R2-D2

Octagon Volume Control part II

To continue from the last post , where I built the octagon volume control, It has now been installed in the droid.

I replaced the hollow mesh aluminium plate with black felt, to get a non-reflective, light absorbing surface behind the octagon port to obscure the insides, and also to not show the plastics holding the potentiometer into place. It did the job perfectly.

Also, as I showed earlier, I had to properly align the volume know in the middle of the cut away portion of the octagon port.

Enter the lovely world of 3D printing. My digital caliper gave me the measurements I needed and 15 minutes later I had a perfect inside bushing for the knob.

I had previously glued the knob in to place with rubber glue so it would be easy to remove. This time, the printed part is just squeezed inside the knob, and the knob is squeezed inside the 3d printed part. No glue needed and a perfect fit!

It even looks centered!

By micke|2016-12-06T00:00:24+01:00March 23rd, 2015|R2-D2|Comments Off

First Ever R2 Builders Sweden Gathering!

This weekend marked the first ever R2 Builders Sweden gathering!

We met up at Nixon’s place, some had to travel further than others (think 600 kilometers, one way. (that’s 375 miles for you Americans). Funny that they still managed to show up earlier than me, who only lives about 32 kilometers (or 20 miles) away..

Anyway, We met at Thomas Nixon’s house, and it was Thomas,me (Only builders present with completed droids), David, Micke B and Anton for a weekends worth of building and nerding. Thomas has graciously converted his kitchen/outer hall area to a workshop for us.

I brought a few things with me, both to show off a bit, and some things to work on. I brought my just completed amp with octagon port mod to show, and also my double wheel set that had a motor burn a while back, and to get it fixed I could use a bit of help…

After looking at what others are doing, I decided to not cut off the second octagon port knob, since Anton immediately said “I can cut that off with my lathe in five minutes next week”. That certainly beats cutting with a noisy dremel for a number of hours!

So, off to work on my old wheel plates. Since I had forgotten a few tools, naturally the ones I needed, it took a while to be able to remove the locking sprints, but once the wheel was off, and we managed to get all the treadlocked screws that held the motor in place.

The treadlock is great, but it requires high temperature to even try and get it loose. I managed to with my soldering iron, heat up the screws enough to get 5 of the siz screws holding one of the motors in place

(Old pic to illustrate how the motors are mounted)

Last screw was impossible to move, but since the motor (or at leas the gear box) was messed up anyway, I cut the head off with my dremel, and forced the screw through the hole to get rid of the motor.

Next step was to take the replacement motor and drill a cavity into the motor axel…

Basically, what I was tryingto achieve was this:

Once the hold in the axel was there, next step was to assembled the motor into the holder, screw in the grub screw (with treadlocker) and assemble the holder. The final re-assembly of the motor holder will be done at home.

I also spent some time desoldering the volume pot on my second, bigger amplifier (for the secondary speakers) for my R2, for the similar octagon port mod for the rear octagon port.

micke desoldering

Once that was done, I built a new breakout board for the pot, and did some other small odds and ends, such as painting a few bits and pieces until I considered myself done for the day.

After a lovely dinner made by Thomas girlfriend, we all just chilled out and relaxed a bit in his home theater…

After that, it was time to go home and get some well deserved sleep.

I had to miss out on day #2 (but I was told it ended quite early), since I had things planned with the family..

All in all a great day. Build pics courtesy of Thomas Nixon and Micke Brodin.

By micke|2016-12-06T00:00:24+01:00March 23rd, 2015|R2-D2|Comments Off

Octagon Volume Control

Continuing on a previous post , I managed to do some more work into this.

Basically, the process of cutting off the knob on the octagon port from the inside turned out to be quite difficult.

The small diamond cutting wheels I had was not optimal for aluminium, in fact, they does give a small, clean cut, but the edge also becomes smooth after just a few minutes, making nothing else but heat after that. It took me a while to realize this.

I could also not use the normal dremel cutting attachments, as they were too weak and broke off immediately when applying a bit of pressure.

So, off to the hardware store, and pick up some of my old, trusty cutting wheels with the speed click, the wheels I used (and ran out of) when cutting up the domes last summer. These are 1.5″ in diameter, or 38mm, for all countries in the world except three…

The problem was, that in order to get the cutting disk inside the hole, I needed to make it smaller somehow. And quite a lot smaller, too.

I first tried and used the cutting wheel on one of my files. Unfortunately, I forgot I had an old file laying about. It created a nice rain of sparkles, and a groove in my file, but nothing really on the cutting wheel.

Anyway, I found that by running it against one of the diamond-laced cutting wheels (that had useless edges) grinded the cutting wheel down very quickly, to the point where I could actually fit it inside the knob.

After a lot less time than I had already spent trying to detach these, this is what I was left with:

The old volume knob was glued in place with E-6000 inside the knob, and it was time to desolder the volume potentiometer from the amplifier.

I added pins to the holes where the amplifier was to be able to attach a cable.easy attaching/detaching.

I also built a breakoutboard for the volume pot itself, with a row of pins for the same cable.

So far so good. Next step was to build a holder for the pot to reside behind the octagon port. I have decided to add a matte black background to the port (still to be added), but I used a piece of thin, perforated aluminium board in the mean time.

Making the cable was fiddly, since I didn’t have a multi-cable with more than 4 leads, so I had to use two of them.

When assembled, this is the end result:

The volume pot rotates without issues, and I’ve tried switching the amp on, and nothing exploded..

All in all, a good upgrade. One of those things that cannot be seen, but the less I need to be reaching inside the droid to do anything in public, the better!

Now, I can easily fix the volume in case he needs to be quiet when there’s a talk going on, or crank up the volume for the parades!

By micke|2016-12-06T00:00:25+01:00March 21st, 2015|R2-D2|Comments Off

R2-D2

Octagon Volume Control part II

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First Ever R2 Builders Sweden Gathering!

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Octagon Volume Control

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