Dome Prep and Prime

Well, it has been a busy month but I was able to glue the two parts of the new dome together and to fashion a dome ring from the floral MDF rings from Michaels.

I then cut out the holes for the holoprojectors, the psis and the front and rear logics.

I primed it today and later in the in the week I will do another pass of fine sanding and then a little more primer.

I have front and rear logics on order from Hyperdyne and am super excited!

Laser Cut Styrene Dome

I was able to procure one of the fine laser-cut styrene dome from Astromech.net before Christmas.  Even with the laser cutting, it required a fair amount of cleanup and sanding.

The dome has three parts. A whole inner dome, the laser-cut outer dome and the bottom dome ring. I used Brian Munger's excellent website that detailed his styrene dome build as a guide for assembling mine. You can check his build at http://www.bmunger.com/R2/gallery/dome-3/.

After the initial trimming of pieces and sanding, I used Weld-On to glue the inner and outer dome together.

























I bought some 18" MDF floral rings from Michaels to use as the inner support for the dome. I am going to attach that to the bottom dome ring with bolts and then glue the floral rings to the inside of the inner dome. I used 3M tape to put some temporary foam board blocks inside the dome to help me find the correct placement of the MDF ring.

I want to cut out the holes for the holoprojectors before I mount the dome to the floral ring so that I have more room to work. So far I am really happy with how everything has come together!

3D Printed Radar Eye and Logic Display Bezels

There has been an increasing number of files available on Astromech.net for 3D printing R2 parts, and since I am building a new dome I decided to 3D print the radar eye and logic display bezels.

The 3D-printed pieces really turned out nicely the Dremel Ideabuilder printer. They were printed at highest quality, with 3 shells and a 35% infill. I started sanding the radar eye last night and the PLA sands beautifully. I am using a 120 grit sandpaper on my Dremel Multimax tool.

I plan on printing the holoprojectors as well since I found Vickers Viscount 3D print files that someone had posted online. Thank you inter webs!

Dome Drive Gear

I was unhappy with the performance of the BaneBots wheel that moved the lazy susan for my dome, so I designed and 3D-printed a dome gear for R2 on the Dremel IdeaBuilder printer at work.

I had some initial quality issues withe the 3D-printed pieces, but that was my fault due to the fact that I did not properly level the build plate. Doh!

The gear was made from one piece that I printed four times. The four pieces tabbed together to make the whole ring. I then sandwiched it between two rings of Sintra to make it more sturdy.

I 3D-printed a motor gear so that it would fit over the 1/2" Banebots shaft on my Jaycar YG2738 dome motor. 

I have to say that I am very happy with the results, and the dome stops on a dime!

You can see a video of the dome drive in action also on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aPWyvSrpXQ

Sci-fi Day Discovery World

I has taken me a while to update the blog, but here are some pics from the great time I had at Sci-Fi-Day at Discovery World in Milwaukee.

The R2 Builders Group had a dedicated space and there was an amazing array of Droids and other robots,  including Wall-E and a Dalek! The space was very nice as it had the droids roped off from the public, which cut down on selfie photo ops, but limited the amount of abuse the droids took at the hands of the curious and excited.

Also, it was my first time trooping as a Jedi with the Rebel Legion, and it was a blast! The kids were great, the other super fans were awesome and there were so many great cosplay costumes as well!

Weathering

Well, I have finally jumped in and started weathering R2 to give him some more authenticity. I am going for a patina of grime that is somewhere between grimy Tatooine R2 and throne room clean R2. I am using watercolor paint so it is easy to remove if I overdo it, and I plan on adding several coats to vary the color and detail.

After my first initial trepidation I am really start to enjoy it!

Milwaukee MakerFaire

Finally getting around to updating the blog!

MakerFaire was two weeks ago and it was fun, frantic and just a wee bit frustrating. 

The organizers combined my booth with my friend Bob Trocke's booth and that of another builder, Craig Smith. We three builders got a 20x20 corner booth and it was a great setup. Craig had a lot of cool droids he had built over the past 20 years or so - scratch built R2 (with awesome Weber grill dome), naked C-3PO from Episode I, the spider droid from Return of the Jedi - to name a few. He has some mad building skills and was an excellent booth mate!

Things got off to a rocky start. During setup on Friday, a freak accident short-circuited my Sabertooth 2x25 motor board in an impressive cloud of grey smoke. Fortunately,  I had a spare at home that I swapped out that night and got him operational. Then unfortunately the next day I soon discovered that I was getting crazy amounts interference on my Vex 72Mhz controller. R2 had a tendency to dart off at full speed in random directions. Very scary. Could the interference be from, say, the robotics competition that was across the aisle from my booth? I wonder!

That was disappointing since I did not really get the chance to try out the new scooter motor drive at the show.  I have since upgraded to a 2.4Ghz controller an hopefully this will avoid any future interference problems.

Regardless of R2's performance, the show was amazing! My brother, Pat came up for the day from Chicago to help out at the booth along with my son, Austin. I was glad they were there since there were over 30,000 visitors on Saturday and at times the crowd was 4 or 5 people deep around the booth. Despite the crowd, people had fun taking pictures with R2, and I enjoyed talking to people about the Builder's Group and showing them the Dremel 3D printer. It was especially nice to see friends and coworkers who came to the show.