I'm looking for help regarding several things on a robot I'm building and I thought it would be good to try this forum.

Anyhoo, the first thing is, can someone tell me more about the following motors I've been given:

Stepping motor, Type: KP6M2-017, DC 6v, 1.8 Deg/step, No. 3929, Japan Servo Co. Ltd, Tokyo, Japan, ADO2222

Berger Lahr RSM 828/3 A FK, 110v, 50/60 hz, BV.5203, C=2, 0uf 1000/1200 U/Min, w-Germany

JD 550 18v, Jin Ding(this one is from a power-drill).

I'd especially like to know about the stepping motor and the Berger Lahr motor, because both can be accurately controlled by computer and the BL motor is a high-torque one.

Secondly, what sort of materials would one use to make a large, metal, structurally sound, and lightweight frame for a robot? I thought about steel L-beams, but I think they'd be way too heavy for this, but aluminum would bend too easily IMO.

Thirdly, and I know I'm probably a bit crazy for choosing it as a first project, but I'm building a bipedal walking robot. The feet will be pretty wide so I'm not too worried about tipping, but can someone point me towards a good 2-axis joint? The ankles will have to tip forward and back, lean from side to side, and rotate slightly. I'm handling the rotation by building a turntable in the foot and attaching a motor in the feet to move it by a bicycle chain. I also need the hip joints to have two degrees of freedom: the up/down motion of the leg and the ability to tip from side to side.

Fourthly, I need a good, fast microprocessor. I'd like the programming language to be fairly straightforward with a user-friendly interface. I'll be using several of them in various places to control things like the leg movement, walking speed, etc, so I'd also like them to be fairly cheap in relation to their processing speed.

The robot itself will be a 1:8 scale (4 foot tall) replica of the Battletech Mad Cat mech. I've always wanted one and have tried before to make one, but I started too small(1:12) and ended up with very little room in the legs for high-torque motors and gearing systems required to actually lift the thing.

So can you guys help me out, or am I whistling in the wind?

As far as materials go, I would think that aluminum would be plenty strong. I having trouble imagining what could make the aluminum bend. How much mass are you supporting?

Aluminum is rather expensive right now.

For microcontrollers, I'm a fan of AVR. There's plenty of help on AVRFreaks.net if you get stuck. I would suggest using WinAVR to program them in C. Your best bet would be to get a development board and work through some tutorials first.

Peter