The Chip and Dale Animation Cel Project

[singhcr]

I'm wearing Chip 'n' Dale socks at the moment! Just had to add that in. XP

I approve! Where did you get those?

[Chipster-roo]

The background sketch has great potential!

I'm really sorry for all these hardships you've faced...hopefully, in this new year of 2021, things will improve 

[MeadowRabbit]

I'm wearing Chip 'n' Dale socks at the moment! Just had to add that in. XP

I approve! Where did you get those?

Disney Store at Disney Springs in Florida. :3 They are almost to the knee styled socks.

[singhcr]

The background sketch has great potential!

I'm really sorry for all these hardships you've faced...hopefully, in this new year of 2021, things will improve 

Thanks 

[singhcr]

Alright, some progress to show at last!

Some of you may have been wondering how I plan on getting a metal pegboard to stay aligned properly to a wooden base. Since I specifically picked out a steel one, that means we can use magnets to hold the pegboard to the base, and the holes in the pegboard to align it to alignment pins sticking out of the board itself.

But in order to do this nice and clean, I need a special drill bit called a Forstner bit. Normal bits used for general metal and wood work leave a point in any blind hole and as I want these magnets to sit in nice and flat in the hole, this bit does just that.

P1020208

Nice. I just need to superglue these in and we're good to go. You can also see the punch mark in the wood for one of the two alignment pins here.



Here you can see the three magnets that will hold down the pegbar. I need to add the alignment pegs as well. You can also see the new threaded inserts at the center of the board that I added to give the whole mount a little more resistance to twisting forces. The depth of each hole isn't exactly right with the relatively crude depth stop I am using on my drill stand, so I drilled them a bit deep and can make up the height with shims to get the magnets to be flush with the board itself.

[singhcr]

Here you can see me pressing in these aluminum spacers to serve as registration pins for the pegboard to keep it oriented correctly relative to the baseboard. They are a very tight fit and there isn't much play between the pins and the holes in the pegboard itself.



I found that one of my holes was just slightly off relative to the pegbar. This is an example of tolerance stack-up, where each operation adds a bit of positional error in the final hole position.

1. CAD model blueprint taped to baseboard
2. Accuracy of factory edges used as alignment to get the blueprint taped to the board
3. Alignment of punch to hole center on blueprint
4. Alignment of drill bit relative to center of punch mark
5. Concentricity of drill bit inside chuck

If I had an end mill, I'd just mill out just a slight slot in this feature to make it fit, but here I can't do that. So I picked a series of slightly larger bits each time and re-drilled the hole expanding it by a few thousands of an inch to get it to fit. If I ever make a version 2 of this board, I'd make it out of aluminum and have a machine shop locate and drill these holes with a CNC machine that is fed my CAD model directly.

Considering the relatively crude tools I have to work with, I'm impressed it was that close the first time!

Now I just have to double check that the pegbar is horizontal relative to the rest of the table (if not, I can always compensate by tilting the camera mount a bit) and to glue these in along with the magnets. Like the magnets, I may need to add a few shims to get the level just so before I glue them. The number one rule of a prototype IMHO is to design as much adjustability as you can because although you do a good amount of calculations and thinking before you ever build it, you don't know if something is a little off, you encounter an unexpected issue etc. For example I was very concerned with the frame bending to the point where the camera wasn't planar to the table so I did a lot of calculations for bending stress but after using it for a while I realized that the main issue is vibration dampening and twisting due to that vibration. The design is flexible enough to add on braces, compensate for the pegbar being a bit askew etc.

[Chipster-roo]

Some great progress here Getting everything aligned properly seems much more complicated than one would assume, with so many different measurements having to be taken into account The final product seems solid and functional

[singhcr]

Thank you my friend. I was very frustrated when the pegbar wasn't lining up with the registration pegs, but I had to remind myself that this is a prototype and it won't be perfect the first time and not to give up.

[singhcr]

Well, some more progress!

I got the tubing cut and drilled by a local machine shop. Thankfully I have dealt with them in a professional capacity and he's willing to do simple stuff like this as an "after hours" unofficial type work as I can pay in cash and save a lot of money as most machining services cost $100/hr minimum.

Here, you can see the steel framing that will hold the glass platen. The platen will glue to the smaller inner square tubes, and it can pivot independently of the main tubes that rotate around the rear threaded rod as I lift it with the front handle. That independent pivot is critical to ensure that the glass is always flat with the table to get even pressure over the artwork/cels, as since the pivot point of the whole mechanism/linkage is above the table (it has to be), the glass cannot be completely flat otherwise.



I was worried that with any tolerancing errors introduced by me with drilling the holes for the mounting points to attach the pivot mounting brackets to the wooden base that the glass may actually touch the pegboard instead of being a few millimeters away from it (which is why I paid for machining to get +/- 0.003 inches/0.076mm hole tolerance and +/- 0.010 inches/0.254mm length tolerance) to minimize the overall stackup and it seems to have paid off!

Now comes some big steps:

1. Spray painting  the metal flat black to avoid light reflections
2. Finding the ideal tension for the pivot bolts and the bolts on the pivot rod. The quick and dirty way is to adjust the bolt tension but that runs the risk of the bolt loosening over time. I can find the needed gap and use lock nuts, or ideally a shoulder bolt with the exact gap so I can tighten the nuts completely with no need to rely on tension
3. Gluing the glass to the pivot tubes, make sure glass doesn't get scratched. I'll probably buy or make a dust cover to go over it when not in use.
4. Get correct density of foam to place under artwork to provide even pressure from underneath the artwork when it's under the glass. Too soft won't do anything and will deform permanently, too hard won't work either. Trial and error.

I'll also have to have a gas shock to hold the whole thing up when I am trying to change out the cels/art. Not sure how to calculate that but I'll figure it out.

[Chipster-roo]

It's great that you managed to get this done at a reasonable cost The measurements are really very precise, going down to fractions of a millimeter

The table looks great in its current state, things appear to be progressing nicely Best wishes with these next steps!

[singhcr]

It's great that you managed to get this done at a reasonable cost The measurements are really very precise, going down to fractions of a millimeter

The table looks great in its current state, things appear to be progressing nicely Best wishes with these next steps!

Thank you my friend! I appreciate it. It is nice to see things look more "concrete" and close to done. It is also helpful when skills and contacts I obtained at my job translate into personal projects such as this. I love seeing an idea go from something in your head to a sketch to a 3D model to something that's really there. It's like magic.

[singhcr]

Now it's time to move on to gluing the steel tubing to the glass platen.

This glass is special low iron (aka water white) float glass with very high light transmissibility and minimal color cast. Typically glass has a tint to it especially as it gets thicker which is the opposite of what we want here as it throws off the colors of the artwork underneath. It's called Pilkington Optiwhite. I imagine the glass used in even the 90s let alone the 1940s wasn't this good. I was after a low iron float glass with an anti-reflective coating on top but unfortunately most glass companies do not sell directly to consumers or when I found a distributor to use they would not sell in small quantities. So while this glass is reflective and I'll have to rely on my light angle and diffusion lenses as well as my camera shadowguard to avoid reflections, it is extremely high quality and absolutely clear which is great.

To prepare the steel, I sanded it clean to remove any traces of paint and to scuff up the surface for a better glue bond. Both the glass and steel were cleaned with isopropyl alcohol and I used gloves to avoid fingerprints, as skin oil is a solvent and will weaken the bond.



I researched what glues to use for bonding glass to metal and two came to the top: epoxy and cyanoacetate (aka superglue). Super glue would work, but it sets almost instantly which gives me no time to align and clamp the pieces together so I went with epoxy.

A warning with using epoxy as I haven't used it for some time: it absolutely stinks. That smell is from volatile organic compounds (VOC, sometimes just called OV for organic vapors) and is toxic. Due to my CPAP machine my sense of smell is poor and after a good 10 minutes I had a huge headache and left the room once the 5 minutes were up for the epoxy to set and I had clamped the first bar to the glass. I had to use a fan to air out the room.

So for the second metal tube to glue to the glass, I bought a mask and OV (organic vapor) filter cartridges to protect myself.



Filters come in two general categories: particulate with or without oil resistance, and vapors.

For example people have heard a lot about N95 masks for protection against COVID. That means it filters 95% of particles under a certain size and is not resistant to oil. R rated means oil resistant, and P means oil proof. If we were to use a N95 or P100 mask here, or a common dust mask it would do nothing for vapors, just like an OV filter wouldn't protect against particles. (As an aside, N95 works just fine for COVID as it is stopping the moist saliva particles that people breath out that which is huge relative to N95 filtration standards and has no oil.) You can get a combined P100 and OV/VOC mask which you would need with spray paint as it has both oil particles and vapor from the solvent. When done with the filters, bag them and press the air out and date the bag. I perform a seal check every time I put on a mask by covering the filters with my hands and breathing in. If I feel a leak or the mask doesn't suck in, there is no seal. After 6 months max even bagged, those OV filters are saturated and it's time to throw them away. So for this job, since I am only dealing with vapors and no dust or oil, the VOC/OV filters work great and they were half the price of the P100+VOC filters.

Remember always my friends, safety first! Do not risk your life for an art project. If anyone gives you a hard time for being safe, those people are frankly idiots.

[singhcr]

A huge, huge, huge milestone has been accomplished today- a complete glass platen assembly!







There's a little play in the linkages so the frame wobbles a bit, but I can fix that if it gets in the way here or leave that for a possible version 2.0 of this table. Like any prototype it's never going to be 100% perfect the first time and the goal is to make it functional, which it certainly is- you can see the independent pivot of the glass relative to the frame works like the CAD model shows which ensures the glass will automatically level itself on the artwork/cels....

...and just as importantly when shot through the digital camera mounted on the stand and through the shadowguard you can see that the glass is right next to the pegboard and clears it too, which means all that time and expense getting it professionally machined paid off and my process of using the paper printed blueprints to mark the mounting holes for the platen brackets worked too.



I do need to add a gas shock to hold this assembly up in the air while I add/remove the artwork underneath and a foam pad to place under the artwork to ensure even pressure, but otherwise this table is done mechanically unless I determine the LED copy lights here aren't compatible temperature wise with the daylight rated film I am using. In that case I will have to use camera flashes for the final photography.

Either way, it's definitely a big moment for this wolf. This has taken over 5 years to get to this point.