First, I soldered the batteries in series.
Then, I tested the wire-up to ensure I was getting a good 9 volts. 9.20 volts, to be precise.
I reattached the battery holders back into the dome, and hooked up the wiring, and all was well. In fact, R2's dome has never looked better. The lights were nice and bright, and I expect the time between battery changes to be much longer now.
I still have a couple more updates for R2 in mind. His outer foot shells are a sagging toward the middle of the body, which makes him look pigeon-toed. I know what I need to do to fix that, and I hope to get to that relatively soon.
I also want to have his utility arms open via remote, and eventually spray mist from behind the top arm. Those updates are probably a bit further out though.
2 comments:
Victor,
There is something about your dome's finish that really fascinates me. I guess because I'm still working on mine. Have you ever seen my Blog page? I would love to get my R2 to look just like that. The finish looks so even all the way around!!! If you read up on my posts, let me know if I'm doing anything wrong or indifferent. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!! Thanks buddy!!!
Hi John,
Yes, I've dropped in on your blog from time to time, and again just now. Pictures never quite seem to perfectly capture a good paint job, or a not-so-good paint job.
In my case, the pictures actually make the paint job on my droid look better than it really is. In fact, I intend to repaint the dome panels within the next month or so, because I can see the underlying "grain" of the aluminum, and the clearcoat didn't go on as smoothly as I would have liked.
As for paint tips, I read that Calvin provided some guidance, and I know his dome looks terrific from what I've seen. I'm using the Krider formula (or at least one of the versions of it). In talking to Mike Senna yesterday, he suggested that each layer of paint (purple, blue & clearcoat) be applied until it looks wet. Allow 10 minutes for each layer to dry, and then apply the next layer. That's what I will do when I repaint the dome panels. Hopefully it will go well.
The white is just Rustoleum Satin White, I kept adding coats each day until I could no longer detect the gray primer underneath. It took more coats than I thought it would, probably 6 or more in all. Having the inner skins unpainted really makes the panels stand out in photos, so that may also be why the droid gets noticed sometimes. All this effort will be negated when I finally weather my droid some day in the future. :)
Let me know if you need me to go into more detail on any of this, and keep up the good work!
-Victor
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