Three days ago, on a Friday morning, I stumbled across the Mid-Atlantic Rubber Company with some Google searching, a very fine company indeed. I called them up and told them what I was looking to do in the way of rubber feet for the insectoid’s legs. They offered to ship me some samples. I mentioned that I was nearby and they offered to let me come look at some stuff. So I did.

A fellow by the name of David was absurdly helpful and ended up just giving me six of each of two kinds of rubber tips to try mounting on the end of the 1/4″ aluminum pieces. One of the kinds (part #0510) was too big to affix on its own, but I thought that maybe I could try gluing it. The other (part #1262), with some struggle, I could get to go onto the piece of aluminum that I brought with me.

Later that day at home, I put all six of the smaller rubber tips (crutch tips, David called them) onto the legs of the robots and validated that it now has good traction. Progress! Next up, I need to fix some alignment issues that keep the legs from swinging through their full range of motion cleanly. Then it’s a matter of mounting the circuit board for the micro-controller and cobbling together a basic program to grant the creature life.