R5 Dome Work and Pixar Roach at Mike's

We'll get to the Pixar roach in a minute. :)

After a few weeks away from work on the R5 dome, Mike kindly had me back at his place to finish the prep work needed to fit the dome onto the Rockler bearing.

Here's where we left off: Dome, Rockler bearing, several segments of steel bar with holes drilled, some screws, and Gorilla Glue (so we can glue gorillas).



The first step was to rough-up the dome screw heads on the bench grinder, so they could be JB Welded securely to their holes in the steel bar segments.





After securing the dome screws to the Rocker bearing with #10-32 nuts, it was time to apply Gorilla Glue to the underside of each steel bar segment.




We then centered the bearing with the steel bar segments attached to it into the dome using washers, all the while making sure the bearing was oriented so that the "front" of the circular bearing (chosen arbitrarily long ago) was pointing toward the front of the dome.



We clamped the bearing to the dome, to help secure the glue on the steel bar segments to the lip on the dome that I had routed out a few weeks ago.




While the Gorilla Glue cured, we took on a detour project.

Remember the cockroach in Pixar's WALL•E?



Mike made the roach out of MDF, and then made a silicone mold of that. From there, he poured a few resin roaches for Maker Faire that he attended last weekend with Michael McMaster. Mike offered to help make me a roach of my own (just what I always wanted!).




Besides the resin body, the only other essential ingredients are some pieces of solid wire that need to be cut to the proper length and bent to the correct shape. Mike had templates for these.



Mike showed me how to get started with bending the wire. I did my best to bend the wire segments to the proper shapes, but inevitably he had to make a few corrections along the way.



Once the bends were in proper order, Mike drilled some holes in the resin body and glued the wire segments in place.



Ready for paint!



Rustoleum Cinnamon does the job.



Next, into the oven it goes to bake to a delicious golden brown.



While the roach was drying, we checked on the dome and the Gorilla Glue. It had cured sufficiently that we were able to remove the clamps and the Rockler bearing.



I will clean up the excess ooze from the expanding Gorilla Glue, and further secure the steel bar segments with a pair of #10 1/2" wood screws for each segment. I also need to cut down the dome screws to the proper length, once I've determined how tall they should be. Hopefully I'll get to that soon.

In the meantime, Bon Appetit!