So, since it is christmas, and I have a little time on my hands, I started working on my skins!
Originally, I had wanted someone to cut these with a laser CNC machine for me, but after shopping around, I realized this would be quite expensive.
Armed with my printer, a steel ruler and a break blade knife, I started on the skins myself, figured it couldn’t be TOO hard..
So, after printing out 10 papers, cutting them up and taping them together, I had a nice start.
Here, the prints are lying, casually thrown down on the 1m styrene sheet, soon to be the rear skin!
After carefully marking which cut-out part goes where, I went outside, sprayed the back of the paper with 3M spray on re-positionable glue.
Next step was basically starting cutting. This, being my first attempt to cut in Styrene, I actually started with the rear OUTER skin. I figured that if I messed up, I could always turn it into an inner skin piece.
I will definitely use the same approach when I am cutting the front skin tomorrow!
Anyway, cutting through styrene turned out to be way, way easier than I had hoped for. Cut down hard, fold, and snap out the parts.
Took me less than 30 minutes to actually cut out the pieces needed to be removed.
The removed pieces will be cut out as well, as I will keep only the outer part with a round inner corner. These will be cut out at a later point, however, as I will need a circle cutter in order to make these nice and smooth!
The rear skin with all the panels cut out. Note that the half-circles underneath R2’s shoulder are also not yet cut out. Again: Circle cutter! =)
So, this really marks the start of the R2 build, and I really can’t wait!
The spray mount really made this EASY! Will need to clean off the skins with a bit of alcohol or something after removing the paper.
Hey… it’s christmas! R2 deserves to be a bit drunk as well! =)
//Micke
