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The arm is 1 1/2" PVC pipe 13 1/2" long. Your attachment of the arm to
the 1 1/4" square strut will be a 7/16" bolt 4 1/2" long. Drill
the mounting hole (1/2") 5 /8"
 on center away from the end. You'll need
four 7/16" flat washers & one nut for this. Place one washer between
the bolt head and PVC, two between the PVC and the strut, and one more between
the strut and the nut. Dab a bit of LocTite on the threads after adjusting the
nut for no play in the joint, but free-moving.
After getting the arm attached to the strut, I bent the plates of the mounting
bracket supplied for the screen door closer to match the radius of the PVC pipe,
and mounted it to the pipe with 5 /8" x #8 pan-head phillips sheet metal
screws. Pre-drilling the holes will
help you get them in. The CADD
drawing shows where to place your closer bracket to the PVC arm.
Now we mount the air cylinder to the arm via the mounting bracket now installed on
the arm. Line up the location of the arm to the front of the can before screwing
the back of the screen door closer down to the strut. Be sure to not place your
screw in the very front or very back of the slotted hole to allow a bit of
adjustment room for fine-tuning later. I recommend attaching the cylinder with the
air line attached as well as the arm, so you can make sure the air line will
have room to attach to the brake-bleeder screw air inlet. If everything doesn't
align at this point, you will need to move the positioning of the strut on the
armature wall. There is one point where the air line tucks right in to the
bulge of the can and allows for a perfect incline to the front of the can for
the arm's upwardly movement, and at the same time allows the arm to clear the
lid once a glove or spooky hand is added to the end of the arm.
 A number of steps have been taken to bring us to this image. Let me take
this one piece at a time, starting from the top down. The board on top of the
"mask crown" (the wood on each side and on top of the handle that is radiused at the corners) is one of a buildup of levels of plywood that will
space up to the trash can lid. We have deliberately placed the height of the
floor of the armature low to enable us to build up the space between the
mask and the lid for the victim's clear view of the monster. Below the mask
crown are the throw limiters and to the extreme left is a partial view of the
lid guide.
 The handle of the air cylinder has been cut down to less than the
width of a human head at 4 1/2". Then we add a 1 5/8" x 3/4"
piece of plywood to each side of the handle and another piece over the top to
hold the side pieces together. The top is 4 1/4" wide x 6 3/4" long.
This will cradle the handle tightly and be attached securely to it by four
2" mending plates underneath that bridge the handle. Simply screw down the
mending plates to the side pieces of ply and then after making sure the mask
crown assembly is perfectly level, insert a 5 /8" x #8 sheet metal screw
through the center of each mending plate (you will have to drill a small hole in
each plate for this in advance) and into the plastic handle. We want this to be
a very secure attachment, since this will be carrying the weight of the trash
can lid as well as the mask and also brunting the full impact of the throw limiters that we will be talking about
next.
Now we get a clear view of the placement of the strobe light in the front as
well as the lid guide in back. Let's talk about the lid guide. This is more of
the 1 1/2" PVC pipe (hey, I had to buy TEN FEET of this stuff just to get
13 1/2" for the arm. I have to use it SOMEWHERE.) used previously. Attach
24" of pipe to the back of the can
(inside) with 3/8" no#8 sheet metal screws
that have been screwed in at four places, removed and the tips of each screw
ground off flush to the inside of the guide. You'll want this as smooth as
possible. This neat little trick was offered from a very helpful Larry Lund to
keep the lid directly forward upon full extension.
You can see where I used the same
technique to keep the head facing
forward on the
Aerial Executioner. I'll explain the rest of the
working part of this soon.
Here you can see the extension
piece to the armature floor has been
added. This was necessary for the attachment of "throw limiters" for the main air
cylinder that I decided to add to this
 event myself to extend the life of the
animatronic. The limiters are nothing more than Stanley Chain Doorstops Item No.#74-8263
with medium-duty extension chain added for the length we will need. We will need
about an extra foot or more for each chain. I removed the original chain and
clipped the new chain for the full length I wanted to eliminate splices. I then
placed a 4" lightweight extension spring to the center of the chain to take
up the excess slack while in the unexecuted position. This helps the chain to
stay neatly hanging from the mask crown without tangling up with the air line
and needle valve assembly below. To further facilitate this, I installed 4"
long pieces of the 1 1/2" PVC pipe to the floor encasing the spring itself
to keep it upright. You will want to pull your air cylinder fully extended and
measure the distance between the bottom of the mask crown and the main limiter
spring and cut your chain 1 1/2" or so below full extension. While you want
the monster to raise as high as you can to get the mask as close as possible to
face-level, you don't want to allow the cylinder to hyperextend, allowing the pump's
cap to bear the full force of the throw. Once you have your chain at the right
length you need to attach the end under the mask crown solidly with the bracket
provided with the doorstop. As you can clearly see, one limiter is before and
one aft of the pump. Make sure these are exactly on center or they will pull
your monster's head to one side or the other upon full extension.
The lid guide mentioned earlier has two
parts. One we have already installed. The other is simply a smaller diameter PVC
pipe tube with a cap attached to one end and a hole drilled through the center
of the cap. You will need to find the exact center of the lower pipe as it lines
up with the lid and send a sheet metal screw through the lid and into the cap to
hold this in place. I used two fender washers (real wide washers) on each side
of the plastic lid to keep the screw head from popping out. There is not much
stress to this in any direction, so there is no real danger to its weakness
other than some outside impact to the upper pipe while the event is engaged. |
