|
 First things first, the CAN.
In the instructions I read to get a 55 gallon Rubbermaid trash can. After
much searching, finding the "208L 55 Gallon" trash can was NOT
materializing. All I could
find was a Rubbermaid "170L 45
gallon" can, but on Larry Lund's advice I decided to use the one
recommended and double my efforts to get the "perfect can". With a few
hours running here and there
to find the "right one" I learned
that the cans in my area tell the consumer the size of the BAG
it takes inside, but it is still a
45 gallon can size, so the
two were the same. I hope this saves you A LOT of
potential running around like I
went through. However,
ANY 45 gallon square trash can will work for this. In fact, I could have built
it in a smaller can, but the height is nice at the near-head level for the
ghoul.
The first thing I did to prepare for the installation of the guts of this was to
mount the air inlet and the end of the power strip that would be supplying the
power to everything inside on a board and then screwing the board to the bottom
of the can in the back. As you can see, there is a small space supplied just for
this use by the manufacturers. ;~) I wanted this to be extremely easy to use
later, so I set it up to accept a standard power cord stretched to where ever it
was to be used, along with the air line. This works perfectly, but use plenty of
screws & fender washers, so the pressure of plugging in the air cord doesn't rip
the screw heads out of the plastic.
 Here are pics of most of the things needed for the animation of your garbage
monster which I refer to here as
the "heart". This is the fun part to your project.
In basic terms you have one airline
coming in to one air valve and from
there it breaks off into two air
lines going into two different
adjustable valves that then go on
to each air cylinder. In-line of
the two lines I have inserted
another 3-way splitter so I could
insert yet another adjustable valve
used for back flow. You can see the pump I used
was all steel construction (available most places called BIKE XTRAS
#861, if you cannot find this steel
pump in conventional stores in your
area, try flea markets, as I have
found them there on many
occasions). For the pump type shown
above, you can actually drill two
or even three holes around the
outside of the cap and into the top
edge of the cylinder and use sheet
metal screws to make this
connection vastly more secure as
shown in the photo on your right. This
is something I did not know at the
time of building this event some 7
years ago now at the time of this
additional information I ran across
while shortening one to use for my
Lynching prop. Just
measure down from the top of the
cap about 3/8" to drill your holes
and if you use three #8 x 3/8" screws, they will not impede the
stroke of the plunger inside. You
will have to unscrew the air line
going in to the base of the pump
and remove the back flow needle
valve hiding below for the air to
actually go in and out of this same
port.
 The
closer for the
screen
door air cylinder that we will
be using for the arm came from Home
Depot. The needle valves (shown in
the photo on your right, below) should be a standard
1/4" valve from the local OSH or other hardware store, (Anderson Barrows
Tubing to Tubing Straight Needle Valve Part No#BP9106-CP 1/4"). You will
also need 10' of 3/8" rubber airline and 1' of 1/4" plastic tube for
attaching to the needle valves. You will need two 1/4" brass T fittings,
three 1/4" each nipple for splitting air off for the arm and another for
the bleed-off. I added another turnout after this picture was taken for the fog
horn which is not yet shown as well.
 To see exactly how to route the air to your
bike pump and screen door closer rams, take the link above to the screen door
air cylinder and follow the close-ups of the entire process. The photos and how-to
there are a little newer than these original instructions you find here on these
pages, so you might want to hold off your shopping for parts till reading that.
Many how-tos on this website from the
Exorcist
to the
Aerial Executioner and more show more detail on how to use the home-made
pneumatics here, so look over this site well before tackling this project. Clear
direction makes a big difference in how long your project will take.
The funny looking blue thing at the bottom right above is a washing machine
water valve that we will be using for our
air
trigger. You can get this at your local washing machine repair place or
better yet from the local landfill. You can always find them there and they will
only cost $1 or so. It
doesn't matter if this comes off of any particular washing machine, as they all
work the same at the low air pressure this event uses and take basically the same fittings.
Be sure to check out the update on the air trigger that shows how to fit your
pneumatics with a
muffler so the operation is silent! |
