Fixed Dome Gap

Another annoyance put to rest. For the longest time, I've lived with a relatively large gap between the bottom of the dome ring and the top of the body.



This was mainly due to the fact that when my frame was glued together, it apparently had a very slight forward tilt to it, so the skins actually clear the back of the frame just slightly, whereas the skins fall just short of the top of the frame on the front. (I've used a black marker to hide the wood.) The difference between the frame and skins on either side is probably a millimeter or so.

Unfortunately, this means that as the dome rotates, it has to clear all sides of the skins through the entire dome rotation, and the front of the dome had to be shimmed on washers higher than normal to clear the back side, leaving an unsightly gap in the front.

I was finally able to fix this tonight by removing two of the remaining plastic feet on the bottom of the front of the Rockler bearing, and through fine adjustments with washers and nuts on each of the six screws that hold the dome onto the bearing.



With this small modification, the outer ring of the Rockler bearing dips slightly in the front, while maintaining higher clearance in the back. This allows the dome clearance to be just right, around the whole perimeter of the droid. Now it looks a lot better to me.



I still plan to repaint the dome panels too. I picked up some primer and paint tonight, along with sand paper for wet sanding the primer. I probably won't even get to removing the old paint until this weekend at the earliest, but I'd like to have this all done well before R2LA V in late September.