R2-D2

All things related to R2-D2

Small fixes

I’ve been battling a bad flue for the past couple of days, so needless to say, the droid has not been the first of my priorities!

However, I’ve managed to drag my cold sorry head off the couch for a little while today to do some small fixes…

I’ve done a few tweaks and things that were not on my list of things to do, started rerouting the electronics and bundling up the cables to make it nice and neat, ordered a new controller, bought a 11 pin connector through ebay, since I figured I’d just make one big connector to unplug whenever I need to pull out my electronics board.

I also decided to do something about my rear unpainted panel door, or rather the panel behind it!

First, I had to re-hinge the door, as the hinge was a bit.. well .. stiff, and I wanted this to be a lot smoother.

Second, I added a small mounting bar, so I could fasten the panel with screws, rather than glue it in place. After all, it is something that I might need to remove from time to time.

Third, the panel was quite boring, and I decided to do something about it!

I’m not claiming this was a stroke of genius inspiration, I do have a quite bad flu, but it will most definitely do for now!

It’s not a big thing, it’s only a bit of images printed out and glued to the white styrene…

When added into the slot and bolted in place, it looks quite ok, actually!

Not too bad for a sick guy =)

 

By |2016-12-06T00:01:19+01:00September 20th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Small fixes
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Evening Post

Fourth blog entry in one day! I must be nuts!

(well… I *am* building an R2-D2..)

All of them are dealing with different aspects and different parts of the build!

First off, I fixed two things that was on the R2-2DO list that I had just been to lazy to fix: I added the ridges to the second horseshoe, and covered the second horseshoe shim in aluminium, to get that of the list.

I was then contemplating drilling larger holes for the dome ring, and have the dome ring resting not on screws but on larger knobs. This would make removing and replacing the dome much easier!

I took off the rockler bearing from the droid, and at the same time, I drilled holes for the screws in the rockler on my secondary golden dome!

Rockler was mounted again, this time I made sure it was all level, then on with the work!

I glued on magnets on the inside of the “Kenny-Panel”, and glued on small metal shims to the corners of the panel. I took the old inside from the front panel, cut it slightly to make it fit, and fit it inside the Kenny-Panel for powering the droid on and off.

The panel is right now hanging on magnets alone, but I’m going to hinge it tomorrow, to make sure it does NOT fall off! =)

Speaking of hinging: I did hinge the front large door, currently attached with CA glue, but that works just fine for now. I even added a small magnet lock to the door. At the moment I think it is too strong, but I will find a better option shortly.

I even tested it with the restraining bolt, and it works like a charm!

Originally, the bolt was meant to be higher, but I realized I had to turn the door upside down (looks the same both ways) for a better fit, so I’ll have to live with the mount point for the restraining bolt to be slightly lower than I first had counted on. Maybe this was put on by a particularly short jawa!

I also took out the main battery and the electronics board since I need to reroute most of the spider web that are cables inside the droid. I did purchase a few things to make it neater, I just need to work on the cabling a bit!

I will also need to find a better socket to attach to the electronics board. At the moment, it is all individual cables that are just attached to each other. One big connector would be a lot better!

Won’t be too hard either… At the moment, I think I’ll need like 10 channels connecting to the board…. maybe.

By |2016-12-06T00:01:20+01:00September 17th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Evening Post
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Things that go Bump in the night..

What what?

THREE updates in one day?

Oh my, really!

I found a bag of carriage bolts on my desk when rummaging around, and completely forgot that I had to add the Dome Bumps to my dome. That should have been on my R2-2DO list!

Well, no need to add that to the list *now* as it is already completed!

These are about 20mm in diameter, and the opening for the dome bumps is around 21mm. These are the best ones I have found so far, and even though the area around the bump could be slightly bigger, it will do nicely!

I started off by making a dome template, in order to get the hole centered..

I printed it out, used one of them to measure my carriage bolts, yes they would work great!

Two of them, I cut out and glued on to my done inside the holes using repositionable glue.

With these in place, I started off by making a mark, using a 2mm drillbit, and then my step drill, to make the holes 12mm.

I needed the holes larger than the bolt, as the carriage bolts has a square area closest to the head, and this needed to fit through the hole as well. Plus, with a slightly larger hole, I could adjust slightly if I was not exactly in the center…

R2’s poor head seems to be doomed to suffer. It is his lot in life.

After a bit of sanding, a quick test fit…

As you saw in the first picture of the bolts, I also purchased washers, that are big enough to go over the square portion of the bolts, and by using these as distances, it was only a simple matter of gently screwing these in place!

Something that annoys my esthetics, as that even though I managed to find the same diameter heads on the bolts, I failed in finding two of the same length…

Oh well, you can’t tell from the outside anyway =)

I think they look great! Of course, they need to be painted, but so does all my blue bits. They are the wrong colour, but that will be fixed… all in good time…

 

By |2016-12-06T00:01:21+01:00September 17th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Things that go Bump in the night..
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