dome

Biggest post so far…?

Wow!

A lot of things to report after today!

First off, I finished gluing the frame together as promised!

When the glue was setting, I did do additional work on the ankles. I’ve added a layer of styrene outside the beefy parts in order to make them the same size as the ankles themselves. Here’s a pic before I added the styrene, just in case I messed it up…

Nice and smooth… next incarnation of these will fit the ankles too!

So, what to do when the frame is setting and the ankles are done. I know! Let’s start playing with the LDP!

The original flatpack of the LDP was essentially 4 parts, and it looked very … well .. thin and boring, so I looked at some reference pictures and added a lot of more styrene. I added another 3mm piece to the bottom, filed it down to get a nice smooth curve, then added a 3mm and a 2mm piece to the top part, and sanded that down to get a nice smooth curve as well. Best thing: it fits the hole like a glove!

Not to shabby for being made from scratch and made a design for them off the top of my head =)

This is what the top looked like before I started sanding..

So, as if this wasn’t enough. After the frame had set for long enough, I just had to test fit my skins. Armed with half a roll of blue tape, I mounted all four skins on my R2, and they fit perfect!

Closeups of the interior follows:

Well.. So the skins fit nice and snug as you see, and I just HAD to put the dome on top.. My first glimpse of what R2 will be like in a few months…

Tiny R2 is inspecting…

Anyway, that concludes today’s work and update! Tomorrow is spent (wisely) by taking out the girlfriend to a nice dinner, but Wednesday will be spent finishing the last part of the ankles and start working on the shoulder hubs!

For now, R2 is standing on his own little table in my small room that I use for office (and messy build room)… He’ll have a nice view over night!

That’s all for tonight, folks!

//Micke

By |2016-12-06T00:01:56+01:00February 13th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Biggest post so far…?
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D-Day (Dome-dagen in Swedish…) (and ankles…)


So.. Today was D-Day!

One of the first items I ordered for my R2 build arrived.. in this small package:

Opening the box gave me this view:

Removing the plastic and paper gave further info about the mystery contained within..

Yes, it is my laser cut dome that finally arrived! It will sit on my shelf for two weeks before I can start working on it…

After the joyful feeling of receiving this box, I started working on my main ankles.

I realized that I had forgotten to add the ankle locks built into my ankles, as I did with the center ankle. I may fix this before skinning the ankles or not, but for now, I’ve left them as is.

Main ankles are mostly glued together and are not going to harden before doing any further work with them.

Note the cables running through, which is just a placeholder for trying out the cable channel. The pinpoints are not yet sanded, and are therefor still a bit uneven, but I have plenty of time to fix that! =)

Finally, I also unravelled the blue Mummy inside my work area, and it turned out to be my left foot shell, now complete. Needs a little bond and sanding on the lower parts, but other than that, looking good!

Now, I take a little break from R2 building. I’ve had a few intense buildweeks, but for the next two weeks I have other plans… I’ll tell you more on that later!

I’ll see you with more updates in February!

//Micke

By |2016-12-06T00:01:58+01:00January 18th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on D-Day (Dome-dagen in Swedish…) (and ankles…)
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A cheap, working solution for lights in the Holoprojectors…

After reading another builders blog, I got inspired to work on the light in my own holo projectors.

I have these, really nice hp’s from BobC:

These are CNC:ed out from aluminum, and just beautiful.

Anyway, I purchased 3 of these LED lights to use as a light source inside the HP’s:

I figured I’d find a way to attach these into the HP’s along the way. No idea how to actually do it at the time.

 

After opening up the LEDlights, I used a special type of plier, used to remove locking casters, such as the ones right inside the HP. Luckily I had one of these lying about since back in the day when I was making my own chain mail 😉

After opening them up, this is what I was left with.


By looking at the battery holder, it is the central point that is the plus sign, and any/all of the four outermost soldering points that are the negatives. This is where I will solder later.

Now, by looking at the size of that thing, I had an idea. the inside of the LED light is just slightly smaller than a normal bottle cap. Being Christmas, I had to use bottle caps from “Julmust”, which is a christmas brew only available in stores around Christmas. Good thing, as it is SOO tasty!

I drilled a hole through the bottle cap, and used an old screw to fasten it to the backplate of the Holo’s. Just look at how well the LED innards fit inside the bottle cap…

So, long story short: It is a simple task of soldering 2 wires, one to the middle, and one to any of the four end points of the LED board.

I then cut open the cap from the side to allow for the cables, and filled half the cap with hot glue. This will also serve as insulation for the center screw.

Sorry, no pics during soldering. Don’t want to burn myself…

Once this was done, I like another builder, too had the issue with the LED lights showing when lighting something, so I needed a diffuser. I also noticed that the very RED bottle cap could partly be seen on the very edges of the lens inside the HP.

My solution for this was simple. I used a glossy, slightly thicker part that I have for my color laser printer. I superglued a disc of paper on top of the LED, and also, for good measure put a dab of glue and put the original lens from the LEDlight on top of the whole thing.

Last step is to turn the whole thing on! Just look at how nice it turns out, and the total cost for this was just the cheap LED flashlights, some cable, and having to empty three bottles of julmust! *hic*

Cheers!

//Micke

By |2016-12-06T00:02:06+01:00December 25th, 2011|R2-D2|Comments Off on A cheap, working solution for lights in the Holoprojectors…
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