Northwest R2 Builders Day

Took some time off building to go to the Northwest R2 Builders day.  What a great time!!  We had a total of 6 R2's in various states of completion.  Left to right are Todd with his wood framed R2, beautiful polished dome and mostly finished legs.  Net is me then Chris with his finished ESB R2 that is beautifully weathered.  Chris has the JEDI control system and senna style drive frames and his R2 worked great.  Next is Carol who has only been building for a few months??!!  Great progress!  She has A&A frame and skins and a 300 Dome and it is coming along nicely.  Last is Amy who's R2 looks mostly done except for drive motors and electronics.  It has senna style drive frames mounted so it won't be long.  Good company!!

My R2 is on the left and you can easily tell I still have a lot of small external details missing.  Power couplers, center vents, coin returns, arms etc. 

Chris's R2 with dome removed. He has a very cool slide out battery tray that opens like a drawer and really excellent weathering.

Todd's dome with a super polished finish.  Also every single dome panel is hinged - just insanely nice work.

Amy showing her A&A drink tray (from Jabba's sail barge scenes).  This looks really nice with a gold hammered paint finish.  Her R2 is just about done and looks super.  Overall this was a really fun event and great to get my R2 to.

Current Status

Today I got the legs finished up and re-installed so I decided to put together what I have so far to see how everything looks.  Gosh!  this is really fun :-)  R2 actually is starting to look like something and all the parts fit.

Rear view showing the electronics panel.  The top of the panel hits the skin (just barely) so it will need some trimming, other than this all is well.

Side view showing complete legs.  Only thing the legs are missing are the lower ankle cylinder holders.

Dome Electronics

Today was spent making an electrical panel for the dome.  I used a piece of 1/4" ABS.  I really am starting to like the ABS, it looks good, cuts easily on my bandsaw, drills perfectly, and won't short out components that accidentally touch it.  I thought for a long time about how to clip in the wires coming from the slipring so they wouldn't hang up on something but finally realized that a simple slot would do the trick.  I slotted the panel and then faced the board and DB plug the opposite way so when the connector is plugged in the wire will not come out of the slot.  This is very simple and easy to hook up from underneath, very important as I plan on removing the dome for transport.

This is a view of the slipring and slot taken through the rear door.  Easy to see the slot in this view.

Close up of the board, cable hood and wire.  The slot is harder to see in this view but you can get the idea.  Later I'll drill some holes in the ABS to run small black tiewraps through to secure the wiring.

Electrical Panels

Time to build some electrical panels so I went to Tap Plastics and found some nice ABS black plastic that has a wrinkle finish on one side.  The main panel (above) and head panel are 1/4" thick and I will have two small side panels inside that are 1/8" thick.  The hinges are cut from a strip of aluminum aircraft hinge, very strong and light.  The hinge pins will be easily removable so I can take the panel off easily for service.

Shown above are the hinges for the panel installed.  The pins just slide into the hinge and snap in the nylon bracket to lock them in place.  Works slick and the panel comes off in just a few seconds.

This is the main panel and side panel with some circuit boards mounted.  On the main panel I mounted the LCD display from behind through a square hole I cut.  I also removed the V Music Module from the case and bolted it to the board because I couldn't figure out a way to mount the case that looked good.  All the boards are mounted using 4/40 stainless hardware and 1/4" nylon spacers.  The small panel is one of the side boards and has the 2 speed controls on it - a dual for the main drive and a single for the dome.

This is a shot of the main electrical panel in the open position.  You can also see the drive panel mounted inside the body.

Main electrical panel in the up position.  I mounted an aluminum channel on the top frame for the panel to rest against and used an aircraft stainless cowling latch to hold it closed.  Looks nice and is very secure.

Front Skin

Finally I have the front skin in a semi-finished state.  All the hinges are bonded on and the doors hinged. I also mounted the coin slots and pocket vents.  Everything is looking good at this point and it fits on my frame fine.

This is the inside view of the skin showing the hinges all mounted.

Door Hinges

This is one of the hinges after grinding away the powdercoat and bonding on with JB Weld.  I wanted to make this look better even though it's inside where it will not be seen - but heck, I know it's there.

 

I have a sheet of carbon fibre decal so I cut ot these pieces to cover the hinge area. 

 

This is the hinge area after trimming out - looks better to me.  Now it's time to do the rest of the doors and hinges.

Leg Work & Painting

Yesterday since most of the time mounting the doors is waiting for JB Weld to dry I painted another batch of parts blue.  Finished up the coin slots, octagon ports, booster covers, and various other small parts.  Above is a leg test fitted with all the parts - darn happy with the results.  In the next few weeks I can assemble R2 with the goal of not taking the legs off again anytime soon.

Doors & Hinges

I wanted to start mounting the doors so I ground away the powdercoat and bonded on two doors.  In hindsight I should have done this before powdercoating but I didn't know how well it would turn out.  Oh well - next time!!  The doors and hinges mounted well, after they dry I'll test everything then bond on the remaining doors.

JEDI Controls

Wanted to see how my new JEDI Controller would work so I hooked it up on a breadboard to play with it.  I found it pretty easy to hook up and it works great.  I downloaded some tracks from my Star Wars CD's and got the sounds working.  Really Fun!

Powdercoated Skins & Parts

Got my parts back from the powdercoater and they look fantastic.  Above are the front and back of the 2 tall doors - everything looks great.  There have been some questions if you could powdercoat skins that were bonded together with JB Weld - but no problems here.

This is the rear door made up up 10 separate parts all JB Welded together.  Both side were powdercoated (same as the doors above) so the inside looks just as nice!

These are the parts I had coated in this batch.  Note that I had some extra driveframes so I took them along just for fun, the drives installed in my R2 are not powdercoated (yet). 

Electronics

Started working on some of the electronics today.  I assembled the slip ring connector boards and soldered all 24 leads from the slipring to the board.  The slipring rotates 360 degrees and will carry all the power and signals to the dome.  It allows for a quick disconnect so I can remove the dome for transport and maintainence.

Soldering the slipring wires into the 25 pin connectors.

Testing each lead with a continuity tester.  Better now than when installed (I speak from experience!).

Completed slipring boards and wiring.  This will give me 12 volts, 5.5 volts and 16 data leads into the dome which should be plenty for what I am planning.  I also plan a second dome with different features so this will make it easy to change the dome.

Finally I added some spiral wrap to the wires and a hood to the plug.  One hood is removed in this picture so the 25 pin plug will fit through the slipring mounting hole. 

Doors

In order to powdercoat the parts everything needs a way to hang up.  Since the doors have no holes or other way to hang I mounted the hinges I had using JB Weld.  The hinges glued on pretty well and the picture is after I cleaned up the excess.  All the remaining parts and skins are now at the powdercoater.

Legs

Time to get the last of the parts ready for powder coat.  Here is the shoulder shim sitting on the leg.  I drilled and tapped the mounting holes for the shim and also filed out the leg bolt mounting holes a bit so everything would fit.  The legs will mount, then the shims will be bolted on and finally the shoulder will mount to the installed shim.

Leg with the shim, shoulder, booster cover, ankle bracelet and strut installed.  The only remaining part to install are the under shoulder details and then I can get the legs finished.

New Stuff

I came home today to find this waiting for me in the mailbox - my J.E.D.I. control system!!  Christmas in September!!  This system includes Sabertooth speed controls, J.E.D.I controller, music module, LCD display. IR motion sensors and more.  Now I can start building an electronics panel and get some real brains installed.

R2 progress to date

There is a Science Fiction model contest at a local hobby shop (Galaxy Hobby) this weekend and they wanted me to display my R2 so I figured this was a great time to put him together with what I have completed so far.  I got everything in place and I am thrilled with the progress.  R2 runs and drives great and looks pretty darn good too.  Actually with all the panels missing and door off he is very interesting to look at.  This is fun!!

Skirt

Received my skirt from Jerry Greene (very nice).  decided to install the strips and then powdercoat later.  My screws bottomed out in the threaded holes before they tightened up so I needed to tap them out slightly.  I clamped my tap in a vice and broke off the pointed tip so they would cut threads deeper and that worked fine.  Parts fit was excellent.

Finished skirt ready to install.  I am waiting to get a few additional parts before powdercoating and need to finish up skins etc. so it stays this way for a while.

Skirt in place on frame.

Fitting Skins

I spent today fitting the front and rear skins to the frame.  Lots of measuring and double checking but in the end it was pretty straightforward.  6 screws hold on each half and they are very sturdy.  After fitting the skins I looked over the door and hinge situation and have pretty much decided I am going to make the door removable instead of hinged.  This should give me much better access to the internals.  I also plan on building a flip down panel for the electronics. 

3/4 Rear Door

I finished up the rear door skin.  Using JB Weld I filled in all the gaps in the rear side panels leaving the door pretty smooth inside.  I plan on finishing this so I can use it if I ever have a chance to get an autograph or two.  I want to be able to get the frame out of the way when I do this so I am going to bolt on the skin to the door frame.

This is the 3/4 rear door frame from my Com-8 frame.

Using my drill press I drilled and tapped 4-40 holes at each corned for the skin.  Matching holes were then drilled in the skin.  It was a bit tight edge drilling the frame but not too bad.

Here is the skin bolted into place.  The socket head bolts are temporary and I will probably use stainless button head screws for the final fit.

3/4 Door mounted up - looks great and it has given me some experience before I mount the main skins!

More Skins

Wow!  This takes a lot of time and some of it is very tedious work.  I spent one whole day building this Center Vent.  I wanted a certain finish so I wet sanded with 220 then 400 to get the desired finish.  I took a lot of work and several sheets of sandpaper but I am happy with the results.  I then glued the parts together with JB Quick.

This is the 3/4 rear door after gluing and some cleanup.  Spent most of a day picking JB Weld out of the seams with picks and old xacto knife blades.

Test fitting the front skins after gluing.  Everything looks good so far - now to get these cleaned up.  All of the remaining panels will be hinged.

Skin

So I dug out my skins that I have been saving since 2004!!  They look great and will be fun to get these fitted.  A quick test slide on to the frame shows all is well.

First I used a hacksaw blade to gently remove all the panels (after marking first) then I filed all the openings smooth. A jig saw was used to carefully cut out my 3/4 rear door.

Here is the back panel after gluing the two parts together with good old JB Weld.  I cleaned the excess off with a popsicle stick with a squared off edge.  I only have enough clamps to do a few parts at a time so I will do the front skins tomorrow.