More dome

Finished mounting the dome to the plastic ring and then glued the blue bottom ring. Tried to paint the remaining panels in the dome blue so I could have those done before vacation. Unfortunately I ran out of paint and realized that I completely underestimated the amount of blue paint I would need. So I need to order some more.

After the paint dried, I glued in a few of the panels that had enough paint to coat them. Just so the dome will start looking like a droid's dome.

Well, the long weekend is over and there will be no more updates or building until the very end of June or early July.

The fusing of the domes

I knew this would be a messy job and wasn't looking forward to it. So knowing that glue would be going everywhere, I used goop because it's easy to remove and slower drying. I smeared as much as I could on the inside of the outer dome and carefully slid that over the inner dome. Then to make absolutely sure that everything lined up, I inserted the hp's and logics.

Then every clamp I had was employed to clamp the two domes together. For some reason the lower areas on the domes didn't join together very well and there's gaps between the two domes in places. The upper part was just fine. But I doubt the dome will break apart anytime and it's probably strong enough.

So now I'm embarked on the task of slowly removing excess goop with a dental pick, toothpicks and rubbing it off with my fingers. After checking it several times, all the holes and pieces line up nice.

The dome finish and steel wool

A few preliminary tasks needed to be done before fusing the outer and inner dome. One of the first things you do when you get a dome is cut the panels out and label the panels and the inside of the outer dome with the corresponding number. So when you fuse the domes together, you lose the numbers unless you mark the outside of the inner dome with the panel numbers. Then after the two domes are fused, you just glue the panels over the numbers on the inner dome.

Another thing that had to be done was the final finish needed to be obtained on the outer dome. There was still some remnants of the spider crap (hard black dots) as well as numerous scratches on the outer dome. Steel wool was primarily used but finally I gave in and used some wet/dry 320 sandpaper to remove the scratches. The only thing was after I rinsed and dried it, the scratch marks from the sandpaper looked horrible. But lots of sanding with steel wool took care of that and after several hours, the dome finish was just about what I was looking for. One where you can see the machined spin lines still but with a little bit of a shine (and no scratches). The real shiny chrome look domes look interesting but that's not going to be on my droid. Even after steel wool-ing and washing with soap and water, fine scratch marks can be seen if you look closely but hopefully the dome will oxidize over time and that won't be as noticeable.

Steel wool works great on a dome's finish.

Files, sandpaper and dremel bits

I woke up this morning determined to finish the difficult cuts remaining on the inner dome. Yesterday after work I removed several panels and was starting to get comfortable cutting the aluminum dome and started getting into a routine. I used a cheap standard circle cutter to cut the 2" and 1.5" circles. The hardest part was finding the exact center of the circles for the circle cutting drill bit. The circles came out beautiful.

For the logics and pie plates, the first thing I do is to drill (with a larger bit) holes in all corners. Then I use a marker and mark where I want to drill holes just in from the line I have drawn on the dome. A nail and hammer then taps little holes where I marked to limit the drill bit from wandering. After all holes are drilled I use a cool new bit I bought for my dremel. It's quick release metal cutoff disc. The cutting disc mount on the dremel in seconds. Much better than the cheesy ones I used to remove the HP's. By drilling the little holes, it makes the dremel's job easier and keeps the wheel from wandering. After the piece is removed from the center, it's very rough but using a very rough file makes short work of filing the area. Then you can work up to finer files. All files are not created equal. The very rough file I have did a great job taking the aluminum down quickly. It took a ton of elbow grease and patience but the dome cutting and filing is complete. Everything needed trimming and it really was a big job. But if you're dreading this like I was don't worry about it. Once you get going it's really a piece of cake. Just don't rush things. Take plenty of breaks and look at a lot of pictures.

So after I got the dome complete, I put it all together for a trial run with the outer dome and logics and hp's all attached (with tape). Everything fit perfect too. I was very worried that once everything was cut there would be something that wouldn't be in line with the inner and outer dome. But the measurements were dead on .... surprise ! Actually I am surprised because usually this is about the time I get a visit by Murphy.

After the wife was paraded out to the garage to admire my droid, it was time to grab a beer and take it easy. Actually this may just be stalling tactics as I'm still not too keen on gluing the outer and inner dome together. But that will happen bright and early tomorrow when I'm fresh. Probably will use goop too.

I also decided on the white paint I'm going to use for R2's skin and legs. It will be the Lowes brand Vaspar satin white. I like the color and it's reasonably priced so that's what will be on my R2. I tested it out on a couple of the panels I cut out and primed. Nice paint and reasonable at only $2.75 a can too.

Rockler bearings and frame

No major milestones in building because I've been so busy but this weekend I should get a lot done. I hope to cut the remaining logics and psi sections out of the inner dome as well as inner dome upper pie plates so they can open with hinges. Then maybe I can laminate the inner and outer domes together.

The last week and a half I've been tweaking R2 and getting some odd jobs accomplished. One notable task has been to tap the frame and rockler with 1/4" tap to attach the rockler to the frame. I needed to add an extra nut to the "Daniel" base plate as a spacer so the dome ring wouldn't drag on the frame. It goes to show you that reading directions is great but you have to make your own determinations sometimes and deviate from standards occasionally. And it turns out someone else had the same problem with spacing.

I would like to get a lot accomplished with the dome this weekend as this is probably the last time I'll be doing any building (or posting to the blog) until the very end of June or early July. We will be in Alaska during most of the month of June. It will be tough being away from my garage workshop that long but there's going to be some pretty cool distactions in Alaska I guess.

The one minor problem I still have with the dome is it looks like it's going to be some work whenever I want to remove or put on the dome. I had to drill out the plastic ring a hair because it was an extremely tight fit that would have required a crowbar to remove the dome. Now it's a little easier.

Holo projectors

I have a nice set of resin holo projectors but was kicking around buying a set of aluminum ones. Then reality set in and I started wondering if the aluminum shavings have infiltrated my brain to influence me to keep buying aluminum parts. The fact of the matter is resin can look just as nice as aluminum if you take your time and prep it right. So I canned the aluminum hp idea and spent the last couple days sanding, priming and painting the resin hp's. And so far they look really nice. I venture people won't be able to tell the difference and will assume they're aluminum.

One noteworthy thing I did in prepping the resin hp's was I wiped them down with alcohol, dried them, and then shot them with a plastic primer that I got from Lowes. I wasn't sure if the plastic primer would work with resin but it worked fine. In fact, in a few places where I missed the primer, the paint didn't take as well. The primer is clear so it's easy to miss spots ... because you don't want to put it on too thick.

I saw this funny video again today after someone on the R2 club posted it. I saw it a year or so again and it's hilarious ... especially if you're a star wars fan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOcKGc8ycCA

Cutting large inner Dome Circles

Tonight I got home from work and decided it was go-time. Time to tackle the one R2 task that struck dread and fear into my heart. And that's cutting the large circles out of the inner aluminum dome with the shiny new "Widow Maker". I've been dreading this task for months now so it finally got to the point where I just needed to get it done. And it actually ended up being fairly simple and rewarding project.

The "Widow Maker" circle cutter was just a little difficult to use. I used Chris's (artoo-detoo.net) technique of deeply scoring the circle into the aluminum while not cutting all the way through. Then I used dremmel cutoff discs to cut the inside of the circle like a pizza all the way through the aluminum to where the circle was scored. Then you just grab each slice of pizza with some long nosed pliers and wiggle it until it breaks off nice and clean. In no time you have a nice circle (After using about a million dremmel cutoff discs). I also had to wear a glove because the dremmel got pretty hot.

I made the circle just a tad smaller than it should have been so a large half round file finished the job. Then I wrapped a funnel with some course sandpaper for the final hole shaping.

I'm glad this is now done so I don't have to worry about it any longer and I can finish the dome. Still have to cut the logics areas out of the inner dome but that should be fairly easy.

Robotic owl and a solution to high gas prices

The tides were great and the wind was perfect this weekend so not much building was done but a lot of superb sailing was had. Having that sailing kayak is going to double my R2 build time. Because when the conditions come together I can't resist taking it out to the Gulf of Mexico. It goes where other boats can't and in conditions that are too rough for most.

On the robotic front we adopted a robotic owl who's now perching in the oak tree out front. Very cool owl who my wife named Theodore.

Oh and while sailing I came up with some ideas about ways to save gas .... Just need to figure out a way to safely tack in heavy traffic.

Singing the R2 blues ...

Didn't get much building in yesterday but did start the process of painting some of the parts in the R2 blue. I'm getting ready to get going on the dome and wanted to start with the blue painting to gauge if I'm going to have enough paint. So I prepped the radar eye, large data port, dome ring and utility arms.

The radar eye is a piece of shiny aluminum art. But it had to be blue so I prepped it by scruffing it up real good with a fine foam sanding pad. I actually did that with all the parts except for the utility arms which didn't need it.

Then the parts were cleaned with acetone and then shot with a coat of aluminum self etching primer (sherwin williams GBP 988 self etching primer).

After the parts are primed I'm using a blend of paint that BLACK GOLD INC. out of Arlington TX sells. They make the same color combo that was used by the R2 in some of the star wars movies I believe. You first use a custom base coat (it's a purple) SKU# R2D2 which is 2 parts FBC10 1 FBC02 and 1 FBC12. After applying the base coat you then use Kandy Oriental blue spray SKU# K04S. BLACK GOLD INC.'s phone# is 817-633-1135 or 817-640-4653 if you're interested. I bought 2 cans of base and 3 topcoat kandy. Not sure if that's going to be enough but it should be close.

Later in the day I applied the purple base coat to the parts and then several coats of the blue. Looks beautiful too. And then ... I have to admit. Sometimes building these robots is so frustrating. No matter how hard you try, something manages to screw up. And it's usually going to happen to the most critical areas. Today my "SUOTD" involved the radar eye. After it was done and looked spectacular in it's new blue color, I decided to turn it upside down and paint the inside ring a little more but from the bottom angle. Bad idea. The radar eye turned while I was shooting paint and smeared paint on the front. So all I can do is sand it down and redo it. And that's frustrating beyond frustrating. Enough painting for today .... and I really am singing the blues now.

NOTE: I couldn't stop and ended up wet sanding the radar eye area that was bad. Then I applied some base coat and then did the top coat again. And it's looking good again. Now if I can keep my paws off these parts for a few hours they may just turn out fine.