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Sober Lives!

12/20/2012

Sobek the African Crocodile God lurks deep in the mechanism of the "Crossing the Mara" automata just completed. Followers of Sobek believe they will saved from crocodile bites. He appears to drive the mechanism determining the fate of the wildebeest herd.

I won't be able to post a video to the website until after the new year but I will blog an overall photo and hopefully post some photos on a new web page.

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Come to Assembly!

12/12/2012

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Here's a view of the lower mechanism assembled. All that is left to do is place the top and install the linkages between the mechanism and the components on the top plate. This tends to be the tedious part. Hopefully all the movements are correct as it is a pain to change motions at this point in the project!

As there are a lot of circular pushrods, anti rotation vanes will need to be added to maintain the right orientation for the characters.

The "engine".

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Putting It All Together!

12/7/2012

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Well, there is still some detailing to be done on the cast of characters and some painting to be done, but things are getting assembled finally. In case you haven't figured it out from previous blogs the subject of the piece is the annual wildebeest migration where it crosses the crocodile infested Mara River in Tanzania. While the most of the herd fords the river in the traditional way, one technically savvy wildebeest, Wilbur, employs the "Serengeti 2000" gyrocopter to elude the leaping crocodile in the river.

I plan to take some time lapse photography when doing the assembly and post the film on the website so you can see the assembly process.

The jumping croc has not been given a name yet.

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Al's Automata Blog

Sober Lives!

Come to Assembly!

Putting It All Together!

Why Automata?

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