Not Dead

I post these every few months don't I?

Well, R2 is not dead. I see him everyday in his sad little pile of parts in my man-cave. One day soon here I will get back to him. Right now I am consumed with family, Steampunk costuming deadlines for myself, my wife, and two of my friends, and an all-consuming obsession with replicating a Star Trek Enterprise uniform. You may need to be a member of the forum, but you can see this project here on the fantastic 1701st Community Forum..

So sit tight, I will be blow the dust off my droid and get him put together!

Leg Test Fit

I test fit the legs last night. They still need to be skinned and drilled for cables. After I get the legs skinned I will start skinning the body. The main ankles are almost done too and the center ankle is all cut out and ready to begin assembly.

Christmas for an R2 Builder

So I got some more regular items as gifts this Christmas. Some slippers and books, things like that. But I also got some R2-centric gifts! Yay me! My family does understand me a little after all.

Here are my R2's wheels, bearings, and motor controllers.

Finally, Some Real Progress After a Dry Spell

I got some shoulder and leg work done over the holiday. I got the shoulders pretty much done. They have been skinned in the .040" styrene with an outer layer of 1/16” thick aluminum held in place mostly by 3M VHB tape and a little glue at the ends where the seam is. You can just see the finished shoulders behind the legs in the lower pictures of the legs.

The legs are all assembled and drilled, but I need to fill in some areas and even some others out with a little filing and sanding before skinning. While I do that I have started assembling the main ankles (not pictured.)

One thing I have noticed is that the bolts that stick up into the leg where the shoulder hub will go seem way too long. I am wondering if they need to be cut down to accommodate the shoulder bolt. I need to pick up a set of resin shoulder hubs to confirm the lengths for cut-off.

Budget Red/Blue Blinker

Thanks to a tip from Jamie Papinchak on astromech.com I picked up a couple of snowman Christmas decorations with a red/blue LED flasher built into it. I took a picture of the blinker removed from the decoration and made a short youtube video of it in action. It's not the best option for your droid, but for the budget builder, it seems like a fine alternative. Now to find a green/yellow snowman blinker...

Proof of Life - Shoulders

I promised my droid building was not dead! Though I have nothing super amazing to report, I did get the mounting holes for my shoulders drilled, counter-sunk, and assembled last night. here's a quick cell phone shot of it. More to come.

Starting a new blog and re-setting my droid build.

No I am not ending this R2-A6 build blog, I am starting another one in addition to this one.

My man-cave/hobby room has gotten out of hand. It's turned into a dumping ground for unwanted tools and junk collected for future projects and unfinished ones. I am clearing it out completely, re-organizing and resetting my work space. I am finally going to college (it's been 13 years since I was in High school) and will need an office to take the on-line courses as part of my Bio-mechanical Engineering Technologies degree at Purdue. I also want to be able to pursue my hobbies like building this droid and other things.

With all this in mind, I decided to take this opportunity to totally re-do the room now dubbed my 'Ready Room.' This is pretty exciting as I've been waiting to get our next house to trek-i-fi a room for myself, but now with 4 years of college ahead of me before we can even look at moving I decided the time was nigh.

I am starting a new blog about it here.

I will be building R2 again soon. His naked legs and bare bones mock me every time I go in there and it's time to take things in hand. So hand me that hyper-spanner over there and lets get to work!

Oh, and the vacuum former is still in construction. got the major steel and wood body work done. A few more welds and I'll move onto the platten, oven, and vacuum systems. More to come on that.