Jawa needs a facelift

I'm still in home improvement projects mode so not as much robot building going on.

Last couple of days I was giving some attention to the Jawa. His hood needed work to keep it in the correct shape to semi hide his head. I also worked on the face and eyes. Jawas don't have pupils and the eyeballs I used before had pupils. Today his torso will be rounded out some and the lower hips will get some work. He needs to look good when he meets the R2's at the picnic next week.

I heard C3PO shipped out Friday late afternoon (Thank-you Helen at MC). He should be home in several days and I'm anxious to see how well the plating came out. This gives me one or two days to get him ready for the picnic/meet with the R2 club next Saturday.

I also worked on the resin wheels I made for my B9. If I can get these resin wheels working then I'll sell the aluminum set to finance more robot madness. Speaking of which .. I got a cool remote controlled miniature Dalek last week and recently joined the Dalek builders club. That would be a fairly easy project I imagine. But not until I finish these other projects.

Chatter on the B9 forum about blinking LED's prompted me to find and order some white and red blinking LED's. I'll use them to build a new brain and set of finger lights. Too many wires in the brain now. Which reminds me ... yesterday I painted (hammered silver) a set of the new Scott S. motorized ears which will go into my new radar / brains. I also need to paint this cool radar unit. The mechanisms are ready for bubble up/down and radar left/right motions. I'll try to incorporate the vex system to do all that.

SMASH !!!!

Imagine my surprise when I got home from work today and found the head of my B9 hanging by a wire against the torso. Somehow it was bumped off the torso. Fortunately it had the "stunt bubble" on it because it was in the garage (just in case). I've been planning on redoing the electronics in that part of the B9 completely anyway so I can deal with fixing it.

Nothing terribly broken but I'm glad he wasn't wearing his formal bubble. So I decided to bring B9#1 back in the house and bring B9#2 out to the garage. I'm thinking about using all the premium pieces from B9#2 for my primary B9 so I have a heavy duty B9 ready for the sci-fi robot convention. The steel treadsection and fiberglass legs and knees are very strong and won't get accidentally damaged in transport or at the convention. It probably wouldn't take too much effort either.

C3PO plating has gone slightly stale. The plating company is having troubles with his torso and I'm guessing they wish they never took the job. I was expecting him to be shipped over 2 weeks ago but as of yet, I'm not sure when that will happen. With the R2 club picnic looming in a few weeks I was hoping to bring a shiny protocol droid to the picnic along with the Jawa. It's going to be cutting it close.

I've been redoing the jawa and giving him a complete face lift and head redo. New eyes and resoldering all the electrical connections with a fuse and quick disconnect for the head. Also I ran some heavy duty wire along the hood to keep his face shrounded in shadows better.

Captain Jeff and the bait shop

I have to admit, it was a nice change of pace not posting to the blog.

The "scifi robot invasion" is now a definate go. I spoke with the promoter of fx show 2007 and he's still very enthusiastic about hosting the event regardless of how many robots show up. The early interest is a tad weak but I'm getting feedback that interest is building. We'll see.

My son now has a Captains license and is doing saltwater fishing charters. They also have a baitshop so I made him a large "neon" sign made with this new technology called cool neon wire aka el wire. This stuff is great. It looks almost exactly like neon but is more flexible and the voltage requirements are not like regular neon. No fragile glass tubes. The only downside is it's not very bright during the daylight. But in dim night it looks exactly like neon without the humming.

The sign is approximately 4' by 2'. I plan on using the wire in some my robot projects.

Also, still no C3PO completion. They said it would be shipped by last Friday but still no word. The chest had to be resanded and re metallized due to cracking. Hopefully it will ship next week. They seem like a pretty reputable company.