construction

R2 sighted in public!

For two weekends, I have now taken my R2 out to get the last bugs out!
I started last weekend with a trial run at a friends birthday party. The kids went nuts and LOVED it!
R2 danced with the kids and posed for pictures. His presence was much appreciated!

During the week, I’ve experimented with the new control system, but there are a few issues there that I’m not all happy with yet, so I had to go back to the radio control, since I wanted to bring R2 to my weekly business meeting!

Every Friday, I eat lunch with about 60 people. A great bunch of people that I’ve gotten to know over the past year and a half, and they have been aware of my project of building this droid. Since he was finished, I had asked for a little time during this meeting to present R2.

When taking the droid home, on the subway, it took me 40 minutes to take him ONE block, due to so many kids, parents, people wanted to see him, take pictures with him and generally asked questions about him. It was great!

However, the cobblestones did not fare well with the center ankle/foot mounting, so the center foot was loose after the little outing.

An hour and a half later, I had removed the existing screws (one of them was bent, due to the full weight of the droid pushing down on this point), increased the holes in the ankle, inserted pieces of aluminium pipe into the ankle holes, and ended up with two thick 6mm screws through the sides of the foot, in to the ankle and out the other side.

This has now firmly locked the ankle in position, and it will not move again. Ever. 😉

I test drove it again on Saturday, at yet another friend that had a kid that had a birthday. Worked like a charm! However, this time, I had some electronics issues, but I’ve narrowed them down to a faulty USB cable in between my power distribution board and my bluetooth speakers! *phew* ! =)

Next up: Finish up the new droid controller in time for ScifiWorld!

By |2016-12-06T00:00:43+01:00November 20th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on R2 sighted in public!
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Almost there… (stay on target)

Last night I finally got around to sand off the dome panels and paint them!

I found the secret to get rid of the spin lines quick!

First time around, I tried to just sand them in small circles with 400 grit. This didn’t seem to do anything with the spin lines.

After experimenting a bit, I realized that if I sanded along the spin lines instead of against, it went a lot faster and quicker!

A quick spray with my blue paint, straight on the metal, this is the result after having to wait a full 4 minutes or so for the paint to dry.

I also got around to finally paint my radar eye!

I actually painted it three times.. I painted it once, wasn’t happy with the masking, trued to sand off, and some paint peeled. I sanded off the entire radar eye, and painted again. Still an anomaly I did not like. This time around I sanded off just the front surface and gave it a new paint job. Looked great!

Next step was to mount all the blue panels.. and R2 looked a lot better again!

Since I had painted my second leg, I drilled up the ankle and inserted a metal tube in the pivot point and glued it in place with some E-6000.

I also decided to paint the screws to my battery boxes white, to make them more discrete.

This is the before image

And this is the after

From a little distance, it is nice and discrete!

I then spent a good few hours getting my arms mounted in my arm boxes, and my arm boxes mounted in the frame. It required a fair bit of carving, routing with my dremel, and finally go in with my metal cutter to cut off a big block of styrene inside the droid!

So… what does it look like at the moment? Well … feast your eyes on this!

Still to do:

  • Make end caps for second ankle cylinder
  • Wrap center ankle cylinders in aluminium tape
  • Make two ankle wedges
  • Mount Ankle Details
  • Mount Under Shoulder Details
  • Chamfer Main Foot strips
  • Weather Skirt
  • Weather Main legs
  • Double check new wiring

…. and done!

By |2016-12-06T00:00:49+01:00November 7th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Almost there… (stay on target)
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Last minute construction work

I was not all happy with my home made keyhole lock for my shims with my horseshoes. They never really kept them fully in place, and I had a hard time getting the shoulder hubs out!

So, I decided to make use of the leg to body hub, which basically hides most of the back of the leg around the top, and drilled and tapped for M6.

Three bolts going all the way through the leg and in to the horseshoe on the other side should be enough!

The bottom screws go straight into the thickest part of my horseshows, so they are really held in place firmly!

When screwed in place, it firmly holds the horseshoes in place and makes it even possible to use them while carrying the droid!

Second Pocket Vent:

Another thing I had that needed to be done, was my last pocket vent.

Again, I used my “can opener” technique described earlier when making this one.

Scoring the lines, then drilling holes in them

then using a pair of pliers and wiggling slightly before rotating the pliers and stripping the pieces off…

It makes the vent looking rather disastrous at first.. Oh my, can this really be saved?

Next step is to flatten this, and I made it with placing my metal ruler on top of the vent, and banging with a plastic hammer. This takes care of most of the dents, but the secret lies really in the sanding!

After sanding with my detail sander, first with 40 grit, then 240 grit, it is a bit gritty still..

Still pretty rough. Fortunately, wet sanding is my friend! After spending a couple of minutes with 400 and 800 grit, this is the result. Please note that I still haven’t even picked up a file to remove any irregularities after the “can-opener” procedure..

A little bit of filing, and then time to add the ribs and the pocket area.

The first few ribs go on…

After all the ribs were in place, last thing left was to glue the painted back-end to the pocket vent, and glue it in place in the body! Last piece to go into the body! Woohoo!

Ankle Cylinder Endcaps:

After the pocket vent was done, I started working on a small detail piece. My ankle cylinders are lacking the end pieces, as I’ve made the cylinders from scratch, and detail work is always fun and never ends, so I decided to fix up two end pieces.

This end piece is made from three layers of 3mm styrene to make up the big piece. This is sanded down and glued on top of a 1mm styrene round piece that I cut around a bottle cap and sanded down earlier.

A quick test fit…

Two of these babies, and then time for the secret weapon: Aluminium tape!

Wrapping these is not all that easy, but the results are not too bad!

And in case you’re not sure I made them myself, check the back of the cylinder..

Last thing on the construction front was gluing the fina pocket vent and side vent in place, as well as securing the doors on the front. Once that was done, I masked up the front center vent and painted…

Enough for one post, stand by for the exciting sequel!

 

By |2016-12-06T00:00:51+01:00November 5th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Last minute construction work
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