Patrol Robot by Yonezawa - 3D Aided Conversion

[RoboDerby]

I with Phil and Rich! It is no secret my admiration for John and Brian’s work. 

[Brian..]

Here's the Patrol Robot in action. The siren looks reasonably close to the original - white plastic with a cut-away look. I had to resort to a sound chip to get the siren effect. I thought the chips were cheap, but soon discovered why - they come requiring the addition of capacitors, resistors and transistors.

It ought to be an intermittent sound but when I closed up the robot I must have touched the contact, so now it's semi permanent.

 

I can hardly find words to describe my wife's reaction.

 

This one clears the neighbourhood cats. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Brian..]

Views of the robot. Yoneawa moved the front switch to the back, making it easy to recreate. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For comparison here are photos of the original taken by Gernot a few years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ranger]

Wow, that’s brilliant Brian!

[Automaton]

Wow that is a great recreation. I wonder if they would have made a patrol vehicle for him 

[ROBODUDE]

AMAZING BRIAN !!!-AND THE SIREN IS GREAT-!!!!!   

[RoboDerby]

Well done Brian! Very cool.

[Roboto]

Fantastic Patrol Robot!!!

[K-9]

Excellent results Brian, and I don't see a single cat in your garden!

[RoboDerby]

 

 

After an unexpected diversion to Japan and nearly 3 months of not knowing what ever became of it, frankly believing that it was likely lost forever, i am so very pleased to finally see Brian’s Patrol Robot looking back at me from the Super Cabinet. Thank you so much Brian. Fantastic job! I feel privileged to now have both of your wonderful Yonezawa prototypes on the Hayes shelf which. Any more and I think it will have to be Hayes shelves in the plural and I wouldn’t be disappointed to someday call it a Hayes cabinet. Thank you so much for all of your contributions to my “toy box.”

[Brian..]

I wanted it to be exactly like Kitahara's - not working. 

 

Credit to you, Jeremy, you've done your best to salvage a real troublesome experience. I'd given up on seeing this fellow again. I thought that was going to be the first robot that vanished in transit. I was amazed that it turned up after what must have been an 11,000 mile trip. Parcels often do get held up but this broke the record.

 

The problem I have with these Smoker conversions is that I can't build in easy access to the innards. I have to bend the tabs to get access, and bend them to put it back together. One more bend and it means trouble! So when the Smoker mechanism fails then you have a real issue - accessing the motor again, repairing a tricky mechanism, closing it again and retouching.  Sadly I've discovered that the HaHa mechanism is just not reliable enough so each build is a lottery. I don't think I'll risk it again unless I can make the build repairable. 

 

On the Mighty 8 robot that I'm currently making the kaleidoscope mechanism sometimes stopped working. I solved it by adding a little adjustment screw that lets you press the motor more firmly to the colour drum, This means that access to the innards has to be easy to get at the screw.  The solution was to make the body top detachable using just two tiny pins.  The top can be removed, the mechanism adjusted, and the body reassembled in 30 seconds.