Glued Foot Shell Corners Under Battery Boxes

Next up, the corner strips that go underneath the battery boxes.



The glue goes in the grooves. The two strips meet at 90 degree angles.



While I was at it, I repeated this for the other outer foot, even though I haven't built the rest of it yet. Clips hold it all together while drying.

Finished Gluing Top Pieces of First Outer Foot Shell

Tonight I finished gluing the smaller of the two top pieces of the first outer foot shell that I'm building.



After applying the Testors glue and setting the piece in place, I used one of my tiny clamps to lock it down. Hopefully the glue won't lock the clamp down with it.

Outer Foot Shell Work Continued

Tonight I got back to work on the outer foot shell I started.

I set up one of the top pieces by having it rest on a small tower of wooden blocks.



After applying Testors model glue, I used whatever I had handy to force the top piece down. In this case, a heavy can of PVC glue, and a battery for a cordless drill. There are some large gaps in the corners that I will fill with a gap-filling glue, as well as some filler such as Bondo and/or Evercoat.



I also started gluing up the window strip pieces for both outer foot shells.



I used the Ambroid ProWeld for this, as it sets up quickly. I only glued the two pairs of corners together. Hopefully tomorrow I can complete the rectangles.

Outer Foot Shell Work

I'm taking it one step at a time with the feet. (I'll stop the puns now.) Today I worked on just one of the two outer foot shells, because until I see the result, I'm not sure I'll want to do the second one the same way.

The first decision is how to start gluing up the main body of the outer foot shell. Alex' web page kinda skips the steps I'm working on today, but it's no big deal, because it is obvious how the pieces are meant to go together. I'm just trying to decide the order of glue-up to make things turn out as good as possible.

I decided to start by gluing one of the front/back pieces to the side piece that goes up against the battery box, since those two parts sit at a 90 degree angle against each other. As usual, I applied the Testors glue to the tabs that will be joined together.



I used a couple of wooden blocks to support the long side piece so that it was perpendicular to the front/back piece, and I clamped everything together. Of course I knew I would probably end up gluing the wooden blocks to the styrene, and I did, but they were easy to pry off without damaging the styrene.



After this had time to dry for a few hours, I repeated the process with the other front/back piece.




After this second glue-up was dry, there was one last piece to glue in for today, the door frame that I glued together yesterday.



I slid the work to the edge of the board so that the top would be relatively flat, and glued down the door frame.



Tomorrow I'll check to make sure everything is sturdy. I plan to add reinforcements to the inside, but even without them the shell should be able to handle some stress.

Foot Shell Door Work

Time to get back to work! After a short diversion with the onslaught of new hits and the fun at the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, I finally had some time today to return to the A&A (Alex Kung & Andy Schwartz) foot shells. Today, it was gluing together the doors for all three feet.



The Testors model glue is working great with the styrene, so I'm "sticking" with it (get it??).



Once a piece was glued down, I measured to ensure it was centered. In this case, the smaller piece is on the back of the door, and helps center the door in the frame that I will glue together next.



Next, the door frames for the outer doors.



My fascination with clips continues. The area of contact between these two pieces is pretty small, so I clipped the door frame pieces together.



Hours later, after everything had thoroughly dried, I unclipped the work and checked it out. Everything seems to be fitting very well.



The holes in the doors will be covered by the half moon pieces. They are there in case the builder wants to use a door fastening mechanism that the A&A foot shells provide, but I plan to use the same mechanism that I used for droid #1.

The A&A portion of the center foot shell is done, but there is plenty of filling and sanding to do, along with the mounting of the half moon pieces, and the build of the outer foot shells has just begun.

Mike's Pacific Symphony Orchestra Gig

Once again, I blog about an event that is not mine. This event belongs to Mike Senna and his R2-D2, I just hung out and took pictures.

The Pacific Symphony Orchestra is in town, performing for three nights selected music by John Williams, with Richard Kaufman conducting. Mike was asked to have his R2 appear on stage for a surprise visit during the show, to help deliver the score to Star Wars. Mike and I both took the day off from our respective jobs to be at rehearsal around 2:30pm.



I can safely say I've never gotten my own dressing room, and probably won't in the future either.



Mike and I did some quite comical sneaking around the building to see what there was to see. Thousands of seats just waiting to be filled for the show.



Here is the prop score that Mike's R2 brings out to the conductor during the show.



It turns out that it is a real score, but for unrelated music. Unfortunately, it was very heavy for the wooden dowel that Mike's droid was going to carry it on, so several pages had to go. Yes, he was given permission to start tearing it up.



The sound technician placed a microphone in Mike's droid, and the sounds were played over the sound system used for the rest of the concert (instruments and conductor's microphone).



Time to rehearse! Mike's droid will appear stage right/audience left. Conductor Richard Kaufman went through the routine with Mike. Everyone is dressed casual for rehearsal, but for showtime it's all dresses and tuxedos for the orchestra and conductor.




As is always the case, everyone loves R2, including violinists.



As the show approached, we went to our stations backstage. Full video showed us what was happening on stage, but we couldn't see the stage directly for ourselves, because it was behind a closed door that the conductor enters and exits.



And finally, the gag itself: "We were going to play one of John Williams' most popular pieces as you see in your programs, but I cannot find my score."

Video was shot from backstage with my still camera, so the sound is not the best, nor is the video.



(Later, Mike's droid made a second appearance to deliver the upcoming season's schedule.)

Finally, proof that I was there. Mike and I with conductor Richard Kaufman.



Thanks to Mike and the crew at PSO for letting me tag along.

The full photoset is here.

Welcome, New Visitors

Makezine.com and hackaday.com (and others) recently linked to this blog, so for new visitors, I thought I'd just mention what's here. I'm working on my second droid, it's mostly done. (I'm currently working on the foot shells.) The blog entries below show the progress for droid #2. Why am I building a second droid, you ask? As soon as I figure that out, I'll let you know.

For most visitors, the Events link to the right is probably the most interesting thing to see. It shows the many events that my first R2-D2 has been a part of. The vast majority of appearances are charity events.

For anyone interested in learning more about building an R2-D2 of their own, be sure to visit http://www.astromech.net, the official home page of the R2 Builders Club, along with the R2 Builders Group on Yahoo.

I am just one of many folks out there who have built an R2 unit, and some of mine was built using club parts (the dome and skins being two major examples), and some was built from scratch. The club does not sell kits, but it does have official blueprints, and occasionally members do a "part run" of certain parts at a machine shop. Most of the droid can be built from scratch, however.

If you are interested in buying an R2-D2, you'll want to check out eBay and/or Sideshow Collectibles. Sideshow sells a static (non-mobile) R2-D2 for $5,450, although for around that price you could build your own, and have it remote controlled too. It would just take (a lot) more time and effort. Club members generally don't put their droids up for sale for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the amount of time and effort we spend building them, and we don't want to fall out of the good graces of Lucasfilm, which has been very supportive of our club to date.

Thanks for visiting,
Victor

Miscellany

This is a rare non-building-related post with a few FYIs.

Searching continues to be broken for my blog, along with a large number of other blogspot blogs. The supreme irony of this is that blogspot.com is owned by Google. This is a known problem for blogspot.com, there are a couple of links on it from the blogspot support forums:

http://knownissues.blogspot.com/2009/07/searching-from-navbar-is-currently.html

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=0e07b50a0cd483f6

This is very frustrating for me, as I know a lot of people use this blog for reference (as do I from time to time).

If you are looking for something on my blog and can't find it, please leave a comment and/or e-mail me (I've added my address to the upper-right), and I'll do my best to answer your question and provide the proper links. Alternately, you can download the entire 129MB blog for droid #1 in PDF format, and then search it from within a PDF viewer:

http://vfranco.astromechbuilder.com/R2D2-Complete_Diary.pdf

(Thank you to pixelFiend for hosting the PDF version of the blog.)

One day, I may add more tags to help look up things such as "booster covers" and "dome," but that will have to wait. Hopefully searching will get fixed and I won't have to do it.

It has crossed my mind to relocate the blog to another blogging service such as Wordpress, but I know a lot of people have links to this URL, and I really don't want to move if I can avoid it. This blog even references itself, so all those links would also have to change. Thus, for the meantime, the blog will stay right here. If I seriously consider moving the blog, I will solicit your feedback first.

Finally, for no particular reason other than I had a bunch of still pictures and video sitting around, I slapped together a "Making of R2" video:



The direct link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1Mc0cQ7ck

-Victor

R2LA Builders Day

Today Mike invited the locals out to have a building day. In all honesty, not a lot of building got done, although William and Nikki Miyamoto were busy at work the whole time, and Russell Rucker also got some work done. As for me, I brought the foot shells in the car, but I was so busy socializing and managing the webcam, that I never did bring them out.

Mike Johnson made the drive from Las Vegas, and we got to see his powder coated pieces in person.



Newcomer Ed Perello has done a beautiful job preparing and painting a resin eye, it even has a glass lens. Remarkably, his paint formula and one of Mike's panels had virtually the same hue.



Russell Rucker desoldered an annoying beeper from his $40.00 Think Geek t-shirt sound system.



Meanwhile indoors, Mike Senna showed Greg Schumsky how his droid works.



William takes the necessary precautions with a box of dirty diapers. (Actually, he had been sanding MDF, necessitating the mask, and the box is full of parts.)



Matthew Henricks amuses me as he types answers to web chat questions that he could explain out loud to the camera.



The return of Chicken Cam, starring Michael McMaster as Gonzo the Great, with Camilla.



Max Cervantes has RC'd his Hasbro Interactive droid, but its dome and foot motors turn too fast. Mike performed some resistor surgery with the soldering iron to slow the dome down.



It was a fun gathering, and possibly the last local gathering before Celebration V in Orlando.

Glued Fourth Skirt Strips on Center Foot Shell

Today I glued in the fourth (and last) skirt strip for the center foot shell.

Just like with the others, I measured and marked the 1/8" overhang and centerpoint.



In it goes, once again I am using the Testors glue.



There is plenty of filling and sanding to do, plus some door work. I'll get to that soon.

Glued Second Skirt Strip on Center Foot Shell

It turns out the ProWeld struggled to hold down the strip I glued last night, so I reglued with Testors and all is well. On to the next segment.

Measure and marked.



The second one is glued and clamped down.



Then I did the same thing for the third backing strip.



This will dry overnight and then I'll set the last one in place. That may require a little sanding to get a good fit, we'll see.

Started Gluing Center Foot Shell Backing Strips for Windows Pieces

I'm not intentionally dragging out this foot shell build, but it sure seems like it.

Tonight I got very little done, I started gluing the backing strips that make up the skirt for the lower foot shell. These pieces also serve as backing pieces for the small windows along the bottom of the shell.

The skirt on the center foot shell is supposed to descend 1/8" from the rest of the bottom of the shell. Some newer designs provide an even longer skirt size, but I'm going with the current official blueprints. Droid #1 does not even have this skirt piece, but it does help hide the wheels somewhat.

I marked the 1/8" spot and drew a line. I also marked the centerpoint, to align it properly with the rest of the foot shell.




As you can see, I got sloppy with the Testors glue the other day, so I squared some of the corners that had glue in them, before bonding the backing strip. I will sand the faces of the footshell smooth later.



Time to glue! I went back to the ProWeld for this.



I'll let this dry overnight and work on the next piece. I expect I will have to do some filling if the pieces don't align perfectly (and I have a feeling they won't).

Glued Window Strips to Center Foot Shell

Tonight I glued the "window strips" of the center foot shell to the main body of the shell. I used Testors model glue because the surface area of the points of contact is minimal and I wanted to use something a little thicker. It dries more slowly than the ProWeld, but the thickness helps form a good bond. (Or so I hope.)



I decided to wait on gluing the backing strips for these pieces until after they were glued in. I'm not sure that was the best choice, but I don't think it will matter much.