Another R2-KT Update, Remote Control for Utility Arms, Plugged Center Ankle Bolt Holes, Cleaned Up Wiring

Lots of pictures today. Apologies to those of you on dial-up.

I went to Mike's to drop off a very minor part for R2-KT, which I'll get to in a moment.

We usually use a piece of cutting board to keep the outer feet from pivoting, but for R2-KT, Mike chose to use some plywood.



With the plywood wedges in place, and the ankles and shoulders now securely bolted down, R2-KT is much more drivable than she was before. Mike also removed the ball casters entirely from the outer feet, and moved two of them to the center foot, since they are in better shape than the original ball casters in the center foot. The vinyl lettering on the back door is in dire need of repair, however.



The receiver battery had no on/off switch, it was required to be manually unplugged from the receiver. I donated a 3-wire cable to allow an on/off switch in the circuit. Now R2-KT's receiver battery won't drain unexpectedly.



R2-KT's dome was indeed found socializing with Mike's R2-D2 dome, just as I thought.



In the meantime, I just happened to bring my droid's carcass to Mike's house. While Mike was working on R2-KT, chatting on the phone and reading e-mail, I was busy getting started on making the utility arms work under remote control. Sure, I could have tried this at my house, but as usual I wanted to copy Mike's proven design. (I have no pride, I admit this readily.)

The essential ingredients are the servo motor (with hacked-up servo horn), a small MDF or plywood platform for the motor to sit on, a PVC stick, and a paper clip.



Both top and bottom arm motor assemblies are about ready to go. They just need to be mounted onto the horizontal ribs in the frame.



The idea when mounting the servo motor assembly is to get the servo arm and paper clip pointing in a straight line, parallel with the servo motor, when the arm is in the closed position. In this orientation, it's harder for kids (and adults) to pry open the utility arms from the outside.

It takes a little trial-and-error to get everything lined up, but with Mike's help, most adjustments were made by repositioning the servo horn on the motor, and bending the paper clip at the right point to match the hole at the end of the utility arm bar.



As the dial turns on the remote, the servo motor likewise turns, causing the arm to pivot open.




Hooray, both arms open under remote control now! I still need to paint the MDF and plywood platforms for the servo motors black, to conceal them. I also need to support the MDF platform for the top arm motor a little better, by wedging something between the servo motor and the horizontal rib from which it hangs.



In the evening, I decided to go ahead and plug the center ankle bolt hole. Like I did with the outer ankles, I will redrill the center ankle bolt hole a little closer to the tip of the ankle. This will provide a bit more clearance for the foot shell, and allow me to fix the center foot shell door holders that I had to gouge in order to slip the bolt through. I'll get to that some other time, though.



Finally, I finished cleaning up my wiring, at least to my satisfaction.




Tomorrow I hope to redrill the center ankle bolt hole, paint the utility arm servo holders black, and reattach my cylinder wedges and LDP that always seem to come off when I work on R2. Then I can start (and maybe finish) putting my droid back together.

Finished Cutting Grooves in U-Bolt, Widened U-Bolt Holes on Angle Iron

Tonight I hacked several more grooves into the new U-bolt, to provide traction around the gas pipe.



I also widened the bottom hole in the angle iron on the drill press.



Now the U-bolt slides into the holes in the angle iron without excessive contact, preserving the threads.

Drilled New Holes for Ankle Bolts, Gas Pipe Bolts, Cut New U-Bolt

Today I drilled new 1/2" holes in the outer ankles. The center of the holes is 0.5" from the tip of the ankle (and centered much better front-to-back than before).



It was a bit tricky to set up the drill press and legs to be at the right height, but I eventually got it, and was able to drill good holes.




Reversing the process from the other day, I used a C-clamp and some scrap wood to press the bronze reducers back into the ankle bolt holes. These reduce the holes from 1/2" to 3/8", for the 3/8" ankle bolts that will connect the feet to the ankles.



Next, I bolted the shoulder brackets back onto the legs, and set up the drill press to drill new 5/16" holes in the gas pipe. This is necessary because yesterday I trimmed the gas pipe by 3/16". Now the pipes overlap a bit differently, and new holes are required for the two 5/16" bolts that lock them together.



I decided to drill the new holes just outside of the old ones. Alignment looks good, the bolts appear to fit just right. I won't know if it's a complete success until I reassemble the droid and try driving it, though.



Finally, I'm embarrassed to say that the threads on my U-bolt for the gas pipe are pretty much trashed. So much so that I had to saw the old U-bolt off of the angle iron that it was attached to, since one of the nuts is completely stuck!



I think that the holes I drilled in the angle iron are ever so slightly too close together, so whenever I shoved the U-bolt through those holes, I was wearing down the threads. I will hack on the holes in the angle iron soon, to alleviate this problem. In the meantime, I luckily have a spare U-bolt I can use.

I hacked down the ends of the new U-bolt to allow a socket wrench to reach the nut once it is screwed down all the way.



I also started hacking in the grooves that are used for traction against the gas pipe. I still have a lot more of these to cut, I only had time for a few of these before it started getting late.

Cut Down Gas Pipe

I partially fixed one of my pet peeves today. The shoulders sit just a little too far from the body. In order to fix this, I must cut 3/16" off of the end of each gas pipe that connects the legs.



Boy, how I missed hacksawing steel.



Now the shoulders will each sit exactly 1/2" from the body, and this will look much better (to me, at least).



I did not reattach the legs yet, as I still need to drill the holes I plugged yesterday. I plan to do that tomorrow. I will also drill new holes through the gas pipe, since the old 5/16" holes no longer align.

Plugged Ankle Bolt Holes on Outer Legs for Redrilling

Yes, it's that time again, time to obliterate my droid!



This time, it's all in the name of plugging the ankle bolt holes in the outer ankles, and redrilling them. This is necessary because I cannot go back in time to this day and tell myself to drill the holes a little bit lower toward the tip of each ankle. Where the holes are now, the ankles and cylinders press on the tops of the foot shells and cause the foot shells to point in weird directions.

I am using a pair of 1/2"-diameter, 1/2" long birch plywood plugs that I cut the other day to fill each of the two ankle holes.

First, I needed to remove the brass bushings. I used another flanged bushing, a C-clamp, and some scrap wood to force the bushings out.




Then I globbed a bunch of glue on the plugs, and shoved 'em in on each side of each ankle bolt hole.




After inserting them half way to get them started, I pressed them in all the way so the plugs are nice and flush with the ankle face.

I'll let them dry overnight, and hopefully redrill tomorrow.

Motor Work, Volume Controls at Mike's, Another R2-KT Update

I dropped by Mike's house today with my droid. The plan was to fix the solder job on my motors once and for all, and to hook up the relays for my remote volume control. I also tried to see I could be of any use in the R2-KT restoration effort.

In my naivete a few months ago, I didn't realize that the coils inside the motors were coated with a thin insulator. I mistook it for copper, since the insulator is a transparent copper-color. Thus, when I converted the motors, as I soldered I failed to strip off the insulation, leading to very poor solder joints. So we went through all the motors and Mike scraped off the insulator and resoldered the motors that needed work.



Later, we worked on getting my CFSound III volume controls working via the remote control and Vantec Keycoder. I have given up on directly connecting outputs from the Keycoder to the 3-pin connector on the CFSound III board. It seems as though the voltage floats a bit when the volume switches are not actuated, causing the volume to drift up and down by itself when the lines are connected this way.

Instead, I went to Orvac Electronics yesterday and picked up a couple of NTE R57−5D.25−12D Relays. The idea is to use the relays as an electronic switch, connecting the middle (ground) pin of the 3-pin header to either of the outer pins. Two relays are required, one for volume-up, one for volume-down.

Mike's the EE, I'm just the software guy, so I entrusted him to read the schematic and solder.



The connections are as follows:

Pin 1 is connected to one of the outer pins on the CFSound III 3-pin volume header. Pin 2 is connected to +12 volts. Pin 6 is connected to the Keycoder input (switch 15 for volume-down, switch 16 for volume-up in my case). Pins 7 and 8 are connected to the center (ground) pin on the CFSound III 3-pin volume header. All other pins are not connected, and are just soldered down to the breadboard to keep the part in place.

This works! Now my volume can be controlled remotely. Yea!

Finally, we worked on R2-KT. By the time I arrived, Mike had already bolted the ankles onto the legs nice and tight, with beefy bolts.



The shoulders also get new, sturdy bolts. The two bolts in the shoulder-to-body hub are just being tried on for size, they actually go through the legs and hub, and on into the shoulder.



The front 2" ball caster in the center foot is getting gunked-up and gross. It barely spins. :(



Time to put R2-KT back together again (as Mike chats with Rick Thames on the phone)...



... and crank down on those bolts.



They may not have domes, but my R2 is proud to be next to KT. (I think the domes were socializing in the next room.)

R2-KT Update

For the first time I can recall, I'm blogging about a droid other than mine, but it's certainly a droid more than worthy of mention, it's R2-KT. If you don't already know R2-KT's story, please visit the R2-KT home page, and the story behind her construction.

Mike Senna is doing some repairs on R2-KT in preparation for her big day at Comic-Con in San Diego later this month, where Hasbro will release its new R2-KT action figure (and a $100,000.00 donation with LucasFilm to the Make-a-Wish Foundation).

First, Mike fixed the battery hoses, which were looking a bit limp since they had no internal support.



With the tubing in them now, they are a little hardier.



The bigger project, however, is to repair the legs and ankles. The two lower of the four bolts on one shoulder were completely missing when Mike undertook care of R2-KT. Their whereabouts are a mystery.



Also, the ankles were coming apart.



Mike emptied out the debris from the legs' interior, and got to work on replacing and fortifying the bolt arrangement.



Don't panic, but this is the current state of R2-KT.



The legs needed to come off for some of the repairs, but they should be back on soon, probably before this weekend is over. I'll try to get updated pics when the surgery is complete. (I'm not sure exactly what the hammer is for...)

The metal contacts in the plastic part of the electrical connectors are also loose, so Mike will probably repair those too. This droid needs and deserves some TLC, so I'm glad to see she's in good hands.

Monkeyed Around with Utility Arms

Adding to my list of unfinished mini-projects, I started looking into controlling the utility arms through R/C tonight.

The first thing I noticed is that the servo horn I was using was not traveling far enough to pivot the arms completely open. I checked out the settings on the remote, and found that I could affect the start and stop points. Not that it helped much, because I still need to determine where I'm going to secure the servo motors on the frame, and where I'm going to attach the paper clip or other linkage from the servo arms to the utility arms. Matthew Henricks and Mike Senna both have nice setups that I'm studying.



Still, it's a start (just like my unfinished volume controls and plugs for the ankles).

Cut Plugs for Ankle Holes

I'm really going to do it! Someday, I'm really gonna do it!

I'm dragging my feet on filling and redrilling the ankle holes a little lower, but I got a bit of a start on it today. Yesterday I purchased some plug cutting bits from Sears. The holes in the ankles for the bolts that hold the feet on are 1/2" in diameter.



I grabbed a piece of 1/2"-thick scrap birch plywood. I was thinking of using a 1/2" diameter piece of pine dowel to fill the holes, but Mike warned that the pine may not stand up to the redrilling and pressure that will be applied to it, so plywood it is.



The plug cutter worked great, perfect 1/2" diameter circles of plywood, 1/2" thick.



I cut a total of eight of these. I really only need six (for the three 1"-thick ankles, so I need a pair of 1/2"-thick plugs per ankle), but I cut some spares.



I probably won't get around to filling and redrilling until next weekend. I may try working on adding R/C to the utility arms in the meantime.

Return to Lucasfilm

I forgot to post this the other day, but this photo was taken on Monday, July 2, 2007. Kevin Allington was able to get us into the Lucasfilm building. We didn't see much beyond the cafeteria and gift shop, but the visit was an opportunity to hand George some more money on trinkets and souvenirs.



From left: Victor Franco, Kevin Allington, Michael McMaster, Mike Senna

And after the visit last November, I thought I'd never see that fountain again. (Huh, I'm even wearing the same shirt. I guess it's time to go shopping.)