Milktropolis. Full of sugary sweetness

It's never too soon to start planning your next Burn: Our Mutant Vehicle is now for Sale!

2011-06-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

We had a blast making it. And just as much fun using it on the Playa in 2010. But sadly we've got to move on. Our loss is your win. So start planning for 2012!

The mutant vehicle consists of:
- An 8x8 foot, 25 foot tall milk carton tower that hold 4+ people
- A ten foot diameter fiberglass cereal bowl couch that seats 10+
- 80 custom made cereal shaped pillows for chilling out in the bowl with friends, old and new.
- A milk splash umbrella to keep riders in the shade while relaxing in the bowl.
- A lighted spoon ladder to get into the cereal bowl from the ground.
- An irresistible fiberglass slide to get from the carton back down to the Playa.
- A lighting extravaganza (bowl is rope-light lined inside and out, carton contains a bazilliion (4000) individual sequenceable LED lights so you can be seen at night).
- A whisper quiet Honda EU1000i generator (for the lights) with only 20-30 hours on it.

The vehicle is driven from the upper carton area with it's own steering wheel, gas/brake control, and emergency kill switch, but the original vehicle driving position is still an option, if preferred ( with a spotter).

You can't tell from anywhere on the outside, but the art car is based on a '92 Ford Explorer. It starts and runs just like a daily driver. The suspension has been modified with aftermarket off road parts to increase it's capacity. It rides on 31in off road tires and comes with two full sized spares. One in the stock location and another that can be kept at camp.

The vehicle is not street legal. And it no longer has a usable VIN #.

milktropolis@gmail.com if you have questions.

We Made It-Milktropolis is born!

2011-06-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

Milking it at Burning Man

2011-05-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

http://artcar.blogspot.com/2010/09/milking-it-at-burning-man-on.html

On the Playa

2010-09-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/visualpoeticaldistractions/5009998647/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/withinreason/4994702453/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyjuice/4976380382/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/madein1953/4991688376/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyjuice/4976285604/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/willworkforcheese/4970669876/

http://www.loupiote.com/burningman/photos/5092865828.shtml http://www.flickr.com/photos/innovatordoll/4982423945/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inadvertentgardener/4976038600/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanais/5001953004/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanais/5001954640/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61689423@N00/4966220861/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/madein1953/4991081269/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54024484@N04/4997810196

http://www.flickr.com/photos/extramatic/4990771894/

a look under the...floor

2010-08-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

lights from the inside of the carton

steering wheel in carton has a gear on it...looooong bike chain to a small gear and some wood blocks for tension. small gear turns a rod that has anonther gear and another bike chain connected to the actual truck steering wheel. we used the rims of an old school Red Flyer wagon, flattened them to mount, and welded a gear to the original wagon axel.

outside the driver's door, showing the gear closest to the steering wheel

explorer steering column showing added gear and bike chain

Getting Loaded

2010-08-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

to get it on the semi, jon had to back the art car up a ramp with loose steering while bob pressed the brake and gas with his hands, unable to see anything

after some spinning out and dumping gas, we made it. thanks to an amazing crew of rammits

now we just had to go straight as these ramps became a bridge to another semi

straight didn't go so smoothly

but finally we were packed up and ready to roll

Lit up!

2010-08-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

Nice views

2010-08-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

GSD day

2010-08-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Disassembly for transport begins

Clean roof: check

Spoon ladder: check

Cereal pillows: check

don't look so happy about it...

Lighting the carton

2010-08-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

(finally) on the move!

2010-08-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

A tablecloth keeps things civilized

2010-08-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

60 feet of squares on squares. This pattern hurt our brains.

Raise the Roof

2010-08-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

The moment of truth (one of several to come)

Perfection on the forklift. And a great view of the carton exit ramp.

3600 holes for 3600 lights. look out, fingertips!

Found

2010-07-24T22:36:00.001-07:00

A weekend of visible progress

2010-07-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Taping up the milk and installing the headlights.

Touching up the carton - and the bowl is *finally* done!

Near perfection. What's next?!

I see you

2010-07-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

It's starting to look a lot like breakfast

2010-07-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

Spout, slide, sploosh-frame.

This rattlesnake decided to get in on the fun.

Doesn't look so much like a toilet anymore.

Painting Begins

2010-07-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

Nat expertly color-matches to the slide. Stephinitely expertly stirs.

Bringing it together.

Projecting and tracing the graphics. The backdrop of fireworks and gunfire helped mark the occasion.

Sun setting over carton

2010-06-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

The Lido deck gets a coat of primer. Stephanitely paints the carton by twilight.

It's gonna be a bowlful

2010-06-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

This is what 80+ pillows shaped like cereal and stuffed into bags looks like.

Things are shaping up!

2010-06-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

Framing the top half of the carton.

Moooooooore sanding.

A metal thing that looks like an owl.

Scavenging for paint among the ruins.

Constructing the carton

2010-05-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

Finally some nice weather. And the first panels for the carton go up.

The space inside. The driver and navigator's bridge and proposed lounge.

The view of the bowl from the bridge.

All the lower panels are up and mostly secured.

Putting Milktropolis away for the night.

Working it Out in Our New Home

2010-05-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

A banner day of sanding, fiberglassing, building, bondo-ing, and putting the pieces back together.

Getting busy in our new digs.

Making a mess. There's always more fiberglassing to be done. Or so it seems.

Building the carton floor. An 8 foot square room that will be our command center atop the cab of the truck.

Taking a break from sanding under the watchful eye of Officer Big Mac.

Forklift porn. Go Dave go.

Getting it lined up. Considering that it's been off the truck for many months it's amazing that it still fits.

Hot!

So long, cranky neighbors!

2010-05-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

the rebirth canal

Woo hoo!

Special thanks to Jon's brother's friend for lending us the trailer.

The truck, er carton, came too.

This forklift is our new god.

Our Last Day in the Burbs

2010-04-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

I guess the neighbors got sick of the sanding too. In a few days, the city would come knocking.

But not before we primed the carton panels

And made the perfect curve

Is there a doctor in the house?

2010-04-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Flip Flop

2010-04-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

Time to re-right the bowl...with the help of 5 strong (bodied + willed) men.

Encouragement from Licorice (with her ultimately failed makeshift leash).

More sanding...really!?

Finally - working on the inside right-side up! (Spray-foaming and rasping in prep for fiberglass.)

A new carving template....soon to be rejected like its predecessors.

Satisfying...

Putting the "art" in "carton"

2010-04-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

All sealed up for surreal driving

2010-04-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

Since the vehicle is going to be remotely driven with either our, yet to be tested, motorized controls or 'big stick coming through the floor' back up controls, we've freed up an area in the old cab to have a small chill space. Bring on the fur.

Devising a new plan....

2010-04-03T22:45:00.000-07:00

....while getting to work with turkey knives on the inside of the bowl. It was a good way to stay out of the rain.

We made a mistake!

2010-04-03T22:14:00.000-07:00

The day begins with "protective" latex paint to prevent the fiberglass resin from dissolving the shaped styrofoam.

Filling the seams with drywall mud to get a good shape and to further protect the styrofoam from the resin.

Stirring up the potion. 100 to 1. Mix, mix, mix.

Cutting the fiberglass mats.

Making sure the fiberglass is done right. All hands on for laying up the fiberglass mat.

Or not. Ripple-o-rama. The latex paint DID NOT protect the styrofoam from the shrinking effect of the fiberglass resin. The end result is a flimsy wrinkly bowl. Looks like a lot of filling and sanding is in our future. The lesson learned is that the internets are not always right. Latex paint will NOT protect styrofoam from polyurethane resin. Spread the word.

And more new solutions

2010-03-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

Excited to employ our new tool, and after a few hours tracking down the best way to adhere the styrofoam (rubber cement), we start covering the bowl.

There she is. Notice the gaps we filled in with expanding foam. We thought that was a brilliant idea.

Until it wouldn't yield to the hot wire knife. (But check out the contraption Jon built to make the perfect curve!)

How about car battery powered steel cable? (Notice the heat gun already cast aside.)

To be fair, it did make some impact before catching on fire.

Getting more rudimentary.

And more desperate.

And back to the basics: turkey knife, sanding block, and vacuum. The best, and apparently only way, to make a compound curve.

A new solution

2010-03-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

Looking around on the web for solutions, I found a guy that used a soldering gun to make a hot wire knife. "I've got one of those." I thought. Out to the garage. I removed the tip and added some 10 guage copper wire. We won't be able to do the whole bowl profile at once. But we can make many different wire loops that correspond to different parts of the bowl. It will take many passes. But it should work. We'll also need to make a moveable jig to connect the gun to the template accurately. Fingers are crossed. We'll report after next weekend.

Failure

2010-03-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

Tried to make the hot wire template for cutting the outside of the (soon to be covered in foam) bowl. I thought that the best thing would be to run a single hot wire around the bowl to cut the shape evenly. So I used a template that was 1/2 an inch smaller than the finished size of the outside of the bowl. Using screws as standoffs I attached a bandsaw blade. Bringing us back to the final template shape. Connected to a car battery charger and it got hot. Hot enough to cut foam except the blade expanded when it got hot and deformed. Couple of hours work with only a lesson in metal dynamics to show for it.

Bowl over

2010-02-27T19:24:00.001-08:00

Decoupling the bowl in prep for fiberglassing. The tires had to come off to get the bowl off. Hopefully that won't be a necessity every time.

It's a bowl!

2010-02-24T19:22:00.000-08:00

How to skin a bowl

2010-02-24T19:19:00.000-08:00

In the end we went with the 2d skinning of the bowl. We'll have to make up the extra d with foam before we fiberglass. We're going for a true round shape. Not a faceted sphere.

We've added the fuel filler door from the original donor vehicle. Allowing us to fill up on 8 essential vitamins and unleaded on the go.

Fail

2010-02-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

We tried a number of ways to skin the bowl but just couldn't seem to get it right. I'm sure this lathe process could work. I've seen it somewhere. But it just wouldn't follow the bowl shape. If it was a nice sunny day we might have spent more time with it. But the rain somehow sapped us of our desire to tinker with it.

Let me take a minute to explain WIBCI..?

2010-02-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

All designers, tinkers and engineers are familiar with the acronym K.I.S.S. As most of us know, it stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. While I usually agree that this is a helpful thing to remember. I also feel that it can be artistically stifling. Nothing whimsical or fun came out of KISS. Nothing crazy or amazing ever developed with KISS in mind. (Mostly)
But how many awesome things began with a blank sheet of paper and the phrase "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" "Wouldn't it be cool if we could fly like a bird?" Wouldn't it be cool if man could go to the moon?" Wouldn't it be cool if George Foreman sold an appliance that would allow me to grill indoors?" W.I.B.C.I..? Look up "Wouldn't it be cool". Below the sponsored links you'll find pages and pages of people asking crazy and challenging questions beginning with the phrase.

Put a little WIBCI..? in your day.

Inside of bowl

2010-01-18T18:48:00.000-08:00

The inside of the bowl showing progress and the speaker placement (left side, black rings) at the joining of the bowl and the carton. The speaker holes allow access to the bolts that attach the bowl as well.

Filling in the space in the bowl with salvaged foam.

2010-01-15T23:39:00.000-08:00

I see you!

Grrrr!

All the styrofoam was originally destined for a landfill.

All sealed up.

Installing the seats

2010-01-15T23:05:00.000-08:00

Where the bowl meets the carton

2010-01-15T22:46:00.000-08:00

The most complicated area to date. Trying to connect a flat carton to a spherical bowl proved to be challenging for our gray matter.

Practice driving on newly installed carton floor

2010-01-01T22:42:00.000-08:00

Approximate driving position for the finished vehicle.

Stuffing pillows

2009-12-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

All the stuffing for the pillows is scrounged or salvaged.We hope to have over 80 pillows.

Moving forward, despite weather

2009-12-26T22:31:00.000-08:00

Rain, rain, go away. The elevated floor for the carton starts to take form.

Recycled

2009-12-22T16:23:00.000-08:00

This is what $36 of scrap steel looks like.

Sewing begins on cereal...err pillows.

2009-12-20T22:29:00.000-08:00

Red hearts, yellow moons, and green clovers.

Test driving the bowl

2009-12-20T22:24:00.000-08:00

Oh my! Look at all the wiring.

2009-12-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

We didn't dare cut any wiring for fear of it never starting again. Guess what? It didn't start. Just needed to reconnect some grounds and we were back in action.

Separating body from frame

2009-12-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

No fancy hoists here. Just manpower.

Cutting donor vehicle

2009-12-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

Bowl taking shape

2009-11-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Workday snacks and scratchers

2009-11-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

More cutting and lots of sawdust

2009-11-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

It all starts here.

2009-11-07T21:25:00.000-08:00

We begin cutting out bowl parts using CAD templates. (Thanks Ken) Thirteen pieces of every shape.

Picking up supplies

2009-11-05T21:28:00.000-08:00

Pencil to paper

2009-11-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

We used some design books and a few measurements to come up with a workable cross section for the bowl. Then off to the CNC router with the file and in a week we had usable full scale templates. We crossed our fingers and hoped all the measurements were right.