Back at a recent R2LA build day, David Annetta was kind enough to give me some unused resin utility arms. I've been wanting to get a second set of utility arms, so I could paint them red to match R5-D4's color scheme. Currently, I just use red skin cutouts as overlays that are attached with putty to the blue arms, and I wanted something that looked better.
Time to rip out the blue arms so that I can start working on fitting the new ones in. (The blue arms will go back in once I'm done.)
One of the first things to do is cut a segment of rod that acts as the pivot point for the arm. On droid #1, I used 1/8" diameter rod for this. On droid #2, I used 3/16" diameter rod. Since I'm planning on fitting the arms on droid #1, I will go with 1/8" stock. It might be possible to fit some caps on the rod to expand the diameter to 3/8" if I ever need to use them on droid #2.
I measured the length of rod on each of the existing arms and cut some segments to size.
I did a test fit of the rod in the frame, and both segments looked good.
The next step is to drill a 1/8" hole in the pivot point of both arms. The resin was cast from a part that used a larger diameter hole, but I was able to center the drill bit and drill the 1/8" hole.
Next up, a test fit. There is the age-old problem of the arms hitting the skins, and this was expected. Nevertheless, I wanted to see how much material needs to go.
The usual amount. I'll get to filing and filling next.
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