My Bing time this week was mostly spent machining the parts for Bing's right (and some left) foot (see this week's picture for the current part set).  Some of them are cut from stock aluminum bars or plastic sheets.  Others are modifications of randomly-scavenged items from the hardware store.  A few details:

• The ankle is a universal joint designed for a radio-controlled truck of some kind, to which I took a hacksaw and drill.  This thing is made of hard steel and was almost impossible to drill through!
• All of the parts grouped by sixes in the photo are parts of Bing's foot pads, which are considerably more elaborate than I was originally anticipating.  Why?  Hmm.  Good question.  Not sure.  Shut up.
• The final weight of each foot, including the ankle joint and servo motor, will be about 100 grams, which is about 30 grams over the "budget" I had guesstimated.  Hopefully this won't be a problem.  If it is, I'll have to trim somewhere.
• To get the stuff to (hopefully!) fit, I had to make a considerable number of little tweaks to the stock items.  It felt weird laboring over a careful cut into a ten cent bushing, but that's life!  Here's an example of one such operation (click on the picture for a larger view).  In this case I am cutting a small slot into a nylon spacer, into which will go a retaining ring.

The remainder of my evening and weekend relaxation was spent designing various little circuit boards.  I just did a count and Bing will have ten or eleven circuit boards.  Yikes!  I better build some!

Six months to go!