Discovery Science Center 2015 - Day 2

Today the R2 Builders returned to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, CA, to participate in Engineering Week. My droid and I were joined by droids and droid parts supplied by Paul Thompson, Maddy Lazerson, Dan Caulkins, William & Nikki Miyamoto and Ken Stubbert.



Like yesterday, our droids were stationed on and around the Sun Stage, and again we talked to people throughout the day.




And like yesterday, at 1:30pm we gave another well-attended presentation about R2 Building in the main theater.






Everyone had a good time, and I'm sure we'll be back again.

Discovery Science Center 2015 - Day 1

Today the R2 Builders participated in Engineering Week at the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, CA. My droid and I were joined by droids and droid parts supplied by William & Nikki Miyamoto, Roy Powers, Maddy Lazerson, Paul Thompson, John Boisvert and Tom Piedmont.




Our droids were stationed on the Sun Stage, and we talked to people throughout the day.



At 1:30pm we gave a 30 minute presentation in the main theater.




It was a good day, and we'll be back tomorrow.

Assembled RSeries Logics

The last few days I've been working on assembling Paul Murphy's outstanding RSeries front and rear logics.



One of the steps is to lightly sand the inner lenses for each logic so that they will help diffuse the light coming from the LEDs.



I attached these diffusers to their logics.



I also glued in the screw inserts, which I let dry overnight.



Once the glue was dry I was able to finish basic assembly.




Next up, installing the fiber optics. A long fiberoptic cable is supplied with the kit. It is inserted into each hole in the logic bezels and trimmed to size.

The first of many times of this (like 176 total).



I tried using a wire cutter, but it didn't work too well. So I switch to a razor blade, which was a bit harder to use, but did a better job of cutting the fiberoptic cable to be flush with the hole.



One down.



Getting there.



One front logic done. Time to do the second one.



And the second one is done. I turned the exposure way down to capture all that fiberoptic goodness.



On to the rear logic! There are 96 holes to fill for this one, and some of the routing is a bit tricky. I used some zip ties to keep the bezel from bowing out.



Each time I finished a row I tested it.



Getting there.




And done! Yea!



I need to figure out how I'm going to get these mounted in the dome. I'm not in a big rush, but I do look forward to seeing them installed.