Building A 52 INCH Robot With Arm

Making The Main Base And Motor Base Of The Robot

I made the base from plywood. I used plywood because it is easy to work with and you can sink the head of a screw into to it so that it will be flat with the wood surface. Many times pieces of plywood may have a hole in one of the layers from a knot in the wood. I use a hot glue gun to fill the hole. If you don't have a hot glue gun you should buy one. They are great at holding down wires, filling gaps, etc. You can get them at many dollar type stores. The same stores will sell the glue sticks for as low as 25 sticks per dollar.

When making the base you want the size to be small enough to fit thru doorways and be able to turn in hallways. Remember that the arm will also be sticking out over the base; so you don't want the base so small that it will tip over. So I made the base 11 3/4" by 17 3/4". Why not an even 12" you ask? Well the plywood surface will be covered by cardboard. Yes you guessed it, cardboard from a cereal box. A note here, I didn't use contact paper over the cardboard but there is no reason you can't. So if you want to dress him up more go ahead.

To mount the motors to the main base you will need to make a small motor base. Each motor base was made from two 1/2" thick pieces of wood. With the size wheel caster I used I needed the motor 1 inch high from the main base. So if you have a 1" thick piece of wood then you only need to cut one piece of wood per base motor. The motor's base size is 2 1/4" by 4" I used a 5/8" drill bit for the hole in the motor's base. The round hole to square hole is about 1 19/32" center hole to center hole. The longer hole was made by drilling holes and then using a file to shape them. A better way would be to use a saw blade to shape the long hole.