Glued Card Stock to 3D-Printed Window Fillers for R5 Dome Neck Ring

Very modest progress today, I simply used CA glue to glue the card stock to the 3D-printed neck ring window fillers for the R5 dome that I primed and painted yesterday.



Soon I will apply a light topcoat of Krylon Chrome Aluminum to go for metal look that I want.

Paint & Primer for Alternate R5 Neck Ring Window Fillers

Season 3 of The Mandalorian has R5-D4 sporting a new look for his neck ring. Rather than engine-turned aluminum as seen in A New Hope, each of the 16 windows around the neck ring has a 2 row/3 column array of inset circles. I decided to 3D-print these with the circles all the way through, and back them up with some card stock.

I applied an undercoat of gray paint/primer to the first 8 window fillers.



Next, I primed/painted the card stock, again 8 at a time.



Before long this was done.



I will glue the card stock to the back of the 3D-printed pieces, and then apply a light aluminum-colored topcoat.

WonderCon 2023 - Day 3

Today was the third and final day of WonderCon 2023 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Being the lazy man that I am, here is a photo dump, without comment.



It was great seeing everyone, and I'm sure we'll be back out there before too long.

WonderCon 2023 - Day 2

Today was day #2 of WonderCon 2023 in the Anaheim Convention Center.

Several photos from the morning:



Around 12:30pm we headed out for the Star Wars group photo in front of the convention center, which is organized by Brandon Jackson. My R5-D4 is in there toward the right.



Back at the booth, Mr. Rogers and his trolley strolled by.



Baby Yoda/Grogu visited R2.



Mike Senna got pressed into service again, this time on one of the Miyamoto droids.



At 5pm we had our How To Build a Star Wars Astromech panel.



And Mike is under Chris' droid once again, just before the panel. At some point one of the links in the chain became detached, but Mike had a replacement link.



The panel was well attended and well received. Poor Michael McMaster had pretty much lost his voice, so we had to do most of the talking for him.



And we did our traditional panel selfie. (Note to self: Get someone else with longer arms to take the panel selfie.)



Unfortunately for me, the panel after ours had their laptop die, so I let them use mine for their entire presentation, so I had to stay in the room while everyone else returned to the booth. Once that panel was done, I hurried back to the booth to pack up for the evening.

One more day.

WonderCon 2023 - Day 1

Today kicked off WonderCon 2023 in the Anaheim Convention Center.

Some of the droid builders were asked if we could come early to help with local TV news coverage, so I arrived around 6:00am, and we swung by the booth before heading to the front lobby area. We had a reasonable amount of booth space, at 400 square feet.



From there we flew in formation to the lobby.



We chatted with the Good Day LA reporter (I failed to get his name) for local Fox affiliate KTTV to go over the plan.



For the first segment during the 7am hour, the Rebel Legion and 501st were represented, along with the droids. Mark Chu-Lin represented us, and his father was once a reporter for KTTV, so that matched nicely.



For the 8am hour's segment, I got nominated to do the interview. This time only the droid builders were part of the segment.



Once that was done, we headed back to the booth for setup. The show opened to the public around 11am, and one of our first visitors was Leilani Shiu, who is often cast as a Jawa, among other characters, on the Disney+ Star Wars streaming shows, such as The Mandalorian.



Chris Romines flew in from his new residence in Texas. It's not a convention unless Chris' droid is undergoing maintenance. This time it was Mike Senna's turn to risk his life.



And now for a bunch of pictures of stuff we saw and did on day 1.



We're back at it again tomorrow.