Yearly Archives: 2015

Out doing charity work..

Before this weekend, I had to abandon the upgrades and mount everything that was not yet all finished back into R2.

It was time to go for an outing!

We (as in Nordic Garrison with R2) had been asked to help open a toy store!

I find myself doing a lot of these things for charity. The local Garrison of 501st to which I belong, Nordic Garrison (Actually the only one spanning so many countries as it does), have to days date collected and donated over 1.000.000 SEK!

This time around, since it is a toy store, we got a quite sizeable donation of toys, that we will in turn donate to one of the local children’s hospitals in the area.

All in all, it feels good to show off your hobby and doing good deeds at the same time. Really makes you sleep better at night 😉

Along for one of the days, we had one of Sweden’s most talented Cosplayers (who is also a very active member of the 501st), Henrik Pilerud of Pilerud’s Cosplay, here showing off his Garindan, a very rare costume that he has made himself.

askernas_pilerud_r2

R2 performed great, of course! 😉

By |2016-12-06T00:00:23+01:00March 30th, 2015|Costuming, R2-D2|Comments Off on Out doing charity work..
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Octagon Volume Control part II

To continue from the last post , where I built the octagon volume control, It has now been installed in the droid.

I replaced the hollow mesh aluminium plate with black felt, to get a non-reflective, light absorbing surface behind the octagon port to obscure the insides, and also to not show the plastics holding the potentiometer into place. It did the job perfectly.

Also, as I showed earlier, I had to properly align the volume know in the middle of the cut away portion of the octagon port.

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Enter the lovely world of 3D printing. My digital caliper gave me the measurements I needed and 15 minutes later I had a perfect inside bushing for the knob.

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I had previously glued the knob in to place with rubber glue so it would be easy to remove. This time, the printed part is just squeezed inside the knob, and the knob is squeezed inside the 3d printed part. No glue needed and a perfect fit!

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It even looks centered!

By |2016-12-06T00:00:24+01:00March 23rd, 2015|R2-D2|Comments Off on Octagon Volume Control part II
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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.

club_working

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.

treadlock

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)

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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…

micke_drilling

Basically, what I was tryingto achieve was this:

bild 1

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.

club_Working_2

After a lovely dinner made by Thomas girlfriend, we all just chilled out and relaxed a bit in his home theater…

cinemaroom

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 |2016-12-06T00:00:24+01:00March 23rd, 2015|R2-D2|Comments Off on First Ever R2 Builders Sweden Gathering!
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