Yearly Archives: 2012

Nail polish remover, center foot and more sanding!

So: After emptying several tubes of model kit glue, with various results, I got back on trying to find the raw chemical, Ethyl Acetate, to glue together my droid.

You can find the actual chemical, the only issue is you need to buy it in bulk!

So, after emailing, calling and finding out ore about it, I stumbled across something.

Seems my girlfriends nail polish remover consists mainly of … you guessed it: Ethyl Acetate!

I have called the company to see how much concentration of this it’s actually in the bottle, but a competing brand (no pic, sorry) (Gripen Remover for you Swedes) consists of 80-90% of Ethyl Acetate.

So, silly as it may sound, I tried gluing a few pieces of styrene together with nail polish remover… and it actually works!

I’ve used the “other” brand, since I know the concentration in that one, until I get word from the company about the concentration in the bottle pictures above.

I also cut out all my pieces for the center foot, and started gluing it together. Not with glue, though. I glued it with nail polish remover.

My initial thoughts is that it is very volatile, you need to work FAST, and you need to soak a bit into the plastic, then keep it hard pressed together for some time, and most importantly: leave it over night to harden. The joint doesn’t get stiff and firm until after 24 hours.

So far, so good!

Oh, apart from that, I’ve got a few hours worth of sanding ahead of me. Got to sand both motor holders, parts of the center foot, the second leg, and chamfer like mad for the foot shells!

Good thing it’s a long weekend coming along!

 

//Micke

By |2016-12-06T00:02:02+01:00January 5th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Nail polish remover, center foot and more sanding!
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So another day of building…

No pictures in this update, no point, really, as what I’ve done is basically finish off the second leg and managed to build the second foot holder at the same time!

I made a slight mistake on the foot when i glued the styrene together, but that only resulted in the foot being even more sturdy than the first one! =)

Good thing with the styrene that it’s possible to fix a lot of your mistakes afterwards 😉

//Micke

By |2012-03-19T09:27:41+01:00January 2nd, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on So another day of building…
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Some new years building progress…

So, since I’ve had a lot of time on my hands during the new years, I’ve managed to get quite a bit done!

I took a few trips to the hardware store and picked up more polystyrene cement, as well as some needed tools and a huge lot of nuts and bolts and washers. At least enough for me to attach battery boxes, the motors to the main feet and all that.

I took the first leg i finished outside and spent 10 minutes with my mouse sander on it, to get all unsmooth edges and uneven bits done and dealt with, and the end result was really nice and smooth.

In addition to that, I routed cables through the leg, and made sure my shoulder hubs fit well into the shoulder, with a magnetic lock.

Here’s the sanded leg with cables running through the leg and proper cable attachments mounted. This leg only needs a small amount of sanding on the marked, red edge before it is ready for skinning.

I decided to add a caster to the main foot as well, as the big wheel is really off center, and I wanted to make sure the foot was nice and level. I may not need this, but at least I have the option of trying this. With the system with the motor holders, and the feet only being shells, I should be able to just switch the feet around to the other leg, should I like to have the caster in the front or in the back. Having the caster in front will cause more impacts, but it will allow me to run the droid backwards through doors if I need to.

Here’s the final foot motor holder, mounted and ready! Seems sturdy and stable, and I can’t wait to get the robot to a point where I can actually have a robot that can move! =)

Apart from that, I also went back to my HP’s and made small white caps to cover the bottle caps out of 1mm styrene. This looks way nicer than the previous temp solution of using paper as a diffuser.

I am starting to get the hang of working with styrene, and using the first leg as a template, I used it to mark and cut out the parts for the second leg.

I even managed to get some time gluing half the leg together.. My plans are to have it completed by tomorrow, and thus having both legs ready, construction wise. Skinning is definitely needed, but that will be for later!

I also have plans for a magnetic lock for the shoulder horseshoes, but I’ll have plenty of time to put that into action before skinning the legs!

So at this point, I’ve got all skins cut out, fixed lights for my hp’s, got one leg done and the second halfway there… and one motor holder done!

//Micke

By |2016-12-06T00:02:03+01:00January 1st, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Some new years building progress…
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