construction

Not much done over the weekend..

.. but I had to do something, at least =)

Yesterday, I spent on becoming an EFR instructor and then head off to the Magic Bar to do a gig, and that went just great.

Today, I just played things lazy, and finished measuring for the design of the Ankle Bracelet.

I did do some constructive work, though. First off, I need to show you the incredible aluminum Leg Struts that (finally) arrived after the Post Office had lost my package:

So, since I wanted to finish off the legs, I decided to get to work on the Resin Booster Covers, and fix a way to mount them and sand them off and all.

i also sanded off and glued the top of the leg strut holder to the booster cover.

I routed out part of the booster cover on the backside with my dremel, and glued 2 pieces of 3mm styrene in place.

I then positioned these on the main leg, and drilled and tapped through both the styrene pieces and the leg for M4 bolts. I had a few lying around (with too large head, but it works temporarily)

I also put in a temporary “holder” behind the leg strut. I should really see if I can fix some sort of sprint to place inside the leg strut, so it will be held in place by its own power.

I dare anyone to find the styrene pieces. They are invisible unless you know exactly what to look for 😉

The leg looks almost complete now. I’ve added the shoulder hub, which is held in place by magnets, and the left leg now only needs a shoulder cylinder and a horseshoe for me to mount the last things on it!

Yep, I’ve also mounted my foot shell. Starting to look good!

By |2016-12-06T00:01:47+01:00February 26th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Not much done over the weekend..
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Skirt complete and first steps..

So, I gook the R2 unit outside and sanded it off good, before going wild with a 2-component bond (Plastic Padding). This was supposed to harden within 10 minutes.

To my surprise it had still not hardened and really started stinking up the place real good after about an hour.

Guess it pays to take out *everything* from the box. It was a 2-component bondo, so I forgot to mix in the hardener..

Ah well, take it out again and scrape off as much as I could, before applying a new layer.

This time it DID harden, and I sanded most of the skirt. I will go over it once again before painting, but all in all, I’m really happy with how it came out.

What do you think?

Yesterday was another day with my cold still not allowing me to move about as I wanted, so it was a calm day. Spent the evening fiddling with the electronics, trying to get a small servo to move by remote control.

No result.

For starters, it seems I had put the LED’s on the controller card facing the wrong way. Guess it was a while ago I was soldering those analog synth modules…

Anyway, after removing the LED’s and trying everything again nothing worked still.

At least the LED’s lit up, but that didn’t really help me.

 

So, at this point, I figured I needed to get something out of the equation, so I called it a night and decided to go and pick up a tethered PS2 controller that is on the “supported” list of my controller card, instead of the unlisted wireless controller…

Back home after todays meetings and usual Friday stuff, I got to work.

Took the R2’s legs down from the shelf, made ankle wedges for them and removed my small caster I had previously installed in my wheels as I realized they would cause more problems.

Finally, It was all about lifting in the experimental wiring I had done on my desk into the R2.

Armed with nothing but tape, I mounted the circuit boards where I could attach them, and tried the controller.

Well .. it moved but not as I wanted. Seems there was still some fine-tuning to be done.

 

Once the channel mixing was engaged on the controller, another try, and this time, something different happened.

I caught it on film but it wasn’t as interested as when I put the dome on and put in my bluetooth speakers inside the body!

Behold: the first steps of R2 … now it really is starting to feel reel. I have an astromech!

After the successful test, I spent the rest of the evening, making a small, but much more neat and handy electronics board:

Notice the über-small 11.1V, 1.3 Ah Li-Po battery at the bottom. Using two 11.1V 6Ah Li-Po batteries rather than two 12V 7.2 Ah Lead batteries will cost about three times as much, but it will save me more than 4 kg’s inside the droid.. Still haven’t decided what to do, but for testing purposes, this will do just fine!

Please note that in this picture, the Sabretooth is not hooked up completely, and the Slip Ring connector board I haven’t even touched =)

Still .. again, it really feels like I have an astromech!

By |2016-12-06T00:01:47+01:00February 24th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Skirt complete and first steps..
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R2 is now wearing a skirt and has a detachable center foot mount!

Felt a little better today. The cold is definitely on its way back, and I’ve taken things easy again.

However, there are a few things that I’ve done on the droid after all.

First off, I drilled and tapped the center ankle and also the skirt and frame bottom, to allow for the center foot to be mounted on and off with 6mm wing nuts, just like the center legs.

So, now my leg mounts are complete! I also drilled and fastened the center foot into the ankle with 6mm bolts, so everything is secure!

Next thing was to sand the edges of the skirt, to get ready for completing it. I also wanted to add inner walls to the skirt, even though it is on the underside of R2, and very few people will ever see anything there, but I like to keep things looking neat, so I glued in 1mm styrene to cover the structure of the skirt.

Once that was done, I sat in my chair for a while chamfering. *sigh* Not my favorite thing to do, but necessary. And messy.

(… and I had cleaned up twice before I took that picture…)

Finally, the skirt, side angles and cones was glued onto the bottom ring, and is left over night to dry off. Only thing remaining now is the “ribs”, something that will require a lot of chamfering… again.

By |2016-12-06T00:01:48+01:00February 22nd, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on R2 is now wearing a skirt and has a detachable center foot mount!
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