10Bulls' Christmas Tail
III. Best Laid Plans (Christmas Eve)...
Tell me about the rabbits George! I wanna hear about the rabbits again...
Well there were a few fraught moments, but amazingly I actually managed to build this sucker.
Despite the precision CNC-manship, the 'drive shaft' was slightly out of alignment due to shoddy manual lathe work (CNC lathe conversion a must for '06). This coupled with a pretty puny stepper motor (sorry miljnor... even if Noel only makes it part way through the door I don't think there will be much carnage), led to some worryingly sticky moments. But some cunning hole enlargement and adjustments led to a slick movement (eew!).
Fortunately for Humpa the robot, I managed to find his spare antennae which I'd been searching for. Being the precision engineer, I always keep my parts in carefully labeled boxes; such as 'Misc', 'Odds and Sods', 'Bits' and 'Junk'. I finally found the aforementioned sensor in a box labeled 'PIC bits', crossed out with 'To Sort' scribbled underneath. Thus the trigger mechanism was procured without resorting to Humpa plucking.
I'm quite proud of the sensors. The BEAM robot boffs go on about springs fixed around a pin, but I always found these notoriously susceptible to bending. Especially the way my dull robots kept bumping into things. I came up with an alternative solution which involves a small brass tube with a piece of spring steel epoxied inside in such a way that when the wire is deflected it shorts against the brass and closes a circuit. But enough nerdiness, on with the show!
The trap is now currently baited. After a bit of a family conference I settled on a kebab of half a maltezer, a piece of Shropshire blue cheese and a piece of carrot to hold it in place. I wasn't sure about the Shropshire blue. Partly in case it scared Noel off, but mostly because it's my favourite. The sacrifices we make for art and science!
So I'm off to get aquainted with an 8 year old malt. Have a great day tomorrow and who knows what surprise Santa will leave us!