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Attacking Martian Repair


robert

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Can anyone out there offer some advice? I recently purchased a Horikawa Attacking Martian from Ebay. I was told that it worked, but switch was finicky. Well. big surprise! It does not work. By continuously flipping switch back and forth while jiggling up and down, I did get a few short bursts of power and movement, which indicates motor is working but I can't get it to run continuously. Otherwise the robot looks great so i would like to get it working.

Are there any parts suppliers out there that make replacement switches for these? A half-hearted internet search turned up nothing. Is it worth taking the switch itself apart and attempting a repair? i have never worked on one of these, so I am open to some experienced advice.

Thanks in advance! :D

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Pop the hole top sholder part off. then you can see the switch from the inside. There is nothing to break on the switch so that leaves a cold solder connection on the switch or the wires leading from the switch to the frame or motor. Also it is common for the switches to quit working if they have been hit. This pushes in on them and the tabs that hold the switch parts together get bent, then the contacts do not make a good connection if at all. This is a easy bot to get into Just go slow and do not bend any tabs more than they need to be bent. Also when ever bending tabs on any robot bend them slowly, if you bent the tab fast there is more stress placed on the metal and it will brake the tab quicker. :P

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oh one more thing about bending tabs.. be sure that whatever you use to lever the tabs open won't scratch the paint! If you are going to use a screwdriver be extremely careful, I once slipped and left a deep 1/2" scratch. Now I use a hard plastic piece for tabs.

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Thanks Alain,

I actually made a few small wooden paddles for tab removal and they work quite well. The wood doesn't scratch the paint at all. I made them out of cherrywood chopsticks, just cut them in half and sanded ends down to a flat paddlelike surface that is thin enough to get under most tabs.

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The first toy robot I ever bought was a silver Attacking Martian. It did not even have a switch. The dealer was using a paper clip to make contact. It was my first Robot and my first repair. I went to Radio Shack and bought a small slide switch and put it right over the hole. I even used the screws that came with it. It worked fine and I have never goon back to make it more original. That old style switch is very fragile. That type of clear plastic usually breaks or cracks. The switch is used to touch two pieces of metal and hold it in place. Paper Clips work too.

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I got my first robot as a present when I was a kid and it was an Attacking Martian! Of course I broke it within a week or two, took it all apart actually. After a few more "experiments" with various mechanical toys, noone ever bought me any more after that... or any other toys that could easily be broken! All I ever got was Mecano and lego or likewise.. But that attacking Martian was something that really stuck in my mind, the menacing guns shooting etc...

So years later I saw one junked Attacking Martian at a flea market and promptly bought it, and so began an obsession? and that, as they say, was the beginning of the end... or should that be, the beginning and the end? :lol:

Since we are mostly concerned now with collecting near perfect robots, or trying to fix imperfections, I was wondering how many of us actually destroyed/took apart our (robot) toys when we were kids? I used to do that to try figure out what made them work! Anyone ever take apart anything that turned out truly expensive today?

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Anyone ever take apart anything that turned out truly expensive today?

No, never decimated anything truly valuable by todays standards but I certainly lost, traded or wore out and threw away a few, including Alps TV Robot, Robot Commando, and one or two (I believe)Horikawas. I do remember taking apart that green flying saucer with the gyroscope inside- I just had to see what made that thing tick! Didn't worry about screwdrivers, just broke the thing open with a hammer for a looksee to satisfy my curiosity. I have since learned more civilized, toy friendly means of performing autopsies.

By the way, speaking of autopsies, I removed the head and shoulders of my Attack Robot and found the problem- the white wire that comes up through the center hole of the switch was no longer soldered down. A quick dab of solder fixed the problem and now it's ready for battle. So thanks John and Alain for responding. I do have an additional question though. I noticed a small blue wire near the lower base of the switch that is not attached, just floating. it is soldered on the other end to the motor support bracket, so it appears to be a bond for the electrical parts and not actually required for grounding. Should I solder this to the switch housing?

thanks.

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Anyone ever take apart anything that turned out truly expensive today?

Not only did I disassemble gift robots as a kid, but I even worked to earn money to buy robots to disassemble. My childhood collection of tin and plastic robots was quite extensive, well over a hundred tin litho pieces alone. None of them survived the early 1970s. I wasn't taking them apart to see how they worked, I was intent on making them BETTER somehow. Some really dangerous experiments, I must admit, trying to rewire DC robots into AC. My mom's kitchen floor was burned in several spots due to my robo-electrical experiments. LOL! Any of those robots would be worth hundreds or thousands of bucks today, except they were totally destroyed by the time I finished with them.

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Robert, if the robot is now working and since I can not se the wire you talking about I would leave it alone. It does sound like a ground wire, but if the bot is runing then a second ground must be in place and working.

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