E-Waste Instructables Robot

I have a box of old electronics from a variety of sources - motherboards, PSU's, graphics cards, speakers, wires, etc. I was inspired by the Reuse Contest to create something with them. After digging through the box, I found a pair of old speakers and I had a "Eureka!" moment. I saw the Instructables robot cobbling himself together from various parts in this box and emerging triumphant. I just had to get to work on harvesting components.

• Box of electronics
• Power drill / Drill bits
• Pin vise hand drill: Click to Buy on Amazon
• Modeling files: Click to Buy on Amazon
• Super glue
• Milliput epoxy putty: Click to Buy on Amazon
• Liquid Green Stuff: Click to Buy on Amazon
• Tamiya basic type modeling putty: Click to Buy on Amazon
• Wire snippers
• Airbrush / Air compressor
• Paintbrush
• Paints
• Hot glue gun
• Hand saw: Click to Buy on Amazon
• Sandpaper

You need to find a set of materials that you can use to create the model. It is best to try to determine what you will use for each of the necessary components at this step. Some will work, some won't pan out - it doesn't matter too much. But you should make sure you at least have an idea of what you're going to use. When you've determined what you will use, you next need to separate or remove them so they're ready to work with.

I gathered a speaker for the body, capacitors for the arms and fingers, batteries for the legs, a PSU socket for the head, a random connector for the chest grill, and other miscellaneous parts to round out the model. I removed everything, cut them roughly to shape, combined a few to get started.

Next, you will need to use the materials you've gathered and start the process of getting them ready for your model.

For me, the biggest step was turning the speaker into the body of the robot. The shape of the speaker is what gave me the original idea, so I needed it to turn out well. I cut a chunk off of the speaker with the hand saw. I cut an additional piece off to fill in areas that weren't covered. The shape wasn't quite right, so I cut it in half and removed some material. I then cut out the space for the grill on the robot's chest. I planned to use a connector I found for the grill. I also cut down the head to the right size.

I next connected the two pieces of the body back together and added the grill using super glue and filled in the cracks using Tamiya putty. It should be noted that everything can be rough at this point as finishing the components comes later. I went on to cut out holes in the chest for three capacitors that would serve as the chest protrusions. I cut out holes for the neck and arms. I used a drill and modeling files to cut and then shape the holes. I also cut a piece of grate from an old PSU and cut it to size to serve as the undercarriage of the robot.

For the other body parts, I began to fill in the head with putty, attached the "fingers" to the "arms", and created the legs. I also cut some wires for antennae, got some buttons from a Roku remote for ears, and parts from a D volt battery connector for eyes.

Next, you will need to assemble what you can while still giving yourself room to work on the model. Unless, you're building something out of Legos, it probably won't go together perfectly. You'll need something to help you out. I opted to use a combination of Tamiya putty, Liquid Green Stuff, and Milliput.

Milliput worked perfectly for me. It's a two-part epoxy puddy. You mix the two parts, mold it in place, and it will dry in about 5 hours. At that point it's cutable, sandable, and perfect for connecting parts and rounding out the design of the robot (and covering up mistakes). I used it to connect all the parts of the main body back together, attach the arms, attach the head, and attach the legs. As you can see, it still looks very rough, but that is what the next step is for.

In this step you need to finalize the shape of pieces, smooth out the surface, and get them ready for painting. You will need a full array of sandpaper grits. Always work from roughest (lowest number grit) to finest (highest number grit).

I sanded down the Milliput and shaped it as best I could. I then sanded down pretty much the whole model to get a uniform surface.

At this point, you will want to first prime and then paint your components.

Because of the variety of materials used in this model (plastic, metal, putty), I made sure to prime all the pieces before painting them. I used the airbrush to prime and then paint the body and legs. I used a paintbrush to paint the eyes, ears, and fingers. I also used a paintbrush for some of the smaller details.

Finally, you will connect all your finished components together to create your finished model.

For this step, I just used super glue to connect the pieces together. The undercarriage with the attached legs just screwed on to the main body.

At this point, I had the complete Instructables robot, but I wanted to complete my initial vision of him triumphantly emerging from the box of old electronics. So I used hot glue to combine various pieces from my box that would serve as a stand for the complete model.