Monthly Archives: February 2012

Horseshoes!

So, since I had to wait most of the day due to a guy coming to change my door (evidentially it was the slight wrong shade of blue so the company that owns the building had them all exchanged for other doors that looks .. well .. basically the same), I decided to get cracking on my horseshoes!

Being one of the last pieces that I need to build, it was either getting to work on these, or the battery boxes.. or the last foot shell. Horseshoes it was!

The horseshoes are basically built from the front, going inwards. There are three boxes that will have either shoulder buttons or shoulder hydraulics. Since I wanted things to look nice, I made sure to sand all the pieces before putting it all together. Mostly, it helped.

It did NOT help where the router had done a messy job, though. I ended up having to sand some pieces down and then place a thin 0.5 mm strip of styrene around to get the proper size. Hopefully it will be worth it in the end =)

First one almost done. In the background you see the routed bits for the second horseshoe on the table, waiting for me to get working on that as well.

Second horseshoe got done as well, it took longer than I would have liked, mostly because, well, I had only routed the round bits and had to cut all pieces out from scratch.

Here’s a nice pic of the two horseshoes, glued up and waiting to dry, and in the front, I’ve got my shims for the horseshoes. I am going to line the edges with the aluminum tape that I have, even though it will be sticky, messy and difficult =)

Enough glue for one day. I didn’t use the ethyl acetates today, but normal model glue, but still, too much time bent over while glueing things has left a mild headache. If I’m doing any building tomorrow, it’s gas mask time again!

On a last note, I also received my 20W amp that will be built in to my R2 unit. It’s small and light weight. Perfect for this project! Now I only need to buy some speakers… and build a box for them as well …

For now, the focus will be spent on getting the droid ready in a month since I may be bringing him to his first event!

Until then, I will definitely have some issues sorting out why my wireless connection doesn’t work.. I’m using parts that are supported…

By |2016-12-06T00:01:46+01:00February 28th, 2012|R2-D2|Comments Off on Horseshoes!
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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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