#x factory

VIVID 2016

As part of my Masters at UTS, I have a 1 minute film in this year’s VIVID Light Festival in Sydney!  It is part of the larger presentation named ‘X Factory’; details are here: http://www.vividsydney.com/event/light/x-factory

My approach to the brief was to examine my own thoughts on the issue of automation. The first part of the film asks the question ‘What do you do when your ‘purpose’ is replaced, when your function is outsourced?’ and the second part answers it with ‘Your self expression cannot be removed or homogenized, who you are as an individual has value’.  

Birdland follows the character Budgie, who finds herself lost in the turmoil of the city and its automation, but utilises the robots themselves to convey her inner self and find joy.

Hello World, X Factory on Flickr.

Here at MachoCave we tend to amp up on our projects in the summer! If you recall, last summer we built an entire 1155 gaming computer, this summer we'll take a look at what it takes to build out a rc car! Sure, you're probably addicted to your video games, but back in the day all things radio control ruled the world!

The X Factory SCX-60 CF is a mid-motor conversion kit for the ever popular Team Associated SC10. SC stands for short course truck - a class of radio control racing, usually 1/10 scale electric off road. Because the SC10 kit is so popular among racers, you can usually find used SC10s on Ebay or Craigslist. In our case, we found it difficult to purchase a used one as we were constantly outbid at the last second. Also, we didn't really have time to track down a craigslist seller-as we were stuck in the studio working all day and the various sellers couldn't meet us at or near the studio also some sellers lived two to three hours away.  Thus our schedules seemed to be incompatible. We did have a stock RTR from a previous review, and we all fell in love that RTR so much so that we couldn't bear to take it apart. It was just horrifying to think that the lunch hour play would be ruined. Also if we took apart the stock RTR, we'd be rushing through the build and not really doing the SCX-60 CF build any justice. Thus we took the hard decision to take the parts option. We had already broken a lot of parts on our stock RTR and had some spare parts in reserve. We found that if you bid on the more obscure part on Ebay--you are more likely to win that auction. As a result our X-Factory SCX-60 CF is combination of new parts purchased from local hobby shops, online hobby shops, and Factory Team parts purchased on Ebay.

Here are a few tips that we've learned from building our X Factory SCX-60 CF so far:

1. Read the manual all the way through - it's actually the best manual that we have ever read! We had questions and the next few pages answered our questions, also the last few pages answered even more questions--in short read through the entire manual before you build.

2. Get the right tools - about half way through our build we ran into an issue where we couldn't get the nuts on tight enough. A quick trip to the local hobby shop resolved that, and we really didn't have to go back to the previous steps if we had the correct tool in the first place.

3. Get enough sleep! I can't stress this one enough, as you are building out the SCX-60 CF or any other RC Car or computer, etc... You get on a roll and start to do just awesome--a few hours later you are making a ton of silly mistakes--losing parts, installing parts in the wrong order, or making downright silly mistakes. Take a break, take a nap, or start again the next day with 8+ hours of sleep--we know it's harder to do, and it's a step worth trying if you get really stuck!

4. Ask questions! Your local hobby shop may have a RC guru that can provide a wealth of support. We admit that some local hobby shop might really suck, it took a few trips to visit all of the local hobby shops in our area before we found to our surprise two local hobby shops that were super helpful. Granted-we are lucky that our region has 6 local hobby shops. Most local hobby shops don't exactly cater to racers, and carry only the parts that would break on an RC car or plane most frequently. Search around! There might just be one or two stores out there that are helpful! If you don't like any local hobby shop or don't have one in your area, online forums are a great place to make friends and ask questions.