Hello Friends!
Welcome back everyone! In Part One of our tutorial on building denkbot cosplay we explored how we built our giant denkbot. Since our motto is “Learn, Create, Inspire” we continue our tutorial with how we built the denkbot courier, so you can use that knowledge to create your own inspiring creation!
This is part two of the tutorial:
- the denkbot
- denkbot courier
Without further ado, let’s continue the tutorial!
MATERIALS
Below are the materials used to build the denkbot courier!
- Various PVC Pipe (Lowe’s)
- Various PVC Fittings (Lowe’s)
- Tool Belt (Menards) with Suspenders (Menards)
- Wood Screws (Lowe’s)
- Metal Clamps (Lowe’s)
THE BELT
First we found a nice padded tool belt with a harness at Menards. Our entire denkbot courier is built around this item, so take the time to search and find a good one!
We were building this in a hurry the day of GenCon so all of the pictures are after the fact, but it is a straight-forward enough design that we can still get the point across.
We cut 3/4″ PVC pipe to length, to create a U-shaped frame to fit the intended wearers waist. This was fit together with 90-degree side elbow fittings so that the upper frame could be attached.
Next we used hose-clamps to attach the leather section of the tool belt to the PVC frame. We used three clamps on the sides.
We attached the back in the same manner as above, using two hose clamps.
The size of your hose clamps depend on the thickness of the weight-bearing part of your tool belt, so make sure you get the belt first then size your clamps.
THE FRAME
As we mentioned above, we used the 90-degree side elbow fittings on the frame so that we could attach the upper layer. A cross brace was screwed in near neck height so that the harness could be anchored to the upper frame.
Slip to threaded fittings were put on top so that denkbot could be easily screwed onto the courier.
There are some obvious improvements that we found as we were building, but due to the time constraints we could not impediment them before GenCon. We will cover these improvements in the Lessons Learned section below!
THE PITCH
To help share our team at GenCon, we had business cards printed out with our information on them so we could spread the good word!
To help with continuity, we also printed team shirts!
We had a lot of fun, made a lot of new friends, and found the friendliest people with amazing cosplay!
We had so much fun and can not wait for GenCon 2017!
LESSONS LEARNED
- We suggest buying the add-on cellphone holder and extra storage pouches for whatever belt you buy. It was hard to get to pants pockets while wearing the courier.
- To make the cross support look more professional, we would replace the screwed in pipe with a cut-to-length pipe that has slip to saddle tee fittings on both ends. We would also suggest adding a similar cross support to the denkbot legs.
- We would also suggest painting the PVC pipe a simple flat-black or grey before final assembly to improve the final products look.
- A future improvement project would be to make the U-shaped frame which the belt is attached adjustable. The current design only allows for one size range of humans to carry the denkbot. Given the baseline we have put togeather, we are confident you can come up with an improved solution!
SUMMARY
If you have any questions on how we did things, if you find any sections could use more detail or clarification, if we made any errors, or if you just want to let us know what you think – please let us know in the comments below!
Thank you for your interest in our endeavors and for taking the time to read this article! We will see you next Friday as we begin designing the robot for our BattleBots Season 3 application!
If you found this article useful and would like to follow along with our Season 3 redesign/build and future content please like us on Facebook; follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and Google+; subscribe on YouTube; and fumble us on Tumblr!