Sunday, August 29, 2010

Finished Resin Eye Evercoat Work, Filed Dome Logic Panels

Today I had time to finish working on the resin radar eye, and I was also able to work on the dome panels that surround the front and rear logics.

First, I sanded smooth yesterday's Evercoat work on the eye.



With that out of the way, I turned my attention to getting the panels that go around the front and rear logic surrounds to fit properly around these parts. This was a challenge for droid #1, and it proved to be for droid #2 as well. The problem isn't that the parts are deficient in some way; rather, the geometry of curved, three-dimensional objects of varying radii that need to fit together cause real-world problems.

Fortunately, on the front logic panel, the top surround fitted in as-is. The bottom surround did not, however.



The first thing to try is filing the paint from the inner perimeter of the cut-out that goes around the lower front logic surround. The paint is thicker than one might guess, with five coats in all (primer, purple, blue and two clear coats). Care was taken to be sure I was always filing from front-to-back, never from back-to-front. This helps avoid paint chips on the front.



After a few minutes filing away the paint on the inner perimeter, the lower front logic surround fit inside. It's snug, but it fits.



Next, it was time to get the rear logic surround to fit inside its corresponding dome panel. The rear logic wasn't that close to fitting, so I brought in the heavy artillery and started filing. The larger file is more prone to causing paint chips, but I was careful as I got to the end to go slowly, and I finished the work with my tiny files.



After a few iterations of filing and testing the fit, I finally succeeded in getting everything to fit together.



Glad that's done.



I still need to cut the inner dome to accommodate the front logic surrounds. I hope to get to that soon. Actually, there is a lot of work to do on the dome, not the least of which is hooking up the electronics, and prepping the dome ring to house them.

2 comments:

Paul said...

Ah yes, all that hard work getting the perfect blue...then discovering you need to *very carefully* sand it away.

Are you going to silicon the panels to the dome?

Victor Franco said...

I plan to use VHB tape for all the panels that are big enough to use it, and either silicone or some other adhesive for the"window frame" panel and the front logics panel.