It works!

thats right folks the damn hand runs! after two full days of hydraulic plumbing and a little electrical work we put it through series of movement tests. The last two days consisted of Christian and I pulling high pressure steel hydraulic lines out of the building and converting them using hydraulic ferals and nuts to extend each ram on the fingers. The bottom line, we built this machine in 10 days, with junk salavaged from local sources, Doyle, Conrad, Christian and I arrived in holland with suit cases with noting more than clothing and small personal items ( no tools or parts).
This has been an intense leason in fabricaton from nothing to create something totally off the hook. These new images are from last nights test. Enjoy

9/14/07 good day to weld hydraulic fittings.

well we got allot done in the last few days. We had a decently tricky time coming up wit a scheme for the hydraulics so i moved on to the electric aspect of the control systems for now and then back again in them morning. Christian came up the basic relay configuration to drive the hydraulics and i set about to wire it up. Things left are to sus out our home made hydraulic conversion, aka i welded over 30 fittings with a tig welder a friends shop in a building adjoining ours and now we need to install them. Then we can get all the feed and return lines set up and plumbed. blah blah for now, here are some pictures.
Today the crew all went off to see The artist Theo Jansen west of Amsterdam. I thought that was cool.

9/11/07

we got the hand/arm moving up and down, left right but we burned out the hydro pump. tomorrow we look for a new one and the rest of the cylinders to actuate the fingers.
It really nice here, everyone speaks english we get two really good meals every day and I get to work with the best possible crew ever.
I found the hydraulic shop, right around the corner from the ndsm warf and its run by guys who know a ton about hydraulics. I am now a European hydraulic expert,HAH.
we are debating putting fire on the fingers, but that is down the road.
off to work.

1st day in, second day off

My first day in worked my sorry ass off.
I arrived at the NDSM Warf around 10am dutch time. Met a nice lady on the ferry who walked me over to where the festival is held. The warf is huge, the buildings are huge. I am tired, here are pictures of the where house we are working in, its wornderfully huge, with giant bridge cranes, and all kinds of scrap metal for our crew to use for our project, which i will give details lager.

going to amsterdam for robodoc

yup, leaving on friday, get in on saturday. i have a new canon digital camera to take lots of cool pictures.
soo, check often, ill try to blog once a day.