Finally started with the legs...

Here is one of the first tests of R2D2:s wooden legs. We have just put them into a pile, for later glueing together. We just wanted to get started and see how this will fit together with the frame and also see how much 3D printing we are going to have to do just to get all the nice looking details and greebles!

So far, we seem to have the basic parts for constructing the legs! They too, lack a lot of love and work that goes into this process. Just nice to see how they will come together. The ankle is basically made of resin, then we have some birch wood and plywood. We use PLA for 3D printing and mix and match materials together. It is the look we are after, and in the end, it will be very hard to tell what is made of what kind of material...

Also, we just cant afford getting it all in metal and even if we did I am not so sure we would go for the all-metal look!

Video of first testfitting...

This is the first testfitting, with aluminium dome, skin and some greebles. Nothing is really attached yet, we just wanted to get a good feel of the finished look. There is a lot of work to be done on each part!

Aluminium skin and adding greebles...

So we did the same basic work on our aluminium skin, just washed it with a sponge, scotch brite and made sure it didn't have that oily coat on the aluminium since we are going to paint it later. Here we testfit the whole thing together!

Basic test, seems like the Lazy Susan can be adjusted and just leave a 1-2 mm gap between the skin and the dome. We tried to see how greebles will fit behind the skin and later we will start cutting into the skin. But this is good for now!

Testfitting lights inside dome...

This is the Teeces light system that really have a wonderful look to them, as they are perfected by Astromech club members. Since we just want to testfit inside the dome, we used tape for the fitting, since there is a lot more work to do on the dome before any electronics are to be put inside!

It really just ended up looking really great!

In just two weeks time there is a Maker Faire, here in Luleå and we are going to showcase R2D2 there. Since we have no other moving parts yet, the lights gives it a more lively feel! We like to support our local Makerspace community even though we don't have any other R2 builders here locally. It might inspire others to start their own build!

Resume Build!

Who would have known it would take almost six months to be up and running again? Selling the apartment, selling a summerhouse, buying another house, empty all spaces, vacate the apartment and finally moving and settle into our new home!

Last week we finally threw out the Christmas tree and thus got the corner of our living room back. Suddenly, building R2D2 was resumed! We started by bringing up the wooden frame and this time putting in our first screws. We just testfitted it before! Also here with the Lazy Susan (which will give the aluminium dome its spinning action)!

We unpacked the 300 mm (Derren Muller) Aluminium dome and this time we went over it with scotch brite and polished it inside and out! Got a really nice shine to it without making it too shiny. If we want to we can bring it up to high-glossy-shine, but we will see what kind of look we feel comforable with later on.

Testing them together for the first time, we got ourselves a really nice looking garbage-can here!

We also found our old boxes with greebles and various electronics parts!

It feels good to get our R2D2 build up and running again!

Lifeform scanner...

So it just never seizes to amaze me all the beautiful craftmanship that some members of the forum goes through, to make sure the parts of R2D2 is up to par! So even an R2 detail which mostly is visible in only one of the movies, can be reproduced to such a detail! This is the life-form scanner, from The Empire Strikes Back. 

Result:

Wow, its just stunning!

Each part manufactured may only be available in small quantities and for a short amount of time. Since these are not produced for any commercial use, only in limited numbers for re-sale to members of the forum. So mostly you could scout the forum for the next part-run or start building your own and try to follow the screen accuracy.

R2D2 really is a swiss-army-robot when you look at all his devices!

...I guess collecting piece by piece when available, and see which parts you can make for yourself is one way to go at it...

Finally got it!!!

Special order this week: the 300 mm dome. FINALLY!

Inner dome

Includes Seamless Milled Bottom Ring

This Hydro Dome Part Run includes:

• 1 Aluminum laser cut outer dome

• 1 Aluminum laser cut inner dome: Inner dome laser cuts include, Radar eye mounting holes, 5 Pie panels, 4 bottom panels to the right of the front HP, these panels are cut with large side tabs (for those who want them to remain static), 3 HP Holes, 3 Openings for Front and Rear Logics, dome bump holes, 2 Holes for PSIs. The inner dome includes hardware for mounting to the inner ring.

• 1 Aluminum one piece bottom ring: Includes hardware for mounting the inner dome to the ring.
The ring is pre-drilled for the "Rockler" Bearing and includes stainless steel hardware for spacing and mounting to the Rockler bearing.

This Dome Fits all CS:L and CS:R parts and frames. Fits all Styrene, Wood and Aluminum Frames.

So I was waiting for this rather important part, since may when the build started. Since may we have had a break from building R2, since first we got married, and then we found a house and have been in a moving process for the last 1,5 month. But as things were coming together, Darren Muller suddenly annonced that the R2D2 aluminium dome would be available in september. And here I was, almost pressing F5 daily at the granite earth home page, everyday since June...

http://www.graniteearth.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ALUMINUM-DOME-SET

for resale only to members on the Astromech forum, not intended for commercial use, the interest was still sky-high. So these babies were available only 25 minutes or so, on tuesday (yesterday). And on monday Darren sold the last couple of units from the previous design and those units (might have been 5 of them) were sold within 5 minutes.

So getting my hands on one of these, is a dream I have had for quite some time now. It is essential to our build! <3 ..nothing can really compare to a real 300 mm aluminium dome and unfortunately it is not a piece you can really manufacture on your own!

The previous design I had made a post about it earlier, also had a bottomplate which in this design unfortunately is gone. This is because it was a piece of scrapmetal left over from manufacturing the earlier design. But I think we can solve it design-wise. The important thing is that we got the DOME!

I can not stress this enough. We are looking forward to starting assembly on this wonderful piece! <3

Fixing the 3d printer...

So we have come to this... had a couple of weeks we were busy with the wedding and all, and after that a piece of plastic got stuck in my FlashForge Finder and after that I was to lazy to fix the machine. But now I finally got around to clear the machine of this PLA plastic that was stuck inside. 

That happens sometime and is not very uncommon...

Fixed it! Here is a tutorial...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyEpvwhDKis&feature=youtu.be

Now back to printing! ^^ 

Star Wars Wedding...

So we had a slight break in our build, since we went to Paris and got married! Slightly Star Wars themed wedding, we finally got the churches blessing over our marriage! <3

We are superhappy and now that it's all said and done we can resume our build of our R2D2 unit!

Assemble the wood frame...

We opted for a wood frame, because it seemed like a solid option. We are building according to CS-R blueprints for R2D2,  (revised). We found another member through the Astromech forum that does a run on wood frames. This is made from Ukrainian Birch Wood, exported to USA, CNC-cut and now exported back to Sweden. I guess thats 0-1 for the Climate, but still we got a great looking frame here. I did ask local companies but they did not seem to interested in minimal order of 1 unit, and they just said that I could possible ask local carpenters. So I did ask a couple of those, but seemed busy at the moment.

I guess this was the shortcut instead of cutting the frame ourselves.

If you ignore the RC plane at the far side of the table, the rest of the pieces are our wood frame! :)

Test assemble... we started watching the youtube video I have linked before, but quickly noted that in the video they are using the CS-L frame instead of this one, so we chose to look at the pictures provided by the seller, and we had no problems putting it together.

Fitted, but not glued together...

And ofc we just had to testfit some of our 3D printed pieces so far... 

We did also make a test using cell-foam for filling up parts of the frame which is not needed for eiter details or hatches. We are guessing that it could give some support for the outer-layer-skin and also may give some extra support to the frame and make for a more solid construct. This kind of cell foam doesn't really add any extra weight to the R2 unit.

That's all for now...

3D printing tools...

We have a lot of sanding to do, so one step is to find ways to sand effectively in all the angels. So this is an example of what to do. Olof Geelnard designed this for our use on the R2D2 unit. This is designed at https://www.tinkercad.com/

And this is the printed result, lower polygon count at the bottom to have a better grip when inserted, and the highest resolution at the top, so that is quite solid and sterdy:

And this is how it works...