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 2

As mentioned previously, Bender displays emotions via his eyelids, and to a lesser extent via his teeth - specifically the horizontal lines. To that end, I made some extra teeth panels when I first finished the heads, and reserved three of them for "emotional effects" - this page documents finishing two of them.

The teeth panels are simple rectangular panels cut from colourbond offcuts. Colourbond is a common roofing, and fencing steel, about 0.6mm (about 25 thou) thick, and quite "springy"... it'll crack if you attempt to put a sharp bend in it since the way it's shaped hardens it considerably.
This springy-ness is used to hold the panel inside Bender's head - as shown in the photo below.


The two "ears" bent into the teeth panel make it easier to spring the teeth panel into a tight curve to insert and position the panel.

Knowing how difficult it'd be to mask up some nice curves, I acquired some of the adhesive tape used for putting gridlines on whiteboards and tried using that to make some wavy lines (Bender's "error" teeth pattern) - it worked OK.

A second line added..



I also tried some sharper wavy lines to recreate Bender's look when shocked - that didn't work as well since the tape couldn't turn sharp corners without puckering. I ended up pulling it off and creating the shocked lines with black paint free handed on to the panel.


Here is the finished panel installed in the spare head - "error"

And the "shocked" look...
Next installment should make Bender happy - he gets his cigar, and a beard he "never wears".

Bender's failed eyes

I won't go into too much detail on this aspect of Bender's construction, but it was something worth trying, and it may be of use to someone.
I had this one gas cylinder, it was from inside a pressurised water extinguisher. The bottom of it was a perfect hemispherical shape, and the diameter was perfect for Bender's eyes... the problem was I only had one of them.



I decided to use this one cylinder as a positive pattern, and make molds so I could replicate the hemispherical end. I cut up a scrap piece of 4" pipe for flasks, and using common packing tape to close off the bottom, half filled the pipe segments with sieved clay mixed sand. I tamped the sand down as I put it in the flask, and tamped the sand around the pattern as I sprinkled more sand in. Effectively I was creating an "open face mold" for each eye. I created six molds as shown in the photo below. The long 1/2" bolt was used for tamping the sand.

Now I had the hemispherical shape of Bender's eyes sorted, I needed a way to attach them to the rest of his head. I'd designed the use of an "eye-plate" which would bolt to the rest of his head, and essentially be a carrier for the eyes. This design made fabrication easier, and allowed for other features such as "clip on eyelids". To attach the eyes to the eye-plate, I made up some fixtures which were basically a 1/4" bolt, with some heavy wire welded to it. One leg of the wire was bent parallel to the bolt, and presented 15mm (~5/8") away from the bolt centre. This leg was to stop the eye rotating around the bolthole when fixed to the eye-plate. The rest of the wire was simply bent in a loose loop to be encased in the eye casting. The photo below shows a row of bolts, having their heads welded to the wire loops, holes drilled in the aluminium extrusion maintains the spacing of the bolt and the wire prong.

The molds were then filled with "post mix" cement, and the bolt/wires fixtures were inserted. The cement was left over from another job, and used pretty much straight from the bag, but I'd sieved out the larger aggregate so it'd flow better in the molds, and not have any inclusions.

Once the cement had cured, I removed them from the sand molds, and cleaned them up, and sealed them with sealer undercoat paint. I had a hiccup when two of the eye rolled whilst the paint was drying, and stuck to the benchtop, when I pulled them off, the paint pulled out of the cement - this was a warning of what was to come.

Maybe the cement was old, maybe removal of the aggregate did something, maybe the phase of the moon was wrong, maybe the mix was too wet, maybe, maybe, maybe - whatever the reason, the eyes were too fragile. I found I could "cut" them with my thumb nail, and I accidently dropped one of the eye-plates when it was loaded with the eyes, and the eyes flew apart. (see photo below)
Based on that, I decided cement eyes were not going to work. I retained the eye fixtures, plates, and started looking for a better method. What worked was only a minor deviation from this plan, but it worked well.