Dome Panel Touch-Up at Mike's

Yesterday I mentioned that one of droid #1's dome panels had a flaw in the recently applied clear coat. Mike Senna had some fresh clear coat that was otherwise going to go to waste, so I took advantage of the opportunity to bring the panel over for recoating.

One of Mike's droid's legacy leg-cutout pieces served as a paddle to hold the panel.



I started applying the clear coat, but I immediately noticed that the problem wasn't going away, and instead, was causing a cloudy appearance in the area I had lightly sanded and prepped yesterday. I abruptly stopped the application.



Mike took a look, and suspected that some of the Duplicolor blue had been sanded, and suggested we reapply a light layer of it, and then re-clear coat on top of that. Mike offered to do that, and I took him up on the offer.



The blue now looked uniform.



We waited an hour, and then Mike reapplied the clear coat



Once it had sufficiently cured, I replaced the panel back on the dome back home. Much better!



Hopefully that's the last of the clear coat concerns, forever.

Prepped Dome Panel for Clear Coat Touch-Up

I noticed that one of the panels on droid #1's dome has a bit of a defect in my application of the clear coat I performed recently. It looks like there is a little bit of bubbling just above the reflected light.



I've decided to try to fix this. The plan is to lightly wet-sand this with 2000 grit sand paper, with some dish wash liquid added to reduce the abrasiveness.



I did my best to only sand off the clearcoat, and avoid sanding into the Duplicolor blue layer just below it.



After sanding, I applied a little bit of dish wash liquid as a pseudo-clear coat to see if things still looked ok. It seemed that the color was retained.



Tomorrow I will go to Mike Senna's house for the clear coating. He was using a can of Spray Max 368 0061 and expects to have some extra in the can, that will expire in about 48 hours anyway. That panel just needs a few square inches of coverage.

Light the Night Blood Cancer United

This evening, R2, Darth Vader (Randy), an Imperial guard (Ellen) and an Imperial officer (Yahir) joined up to help blood cancer patients and survivors celebrate their Light the Night annual event.



Some of the event area was on pavement, and some of it on grass, so R2 wasn't able to roam everywhere, but plenty of people came over to where he was.



It was a warm evening with a full moon, making for perfect event conditions.



This was extra-convenient, since it was less than two miles from home. Hopefully we'll be back next year, and in greater numbers.

Finished Reattaching Dome Panels for Droid #2

Today I was able to reattach the dome panels on droid #2 that were recently re-clearcoated with 2K clearcoat. This was pretty much a replay of yesterday with droid #1's dome, so I'll spare us both the details, although here are a couple of panels in the process of being reattached.



The plastic that I use behind the front PSI is severely discolored, so I might as well replace that as long as I'm messing around with the dome.



I cut a couple of pieces of plastic from the same sheet I always use for the PSI diffusion.



I used the same VHB tape I'm using to attach the panels to attach the diffusion pieces, simply because that's what I had handy and my masking tape is old and gross.



Ok, back to the panels. I wrapped up with the pie panels and round panels on top. Each of those pie panels (except the one with the holoprojector) had 6 pieces of VHB tape that needed to be peeled off. Again, my poor finger tips bore the brunt of that for all the panels again. I'm glad that's behind me.



And here's droid #2, in all his dome-panels-clear-coated-with-2K-clearcoat glory.



Probably what surprised me the most is that even with removing and reinstalling the rear logics module on both domes and other monkeying around in them, I didn't break anything. All the lights still worked.

Anyway, that's over with, and hopefully I won't have to remove any dome panels again for a long time (like, ever).

Finished Reattaching Dome Panels for Droid #1

Today I was able to pick up where I left off yesterday, and continued attaching the dome panels on droid #1 that were recently re-clearcoated with 2K clearcoat.

Yesterday I found that my 20-year-old roll of 3M Very High Bond (VHB) tape was delaminating from the backing paper, so I ordered a new roll, and it arrived today.



Here are some panels going back on the dome.



There's a ton of old tape to remove for the dome pie panels. My poor fingers.



But, I did it, and the panels are on now.



The penultimate piece, the radar eye.



And finally, the little dot on top. I am using silicone to attach this small piece.



I ended up spending over 4 hours on this. By far, the longest part of this process is removing the old tape. I jam a finger or a thumb at one end of an old strip of tape, and start rolling and peeling it off. After a while I have to switch fingers or else I'll get blisters.

I tried getting a beauty shot of the finished dome, but given that it was too late to have sunlight streaming inside, I had to settle for a single floodlight above the droid.



Tomorrow I plan to do the same for droid #2's dome.

Started Reattaching Panels to Dome for Droid #1

This afternoon I got started on reattaching the panels to the dome for droid #1, after having applied a new 2K clearcoat to them. I am using 3M Very High Bond (VHB) tape to affix the panels to the dome.



I intentionally left the old tape in place on the dome, to use as a guide. The plan is to remove the old tape, one panel at a time, and apply new tape to the same area.



One panel down, many more to go.



In some cases, it makes sense to apply the tape to the back of the panel, especially when the panel is relatively small, or has a bit of an oddball shape.



Another panel down. Time for the next one...



...or maybe not. My 20-year-old roll of VHB tape is delaminating from the backing paper. This pretty much makes it impossible to continue with this roll.

Time to order some new tape. It should be here tomorrow, and I can pick up where I left off.

Finished Applying 2K Clearcoat to Dome Panels for Droid #1 and Droid #2

Today I was able to successfully finish applying Spray Max 368-0061 high gloss clear coat to my dome panels.

In the morning I decided to wet-sand all the panels that I had clearcoated yesterday. This was because I felt yesterday's application was a bit uneven, and I wanted to smooth out any rough spots. (The black strip is the wet sandpaper.)



Ok, here are my first two guinea pigs. Let's see how this goes.



Much better. That's more like it!



I had to suffer through clearcoating about 36 of these panels, so you get to too. (Some may look like repeats, but that's because it's two droids-worth.)



Best of all, the snakeskin patten was successfully eradicated, as seen above on the dome pie panels, and here on the radar eye for droid #2.



I'm very happy with how these turned out.



Next I will need to remove all the old 3M Very High Bond tape that is still on the dome and replace it with new tape, in order to affix the panels once again. With any luck I'll finish that tomorrow. Hopefully.