Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Unmasked Skin Panels, Glued in Side Styrene Skin Pieces, Taped in Final Skin Panel, Glued Side Vent Parts Together

This morning I removed the masking tape I was using to hold the skin panels on that I had glued with silicone a couple of days ago.



All the panels are holding tight, so that's good.



In the evening, I worked on gluing in the styrene pieces that go on the bottom sides of the skins. First, I needed to cut a couple of 3" wooden posts from scraps.



I applied Testors model glue on the side that the styrene gets glue to, and wood glue on the bottom, where it is glued to the bottom of the frame.



No need to worry about the glue dripping, the carpet will catch it.



I then slid the styrene piece in place, and using the holes for the octagon ports, held it all together with my fingers for several minutes, while the glue had time to set.



I also taped the last skin panel in place, the one that I had to repair the other day. Again, I used blue tape to keep the panel centered on the outside.



I used masking tape on the inside to tape the panel in place. I'm not gluing it in, in case I want to hinge it in the future.



I wrapped up by gluing the side vents together. These are two-piece vents. Once piece is the blue background, the other is the aluminum grill.



There aren't any screws for this part, so I simply laid the back plate on top of the grill, and applied silicone along the perimeter.



I smeared it around a bit, and I'll let this dry overnight.



As I mentioned earlier, I'll probably wait a little bit before gluing the side vents onto the skins, since once they are on, the skins won't be easy to remove anymore. Just in case I need to remove the skins for some unforeseen reason during this final assembly, I don't want to make things more difficult than they need to be.

2 comments:

Samurai said...

Any room for some magnets behind you side vents? I put some magnets on the back of my side vents so they are easy to pull off when taking the skins off. It works well and the slight pressure from the vents hols the seam of the skins together too.

Victor Franco said...

Hi Dan,

Not a bad idea, I'll check, but if it looks like it's going to be difficult to install them, I'll go with the silicone. I'm seriously considering magnets for the rear door too (instead of screws like on droid #1).

Thanks,
Victor

PS: The word verification that I needed to type for this comment was "artou". :-)