. I mixed up some bog, filled one of the hemispheres, and placed it on the eye-plate with a fixture already secured.
A couple of notes on the above procedure:

-- I've been keeping my bog in a refrigerator so it's cold, and not going off as fast. (I also keep all my glues, and expensive solvents in the same fridge)

-- I sprayed the eye-plate with a light oil as a form of mold release to stop the bog sticking to the plate... However I did not spray any oil on the fixture since I wanted maximum adhesion to this part.

-- A reasonably thick section of curing bog gets VERY hot. I'd seen similar exothermic reactions when working epoxy with the rockets, so I knew I could cool the mold from the outside with water, and not cause any damage to the casting. If anyone else tries thick castings based on resins, they should not leave the casting unattended during curing, and keep flammables away. If possible, do the casting in layers to distribute the heat effects.

Once the putty had cured, I removed the decoration halves (some popped off neatly, others needed to be cut away), and sanded out any irregularities caused by the thin plastic warping with the hot putty, or due to the weight of putty.

The end result after repeating the above with another three eye castings was two sets of eyes. I decide not to bother with making up the third eye-plate since I was running out of bog at the time.
Top view of bog eyes mounted on plate.

front view of good eyes on plate.
This photo demonstrates how the eye-plate bolts to the head. In this shot I was testing the exposed length of the eye fixtures to ensure they would not foul against the surface of the head. The eye-plates are held to the head by a single bolt on the centreline of the plate, and the head. A second "prong" is also there to prevent rotation of the eye-plate which engages with a hole located 25mm (1") below the holding bolt.