Various mechanical projects

Project:Bug hunting robot automaton
Started:March 1st 2009
Finished:March 8th 2009
Materials:Wood,aluminium,steel,glass bulb,plastic mesh,parts from an old typewriter.
Note:I've wanted to build an automaton for awhile now.Even though you could say that
my Tinguely inspired projects are automata in a way too.
For my first,hand-cranked,one I started with a simple mechanism:two cogs,the smaller sitting at a 90 degree angle.Then a cam on the big
cog makes a small shaft go up and down.
As I'm not good at making humanlike persons I choose for a robot.In this case one chasing a bug
with a net.My original idea was the have the bug on the small shaft dodge the net just as it was approaching.
But that didn't work out very well so I made that bug just hop up and down,and created
another bug that just flies in front of the net.