Edward Knifelegs

Published on 2023-07-05 in Bigbug.

The 2.5mm aluminium sheet arrived, and I spent a weekend sawing it with a hacksaw and drilling by hand and with an electric drill.

If you plan on doing anything similar yourself, I have two tips for you. Get the sheet attached to something heavy securely, a good vise or clamps can speed up your sawing greatly, and don’t arrange the parts the way I did in there, interlocking, without a straight sawing line separating them. It’s much easier if you can separate the elements with straight cuts first.

Then some drilling and a lot of filing, and we have workable legs. Note that it vaguely resembles a knife, mostly because it’s made of shiny metal. But all the edges are rounded, and the tip is not sharp either.

Finished robot. Yes, it does look like hacked by hand, and it would look much more “finished” if I used a cnc machine or some kind of other cutting service. But I happen to be happy with that looks, and I don’t plan on making more than this one prototype. I added some RGB LEDs to act as eyes, but they are not connected to anything right now. If I ever replace the wooden body with a custom PCB, I will probably include footprints for those LEDs and connect them to spare pins, but for now I haven’t decided if I will ever go for that.

Finally, a family photo of all three bug robots: Wee Bug , Fluffbug and Bigbug all together.