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Sunday, April 26, 2009

R2D2 abuse

It was fun taking R2D2 to take your droid to work day but the front foot drive is once again loose. Driving in our parking lot going from one building to another took it's toll on R2. The pavement was rougher than I anticipated. That in addition to the main building he drove was tile and very bumpy tile with large grooves between the tiles. It was akin to taking R2D2 on an automotive test track. I was wincing as the front wheel banged away on the bumps. Many R2's in the club probably couldn't even go on surfaces like this but mine is like a tank. A tank with a delicate front foot.

I must .... must must must build a completely new front ankle / foot design similar to my rear motor mounts. It just makes sense. The stupid pivot point on the ankle is such a waste and completely inefficient for a droid that won't have 3-2-3 configuration. Recently FordFun signed my guestbook with a note that he just completed a design like that. If you're reading this, I would love to see some pictures of your design.

For now I will remove the foot and fix it again as there's another charity event that would like R2D2 there to entertain the guests.

5 comments:

Brenda's blog said...

Ouch!!! But it sounds like you had fun, And how could you build an R2 and not tell your co workers LOL LOL I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut. Hope you get R2 back on his feet soon.

Brenda

fordfun said...

Jim, after reading your last entry, I broke down and took some pictures and posted them on astromech http://astromech.net/forums/showthread.php?p=19597#post19597 hopefully it will give you an idea of how I approached this problem. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks, Gary

Jim said...

Ya can just feel R2's pain don't you Brenda : )

Gary, Thanks a lot for posting those pictures on Astromech ! I responded to your post there and love the design you came up with. Just exactly what all droids should use. You should do a run of them. Could possibly change the way droid builders think about creating their center feet. I think it's an area of contention among many builders.

fordfun said...

Jim,
Thanks for the nice comments on Astromech.net. It doesnt seems as though its as popular an idea as I thought it would be. Anyhow, I am pleased with it. Late last night, R2 took his own first steps. I was quite pleased with the front foot setup. I had some concerns about my smallish speed controller (dimension engineering 2X10RC, but it worked flawlessly for over 45 minutes without any noticable overheating, ran cool actually. Now to finish a few details and get this thing to my daughters school!

Thanks, Gary

Jim said...

Yeah Gary I was surprised there wasn't more discussion about your front foot design. Even though there's some genius innovative people in the club human nature is to follow what everyone else is doing. Until you drive R2 in some rugged conditions you can't appreciate how helpful a sturdy front foot design can be. But thanks again for posting the pics.
Jim