How Will All This Work?????

That's a great question and even I am not sure of all of that yet. We are taking one section of Artoo at a time starting with the head aka the dome. The 3 main parts of an R2D2 build are the dome, body and legs. After that you have lights, sounds and so forth and so on. As I said in our original post the dome is where we chose to start as you can take one look at it (and people have) and immediately recognize it as Artoo.

All of that being said I thought I would post a dome design another builder did to illustrate how the dome will be laid out. Once again this is a design that another builder, Sirg70 to be exact, was kind enough to share with all of the builders so that we could better manage where pie panels housed gadgets such as the periscope. To see the constructed periscope feel free to check the previous post.

As you can see by the key in the top left of the picture, the green parts are Jag hinges that will sit inside the dome allowing the individual pie panels to be controlled by servos to open and close via a remote. You can also see where the logic displays, dome bumps and holoprojectors I have posted previously will mount which will also be servo driven. We are still waiting for a builder/fabricator to do a run of aluminum radar eyes as well as the life form scanner. Once we have those items we will have all of the major components for the dome. The lightsaber that ejects from R2 on the sail barge in Episode 6: Return of the Jedi is supposed to be coming out by one of Jags runs this winter along with mechanical riser sets that can be used to raise and lower the periscope and lifeform scanner through the dome.

Once again I would like to thank Sirg70 for the great illustration of the dome and remind anyone interested in building an R2 or other astromech droid to visit the astromech site for information. While you can purchase items through runs they still require assembly. This is not something where you buy an item and "snap" it into place and the build can take years to complete.

More to come in the near future.

Who needs Yahtzee? Family Fun Night Is Building A Periscope

Over the weekend we recieved a nice suprise. The aluminum periscope Artoo uses in Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back arrived in the mail. This is a really cool piece and Mike Wheeler did an incredible job with the detail on it. The kit consisted of the following components:

The parts consist of the periscope itself, three lenses, black plastic O-rings, the aluminum riser base, the different shaft assemblies and finally all of the hardware (screws).

The boys and I started by assembling the riser shafts and inserting the rubber insert pieces and O-rings.

Having assembled the riser shaft pieces we then began attaching them to the periscope.

The periscope itself has tapped holes that are countersunk to run a screw through in order to attach the riser shafts as seen in the picture below:

We took our time attaching each riser piece by piece so that we could keep it straight. The boys would take turns tightening the screw while the other held the riser shaft in place.

We continued this process with all three of the riser shafts until we had them all securely attached to the periscope.



Finally we had only the base left to attach. The boys had the hang of it by then so they knocked it out with very little effort. The base is also pre-drilled and countersuck to allow easy attachment of the riser shafts. The center hole allows for us to run a wire through the base and into the periscope so we can add the lights in the periscope at a later date.

After only 15 minutes we had the periscope assembled.

This is an up close picture of it fully assembled.

The base will allow us to insert a pipe so that once installed in the dome and with the assistance of a riser mechanism we will be able to raise and lower it through the top of the dome. We will also have the ability to rotate it up to 360 degrees once it has cleared the dome. One of the pie panels from the top of Artoo's head that is currently in the sanding stage will be JB Welded to the top of the periscope and as mentioned before we will eventually wire up lights as well inside the periscope itself. We will also need to prime and paint it to make it screen accurate.

Now time to get back to sanding. We still have 4-5 differnt gritts of sandpaper to use on the dome and we also recieved all of our LED bulbs, bezels, circuit boards etc. so will be starting to solder the circuit boards for all of the main dome lights in the coming weeks as well. Between scouts and T-ball time is much more limited but we will continue to post our progress as we go.



Star Wars meets Karate Kid...Sand On Sand Off

We had a major event happen in Houston.....RAIN!!!!!

I had almost forgotten what it was and while we only recieved 2 inches which by far does not get us out of the drought we recieved something else nice. Are you ready for this? 65 degree Saturday afternoon.

My son and I headed for Tball practice and as soon as we stepped outside he said "Dad, it's not hot so can we sand Artoo?" Talk about making the ole man proud. After practice we headed home and began getting everything ready. Sanding is a long process as it requires using several diferent gritts to get to your finished look. The aluminum dome in and of itself is a thing of beauty and depending on how you want your R2 to look will determine how much sanding you want to do. Some people like it as is with the subtle spin lines. I put it to a vote with the boys and they wanted the high polished look that you would see in the movies such as the award ceremony after the battle of Yavin in episode 4.

A trip a few months back to an auto store scored me the different gritts pictured here:

I purchased a total of 6 different gritts. The lower the # the coarser it is so we have a pack of 10 sheets each of 220,400,600,800,1000 and 2000 gritt sand paper. They are all wet/dry sheets.

We began by setting down a towel in the drive so the domes would sit on something to offer them protection and we filled up a mop bucket with water to dip the sand paper in. I also had the hose close by as after a while you need to spray the dome down to clean it.

My oldest boy worked on the inside dome and I sanded on the outter dome.

After a while even mom got involved

Once mom joined the party my youngest was all in and it became a family sanding party.

At least that is until the neighbor's boys came out with their lightsabers and then I was abandoned as my boys ran inside to get their lightsabers and while the moms talked and the boys dueled a grown man set in the driveway all alone sanding an R2 dome.

After a total of about two hours and all of the 220 gritt gone I rinsed the inner and outer domes off and wiped them down and set them in the sun to see how they looked.

I am torn at the moment as a part of me wanted to jump in the truck and go get another pack of 220 to keep sanding. The other side of me knows that this is the roughest that it will look as the sand paper I used was very coarse and to move next to the 400 gritt. By the time I get to the 2000 gritt it should be smooth. Guess I'll sleep on it for now but I am hoping tomorrow will be another nice day for sanding.