Paintjob

Data Panel!

So, A long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.. I had temporarily mounted one of the inside panels of R2 with duct tape.

The circuitboard was assembled, held in place behind the panel by duct tape, the panel was unpainted, looked flat, and .. you guess it .. held in place by duct tape.

Not to mention the arduino running the program for the blinky lights…

Anyway: I figured that if I wanted this panel to be in my droid, I had to do something proper with it. I have not had it inside my R2 for a long time, and I had an idea what to do with it:

From this:

To something like this:

I have 4 arduinos in the body of my R2-D2, and easy access to them is something that I have long sought after…

First step was to start cutting up the panel..

A while ago, I ordered a bunch of USB cables for panel mounting. I just needed to cut away some portruding things on the insides, and then I simply taped four of them together.

Test fit behind the panel..

It fits perfect!

However, I wanted to have something more, not just a long gaping hole with 4 USB’s, so I made a sort of bezel from 1mm styrene.

A test fit, to see if it works, and how it looks..

Just testing to see that the USB plug reaches in deep enough to sit properly. It does.

Next step was to drill up the holes where the connector should be properly, take the panel and bezel outside and paint the panel. Satin White, of course. The bezel, I decided to paint in R2 Blue. I needed to try something out.

I also designed and 3d printed a few distances for the circuitboard to go around the round LED’s at the bottom and to the right. Everything was hot glued in place and works like a charm.

For the LED’s up right, I cut up a piece of 1mm acrylics, drilled and riveted in place. The edges cracked when I did the riveting, but as I’m planning on weathering the panel, it really makes no difference.

Time to weather the panel! I used the same method I used for the rest of my droid, but made this one to be a little more cleaner, as it is on the inside of the droid. I filthied it down with the remains of my old Citadel Paints: Chaos Black and Flesh Wash. Once really soiled, I used cotton pads and a solvent to clean off just enough to make it look clean..ish.

I also took some sanding paper and dulled down the clear acrylic, and banged on the acrylic with the handle of a screwdriver until it cracked a little more. It looks just the part.

Something is still missing. The connector. It is just a slight engraving and some holes on this panel. I decided it needed something else. The research I’ve made suggests that it is a multi cable connector, and I drew one in Rhino3D and printed on my Makergear M2.

Once done, I gave it a quick acetone vapor bath…

… and finally hot glued it to the panel.

MUCH better!

I still need to do a bit of work on the body of the droid to mount this in place, but I was so happy that I had to do a quick pic with the panel in place:

Finally, a short youtube clip to show off what it looks like in action!

The inside of the panel is the next step with this part. I need to add ridges to mount the panel against, and also weather the inside of the hatch. That, however is work for another day! 😀

By micke|2016-12-06T00:00:22+01:00April 5th, 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

The final stretch..

So, even though the build is done, I will complete this build blog! I will honor my commitment!

Last things to do, consisted of making end caps for my PVC/Styrene ankle cylinders.

I glued 3 1cm strips of styrene together, started filing, added a bit of bondo, sanded some more, and it started looking pretty good

Once this was dome, time to glue it on to the circular bit of 1mm styrene I had already cut out.

Last step was to wrap it in aluminium tape, and then done! Two of them were made!

Also, last step was filing the aluminium foot strips. They needed to be chamfered in both ends. This was a tedious job, not very fun, but something that had to be done. It also rendered a lot of aluminium fillings…

Once this was done, time to file off the edges of the battery harnesses and then attach them to the battery boxes.

If you wonder, these have been sanded down to look nice and smooth.

Then time for weathering! I had to weather the skirt of my R2 and both legs.. Check it out when it was still in pristine condition.

About 45 minutes later, it did not look as nice and white anymore…

Since I posted the pics of the finished parts earlier, let me tell you about today:

I was going to a friends place, since his kid loves Star Wars and it was his birthday. I figured it would be a great place to break in my droid!

First problem was that when I started it up, nothing happened. The dome powered on and worked and I could rotate it, but it would simply not drive! Something was wrong!

The good thing about building this myself, is that I know everything about my droid, and I was forced to go debugging.

A couple of cables needed to switch place, and I changed a few things in how things were connected together, and it finally worked!

My droid is complete! Woohoo!

Nice machine! Nice looking! It even looks good from the behind!

And a little detail picture of some of the subtle weathering put in..

So: a proud owner with his droid. After over one year of building!

My estimation is that I’ve probably put in somewhere between 1500-2000 hours into this little machine.

Anyway, the kids party was a blast, but chaotic. Really chaotic, but R2 was the star, naturally, and he even made a couple of new friends!

So, I now have a droid. There are a few minor things that I may need to look in to. Might need to do something about one of the feet, as I am guessing the belt is chewing in to areas that doesn’t have any cogs, and that is effecting the performance of the wheel!

I also need to get get a better battery. I am using a 20Ah battery at the moment, and I need to do some measuring on power consumption, and possibly get a different one. I would love to get a LiPo battery. Found a good one in the UK, that weighs less than half of my current battery (it’s a good thing) and has more power.

The drawback? it is silly expensive!

I should start selling ad space on the droid to pay for things like that! (not really)

Anyway, at the moment the fully assembled droid is sitting in our living room and just been charged. I’m going to have so much fun with him at the upcoming sic-fi fair in 3 weeks!

That’s it for now!

Oh, and this build blog will not just stop. I have upgrades, updates and other things planned, including appearances, and a whole new dome that needs fixing up!

Stay tuned and thanks for following!

//Micke and R2.

By micke|2016-12-06T00:00:45+01:00November 10th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off

Paintjob

Data Panel!

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First Ever R2 Builders Sweden Gathering!

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The final stretch..

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