Sunday, April 7, 2013

R2 IS STANDING! ( FIXED SHOULDER DISKS )

I got the legs done and propped R2 up on two legs. The first time I realized I had the shoulder disks too far down the legs and had to pry apart the outermost wood layer and take all the bolts out, fill the holes, make new holes, and put the shoulder disk back on and glue the leg layers.

Now he's standing again with the corrected shoulder disks. He's starting to look like a droid now!

As you may be able to tell, the shoulders come up past the frame top and this makes the dome look sunk in, like he's hunching his shoulders. This is the pre-shoulder disk fix.



R2 after the shoulder disk are fixed and standing again. Sorry for the awkward angle and bad lighting, iPod quality.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Shoulder disk and leg work





I did so work on my R2 legs and also took my mess-up frame ring to use as a dome ring to keep my dome stable.









Now onto the legs and shoulder disk...
I took my legs outside and drilled holes in the 1/2 layer facing the frame and the shoulder disks. I followed Victor Franco's tutorial to put it all together and and almost done drilling holes and putting bolts and t-nuts in. I drilled a wire hole in the leg layer and shoulder disk as well.



Victor's tutorial...  http://pw2.netcom.com/~artoodetoo/LegTutorial.pdf
His blog is really good for studying and building. 


Now R2 looks like this...a pile on my fireplace, not in it.



Painted center ankle, new pipes, eletronics

So I haven't posted too much, mainly because I've been working on R2 ( and doing homework, projects, a play in theater, and Wondercon). I painted the center ankle and will probably use blue acrylic paint to paint the small areas on R2's dome and some resin parts. Any aluminum color silver will work for R2's dome, so I have that on hand. I used 2-3 coats. It's a devil to get off your hands. By using soap, nail polish remover, and olive oil; I got it all off.

I also put my ABS skirt onto my frame. I used a sharper and longer nail to drill a hole for the small screws that I used. After two tries that yielded a crooked skirt I got it right.

A week or so ago I went with my mom to Home Depot and get some electronics and new pipes. The electrical pipe wouldn't fit into the gas pipe so we got 3/4' and 1' galvanized pipes plus flanges to match.

Some electronic related stuff...
-25ft 12-gauge wire
-30 amp circuit breaker
- 1 grounding bracket for power and ground signal distribution

haven't had time to take many pics so here's a what R2 looked like a few days ago....

 



Wondercon 2013 (my first)

I went to Wondercon (my first convention for anything) Saturday and Sunday to do booth duty with the builders. Got to go around and look at booths but mostly stuck to R2 Builders booth to get pics. I got a chance to see what driving an R2 is like with Victor's droid. It was easier than I expected but still hard. I need to practice driving my own a good week or so before the senior project due date (my scooter motors coast to a stop according to some/many builders). The convention was a bit boring without having a droid to drive around but walking people react and seeing how happy they were was cool too. I might bring R2 to an old folks home, they might remember Star Wars best and probably will need cheering up. Visitor = day instantly made for elderly people.  Now...onto the pictures!
cutest empire vehicle...forgetting the name



bear dressed as a ewok


this girl (far right) lost it, she was so happy.

McMaster's Wall-E

R2 and a R2 jacket..AWESOME!


Victor's R2 needed to park and Wall-E was in the way. The crowd watched as Wall-E gave his parking spot to R2. I think Wall-E is taking this opportunity to learn how to drive R2 or himself, why else would he be staring down Victor's control box. 


Victor got an interview

this is actually how R2 runs, she drives him

R2, Wall-e, and Spiderman had a...disagreement