A robot autopsy

So yesterday I was at a flea-market in a neighboring town, mainly looking for a new chair since, you guessed it, my old one fell apart too. Which is a generous way of saying my ass has two victories under its belt by now. But this new stool looks much sturdier, with like iron and wood and large bolts and what not, rather than being basket weave or 10+ years old.

But the title isn't about my ass destroying furniture. You see I found this big chunky robot there, on sale for 3$, he was attached to some weird base with a radar and an attachment for a hot wheels track. I didn't take any post surgery pictures but here is one I managed to dig out from the inter-webs after some searching. Here is an artists impression likely from the box, its probably a bit over embellished, however the actual photos had to show the action and therefore were blurry as fuck.

Ofcourse I was going into this completely blind, I knew there were some sort of trigger on his base, and that the rocket arm could be cocked, but beyond that nothing. My first step going in was detatching him from the base he was on, there was some scrap and carwrecks there, but they were all the wrong scale oh woe be me. I didn't get any photos of this because frankly I just dug straight in when I got home, imagine your own screwdiver montage if you want. Here is a later shot of him on my windowsil freed from his plastic shackle, towering over minions and character sheets.

However there was something I noticed that bothered me, both of his arms had very limited articulation and his torso could only be turned about 90 degrees on his hips, small clicks and tension told me some things inside him were working against me, so he went under the screwdriver again. Any sensitive toy robots may want to look away now. Blood and guts incoming.

And true enough look at all this crap, gears, springs, wheels. I don't need any of them. So I started filing down teeth and snipping out bits all to make him as agreeable as possible when posing him before gapfilling and glue. Two of his limbs had extra stuff I had to deal with, namely his foot and hip as well as his blaster arm. A trigger went all the way from his sole up to his shoulder joint for triggering the shot, and I'd like all of that stuff not to be clanking and rattling about.

All of this was quite entertaining to work out, as I had no advertisement, box-art or manual to show of how he actually worked. Of course I cheated when making this and looked up "Hot wheels robot track" and it honestly took me a while to find the right one, since it appears hot wheels have plenty of sweet robot tracks, tickling my goblin brain with the temptation of my shinies.

Yeah throw that car!

Come on murder-bot you got this!

Nitrobot, Nooooo!

Also while we're getting pumped, take a look at this fancy 2009 advertisement I found for my previously unknown robot now known as CYBORG DESTROYER, also just listen to that narrator and guitar soundtrack, this might be well past the nineties, but hot wheels doesn't care.

But yeah look at all the crap he can do, woo! And now I just crippled him for life, chronic injuries, woo...?

Now cyborg blaster may have left the day job at hot wheels, but he's ready for greener pastures. Time to settle down, get that paint job he always wanted and flex menacingly at all the 28mm suckers on the tabletop.

Here he is post surgery, put back together. I liked the dynamic bracing pose of his legs so did nothing about those. I removed the connector on his right shoulder since there should be enough surface area to glue the arm into a position I like, as for his left arm I left the knob where the arm normally snaps on, mainly so that I have something to angle it off. Next major step is building an impressive base as well as gap filling. And sticking with the name I think I might keep him as CYBJÖRG BLASTER, and give him his own tag so you can follow this specific project if you want to, sent as a massive Lunar Coalition eradicator to as the name states, thin out the encroaching and quite numerous cybjörgs I've made by this point.