Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas and God's richest blessings to friends and family for the new year to come!! All the time, He is good!!!

Jon

First leg ready for primer.

The construction of the first ankle is complete. I made the ankle and bracelet to be one piece and as you can see, in the picture, I had to fill in the area where the two pieces came together. I had a small gap in there that I didn't like and the filler worked out very well, not only filling the space, but also to make the bond stronger. I will have to mask off the bracelet as it will be metallic, while the rest of the ankle is white. I plan on having this primed tonight and ready for paint tomorrow.

The booster again, is just set in place for the picture. I have been looking at other builders blogs to see how they have attached the booster on their droids. I still haven't decided which way I would like to do this and may hold off until I fully test the legs on the droid when it eventually gets moving. I'm on vacation between Christmas and New Years Eve, so I plan on spending some time working on finishing up this leg, and starting the other outer ankle. I'm hoping to have Artoo standing before too long.

Leg and Ankle update

This month marks my second year as a member of the R2 Builders Club. Two years into this project and I've come this far. Can't wait to see what next year brings!!

Not too much of an update as I have been busy with family and work, but a little work here and there over the last few weeks gave me enough to add to the blog.

I finally got around to finishing off the construction of the first of two outer ankles. I've had this part sitting about 2/3's complete since August. This like the legs are based on Dave's styrene plans, with a very slight modification to add more bracing.

I ran into a small issue with the booster and ankles. I created the curved section for the ankle and didn't take into consideration that I needed to recess the booster into this part, as I had cut the ankle to allow for the booster to fit properly. You can see that the cut notch on the legs and the booster did not match up in the first two pictures unless the curved part was slid down the ankle by 1/4". After a little thinking, I recreated that curved section and pre-cut an access into the top face and the center brace (not shown). After letting it sit and dry, the booster fits perfectly, and the notches line up on the leg and booster parts. I'm still cutting the ankle bracelet piece and will pre-paint that part aluminum. I will have to smooth out the edges of the ankle and then skin them with a layer of .040 styrene to give them the same finished appearance as the legs.

Logics Installed - Test

I installed the front logics tonight just to see how they looked. I have the pic cranked at 45v and if the logics are directly facing, it's blinding. I may need to cut the voltage back. This again is only half of the leds, however, I faced a problem as one of my wires broke. It was on the outside row of the leds, and when I connected it again, it worked. This really bothers me and I may only add another string or two and then glue some blanks in. The light from the surrounding leds may illuminate enough to make it look full. At 40 leds, it already looks pretty good. It's a compromise, but it may be necessary to do, just to avoid possible (further...) breakage.

First Logics Test

Big Update!!! I have been working on the front logics for a while, running into issues with the pic flasher a while back and point to point wiring more leds than I'd like to count. It's been trial and error with led strings breaking and having to be re-welded and/or replaced. I am half way through, which means for me, 40 out of 80 total leds for my front logics. Keith's resin logic surrounds only allows space for 5 rows of 8 leds, instead of 5 rows of 9 leds that my bezels are configured for. From my point of view, it doesn't really matter, it's still going to look good.

I have spent time here and there, working on no more than 2 or 3 leds at any time, to glue the lights to the bezel. It's been a slow process and has taken more than 2 weeks for me to complete due to the cure time for the glue, but I have 4 complete strands. Today, I spent some time wiring the strands to the pic flasher and it tested great!!! I can't wait to complete this as it's been a long time in the works for me. I'm going to have to power it with 9v batteries for the time being, but I will eventually move the power over to a distribution board, connected with a slip ring to allow connection to the dome without the wires getting twisted. This will eventually allow me to run the light operation remotely, and give Artoo a little more realism.

Legs attached

Well I think I figured out how to attach the legs to body. This set up isn't completely set, but it was stable enough to make a display appearance for Halloween at work and then at church for our youth event. Artoo was a big hit!!! I can't wait to get him rolling around for next year!!

Attached are some pics. I attached the legs using the parts included with the A&A frame. There are 4 hubs, two per leg. I have them attached, one to the leg, and then one inside the JAG stop on the shoulder of the frame. This give me about 1/2" from the leg to the body, less the .080" thickness of the skins. I have yet to reinforce the bolts, from both the inside of the leg hub as well as between the inside of the leg and the shoulder hub. I plan on using an additional piece of styrene inside, laminated to beef up the area of the bolts. I plan on doing the same on the opposite side of the leg skin, using metal for added strength.

The builder logo that you see is the cut out from the C&D dome base ring. I think Cole Horton mentioned something about not knowing what to do with this area, but he added the logo there for fun. I'm not sure if anyone had done anything with this yet, but I plan on eventually finishing a frame to fit it and adding a clock movement. The weathering was made to look like scrap metal. I'm pretty happy with the results.

Reboot....

It's been a while since I've posted anything Artoo related. I've been doing works here and there on items. Although it's been too cold outside to paint, I have been painting parts indoors. The booster covers and one shoulder horse shoe are recently completed.

I have also started working on my front logics. My circuit tested fine, but I had a couple wires that had broken on my chain while transporting back and forth from my home to my in laws where I was working. I replaced the wire connections and glued the first pigtail in place. The bezels are from Calvin Thomas (Thanks Calvin!!!). They are a little big for Keith's resin logic surrounds, so I'm eliminating one column of lights and shifting the bezel over slightly to center the installed leds. I'm not drastically off center and eliminating 10 lights leaves me a little more room for error and less draw on the pic flasher.

The picture doesn't do justice for the blue booster cover. The cobalt blue is very deep, but in natural daylight, brightens up considerably. The leg and the shoulder are Satin White. I haven't mounted anything yet and probably will not until after I have the legs attached to the body and tested. I still have to paint the silver edge on the recessed layer of the horse shoe shoulder. The shoulder hubs are in process of being painted, as are the leg struts that fit in the booster.

The leds are extremely bright, but will tone down when all of them are installed on the pic flasher.

Things will probably be slow over the next couple of months with the holidays, and work around the house.