http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/TaiChiArmAndMe1.jpg = OK,a little about brooks coleman....that's me = First off, I'm this artist kind of guy that wishes he was a scientist or a shuttle pilot. My "too many projects at once" life style side tracked any possible formal education after high school, so I get by with my subscription to Scientific American and have the coolest physics teacher/shuttle engineer dad a guy could ask for. Although I doubt I'll ever get to fly the shuttle, I did survive 10 years of hang gliding, from the over-passes of I-45 south of Houston to the 10,000 foot Sandia mountains in new Mexico. Moving to Austin in the late 70's I started out living on freelance work in Photography, hang gliding lessons, wood carving, and general construction but eventually did a couple of years at my only two real straight jobs, the first was building electric cars at Jet Industries, where we pulled gas engines out of dodge omni s, and Fuji mini vans and replaced them with electric motors and huge battery packs. The second day job was making solar panels for Cole solar systems. It was fun and a good learning experience but my creative spirit will not be chained down, that and the first couple of weeks of allergie season gets me fired for missing too much work. Oh well, I don't like alarm clocks anyway. Over the last 25 years I have been doing what I do with hopes of some day hitting big with one hair brain scheme or another, with some variety of success. Mostly, just really good press like the 2 page spread in Newsweek and several segments on the Discover Channel about my involvement with the robot group, and fifteen years with the psycho-avaunt-jazz-industrial-punk-classical-garage .....band. Li''''''Quid''''''Mic''''''E. Now days, I live out in the piney woods of Bastrop, in a half finished house I'm building myself. Most of my income comes from the metal art bras I've been making for about 8 years now, but the real point to this page is to show the variety and depth of all the things I'm doing and hope to do. == Robot Projects == TheHexipod TaiChiArms WayCool500 SharkBlimps BoxerBot GizmoArt PartsDepartment HairBrainSchemesDepartment == Cylinder Photos == . http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/cylindersc.jpg Desposable syringes make good cheap and light weight cylinder actuators for air and water (oil based fluids eat the rubber too quick) .Make sure you get the luer-lock type so the hose fittings don't come off .I've been getting mine from Tractor Supply Company for a couple of bucks each and they work great for both master and slave cylinders . http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/needles.jpg I've been making barbbed hose fittings from the 16 gage needles like these . http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/fittingb.jpg To make them into fittings cut the ends off with a jewlers file . http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/fitting5b.jpg Then file grooves rings to form the barbs for extra grip http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/crimp.jpg Slide a band crimp (I make mine from a 3/16ths wide strip of .040 aluminum) on the hose ,then slip the hose onto the barbbed fitting and slide the band down over the grooves and crimp like so ........ http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/finishedcylinder.jpg Attach the fitting to the cylinder and your ready to go . == Pump Photos == http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/parastallticpumpb.jpg The parastalltic pump I made for circulating the fluids thru the pump bras which just happens to work great as a reverseable hydrolic drive for the cylinders .Only one tube is needed because they work as pushing or pulling the fluid . http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/pumpdriveb.jpg The drive is a Futaba servo with the feedback pot ,endstops and control board all removed (I got a big box of used servos when my favorite hobby shop went out of biz ). http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/openheart.jpg This one uses a 1/16th I.D. tubing http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/pumpguts.jpg I made the 2 roller pinch wheel by turning 2 offset posts on the end of an aluminum rod and Futaba horn spline mount to the other end .