As with the tram before it I wanted to continue turning items of the boring, everyday Australian experience into something fun and exciting that the local layperson could relate to and connect with regardless if they were fans of a certain transforming robot toy franchise or not. However I also wanted a simpler project. I wanted to work with something smaller (and as I reasoned at the time, easier to transform) than a tram as well as explore more of our icons beyond public transport. Even though I was working from home by that time, my imagination was still very much inspired from my days working 9-5 in a city office. A quintessential part of my daily city commuting experience was the walk from Flinders St station to the office where no matter what street I was on, long before I would see them I would hear that unmistakable whirring of the morning street sweepers slowly making their way around the footpaths. From a shape and proportions perspective, they are short and boxy which makes them much easier to cut up and arrange into robot than a tram or carriage without the need to find clever ways to use up excess length. So when it came to deciding what I would transform next, a street sweeper seemed an easy choice.

So what went wrong?

Well nothing at the start. In fact the initially rough cut up of the vehicle suggested that things would fit quite well together within a sensible number of parts. It wasn’t until I’d decided to upscale the model by 50% (at the time for improved parts strength) did complexity start to creep in. While I could now implement more intricate joints and smaller moving parts, I was also no longer sticking to the enforced design simplicity that came with working in limited space (a constraint I had deliberately prescribed myself at the start but conveniently forgot). So what followed was basically:

1. I need to move this part from here to there.

2. But wait, I have room for more detail/articulation/gimmicks, I can just divide this part up for better assembly…

3. Now there are more parts.

4. Repeat.

It took a few rounds of that before I realised I’d fallen back into the trap of being driven by perfectionism, and wanting all the features, all the details, all at once. My cup wasn’t being refilled by the progress and wins anymore and I was spending more time being dissatisfied than appreciating my work. This project just wasn’t fun anymore.

That’s the circuit breaker.

One of the big lessons I picked up from my creative pursuits over the years is that when a hobby project is forced to completion with nothing behind it but joyless grind, the feeling of crossing the finish line under those circumstances feels like a cheap, short-changed version of the amazing uplifting high you expect after a major accomplishment. Rarely will I be looking at my best work as much of the patience required to bring that out will have been jettisoned in that mad dash to the end. It feels like being cheated out of something worked so hard for. So I made the decision to shelve the project (despite being 75% of the way through) for now and maybe come back to it when I’m ready again.

So sitting here with an incomplete robot that doesn’t even have a head, was it worth it? Absolutely. Even though the project didn’t get to finish, it served well as a test bed for new ideas with many valuable take aways:

• Steel dowel pins - The tram used screws to facilitate hinge joints which while did the job, were a bit clunky and not great in limited space scenarios. Figuring out 1.5mm steel pins has enabled all the robustness a screw solution provided with the added benefit of fitting in much tighter spaces. This enables a lot more options on implementing any sort of folding panel or hinge solution.

• Design for the whole production process, not just the finished result - The major bottlenecks in the Tramsformer production journey were by far the parts prep and assembly steps (10+ hours per unit). This time round, I was very conscious of making sure that the parts and movements were designed in a way that were not only easy to print, but simple enough to put together without needing a huge reserve of cognitive effort. Assembly has been much less stressful this time round.

• Fun factor - For hobby projects like this, fun is better than done, and done is better than perfect. When it stops being fun, it won’t get done and if it doesn’t get done, it probably won’t get iterated on to get good enough to perfect. It’s also fine (and in fact probably healthy) to take breaks, especially when the well of joy starts to dry up. Come back to it later when you’ve refreshed.

So completed or not, the Street Sweeper has served its creative purpose well and the fruits of the project will be carried over to the next one. In the meantime, it’ll sit on my desk as a reminder of something to look forward to; even in its incomplete form, I’m still damn proud of it.

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After a fairly successful experience with the Tramsformer project, I decided that far from being burnt out to the point of never wanting to see another 3D printer or toy robot ever again, I was finding myself inspired by the skills, achievement, and learnings I’d gained from the whole journey. Ideas that previously would never had occurred to me or felt beyond my ability were now not only possible but viable with the major limiter now being time and mental energy outside of work hours. That said while I was itching to start a new transforming robot project, I wasn’t quite ready to jump into another huge engineering undertaking just yet so there were a few new constraints I wanted for the next round:

• Easier assembly - By far the biggest challenge and bottleneck with the Tramsformer was assembling for production. After many tired evenings of fiddly handling of tiny screws, pliers, glue, and paint I wanted to make sure that any future design must be not only easy to produce parts for but also require minimal cognitive and physical effort to assemble as possible. Each Tramsformer unit took upwards of 10 hours of clean up and assembly before they were ready for packaging. I needed to do better than that.

• Easier parts production - I wanted to be able to prototype and iterate faster and experiment with new techniques and ideas sooner without the chore of cleaning up complicated prints or tinkering with print settings because of design complexities. This is something much easier to do while I’m still at the design stage rather than retrofitting a 95% complete model.

• Simpler transformation - The Tramsformer isn’t easy to transform, even with the instructions. I’d like the transforming experience for the next one to be more joyful than frustrating.

  

As with the tram, I wanted the vehicle/alt mode of this new bot to be something mundane, ordinary and relatable to everyday folks. After a false start with attempting to transform a street sweeper vehicle, I decided to add to the list:

• Smaller scale - In an attempt to address some of the assembly and printing challenges, I’d opted to design the street sweeper as a larger model. Unfortunately in doing so this lead to a tendency to over-engineer much of the transformation and moving parts simply because there was space to do so. The part groups were big and complicated and the project lost steam. I needed to bite off something smaller that I could handle.

While the Street Sweeper sadly got shelved (for now), it wasn’t without some extremely valuable learnings, the key one being figuring out how to implement 1.5mm steel pin hinges. This would open the doors to much smaller scale designs that could robustly accomodate moving parts in spaces that screws couldn’t fit. I decided to try this on an idea I’d scribbled in a notebook after a few glasses of wine while on holiday in Portland last year: a wheelie bin.

I’ve got a good feeling about this :D