Getting ready for Rouge One

Rouge One comes out this weekend so getting Patches spruced up for the event.
Fixing a loose body hinge and refinishing his front foot after 8 years of wear and tear.

BB's body almost done

BB's small body details are being added. This weekend I get back to the dome.

BB-8 body progress

Outer shell is almost done.

First build day of the year!

Today everyone was working on something different. Denny was working on putting buttons on his Stargate GDO.
Jen sanded the logos off her Ace bat so we can repaint it.

Once sanded she finished it up with some fine sandpaper to get rid of all the scratches.

Then everyone helped out cutting circles for a new frame.
Mr. S cutting some plywood to size.
Ryan lending a hand.

Jen sanding some parts this time.

Lunch break!

After 7 hours in the shop together we all started acting a little weird. So we called it a night and will pick up some time soon.

Droid boo boo

While loading Patches up for an event I ended up almost dropping him because I have been doing so way to much heavy lifting and help friends move. Trying to lift a 125+ lbs droid seamed to be the final straw. Lucky his head was not on. Patches also got a wire yanked as well that is now fixed. Here is a shot of Patches after I popped the two dents out of his back skins. A little filling and sanding, then a respray of paint  in the two chipped areas and all should be good.  No more lifting heavy droids by myself for a while says the Doctor. Sad we had to miss the event but there are plenty others coming. I will take the lighter Astros to the next one.

Details, details

Jen took the time to paint Patches power coupler for me as she has a steadier hand for this kind of detail work than I do. I have put off painting this part for way to long.

Jen then painted the power coupler on her R3 who now has the nickname of  "RIVER"

One final coat of paint and it is done.

Jen was nice and painted TD's power coupler as well, she also touched up a few scraps here and there.
All better now!

Getting pretty for CON season

Today I cut out by hand a styrene coin return and one lower side vent for R3. The back side of the vent needed some red paint so I went ahead and painted it along with two of her outer ankle leg pieces.

 After all the paint was dry I silvered the other parts then assembled the styrene pieces and attached them to the droid.

With the lower side vent in as well as the coin return R3 looks a lot better. Now to work on the last part of the center power coupler so no one can see inside the droid.

Last minute touch up

 Getting R3 Ready for WillyCon this weekend and did some last minute detail work. One of details that was bugging me was seeing the wood and bearing under the dome.

 I colored the wood on the top of the frame black.

 Then some of the bearing as well.

Now she looks a lot better. A cleaner look. Now time to pack up the trailer and get her to the Con!

Silver time

Today I showed Jen how to silver the parts for her droid, after a quick lesson she went to work while I painted some other parts.

Here is R3 with her new red side plates installed as well as the ankle brackets, boosters, shoulder hubs, and a few other parts. Poor ED got no such love today.

Building and BBQing Part 1

I repaired the driveway earlier this week so we all decided to take it for a test spin. Denny was the first to come over, he was working on his clone armor.Right now he is working on the bicep pieces.

While he was doing that I cut out two center vent covers by hand for R3 and R4. Lots of measuring to do!

The wind settled down for a bit so I painted the center vent cover for Jen's R3 after it was cut out and rough sanded..

While the paint was drying I cut out some ankle bracelets as well for the droid's legs.

Here is the finish vent cover, now I just need to mount everything once Jen is done making her cutom louvers for the insides.

Next I helped Denny glue his bicep pieces together and set them aside in clamps to dry.
More to come...

ED 2.0

 Now that R3 has her new legs I thought it was time to put poor ED back together. He has had a rough year, being scavenged for parts for the other droids in the group. He was down to just a frame and dome :(
First I started with putting his legs back on.

 Then I flipped him over and put his motor holders back on as well as his omniballs.

Next I put his dome motor bracket back on and prepped the new lazy susan for installation.

 

 A new builder asked me a few days ago how to install the lazy susan correctly, so I will go into extra detail here. On the outer race, take out every other rubber leg and put some tape over the area around the hole so debris can not get in the bearing. Then find a drill bit that is the same size as the hole that the rubber leg was in. Carefully drill the hole all the way through the race so it comes out the other side. These holes will be use to mount the lazy susan to your frame. The inner race will have bolts to hold the dome on. The picture below shows what I am talking about.

 

 With the dome motor bracket installed is time to mount the lazy susan. I still need to get the right sized bolts for the bearing so I will post pictures of that instillation later.

 With the top end together I put on ED's bottom end skirt. Just a couple drywall screws and it was done.

 Here he is standing back up on his own three feet. He still may not look like much bit at least he is together.
Another bonus with him being together is I now have more work space! :D

Patches Unhinged

After a little finesse, I got the remaining hinges off of Patches Body. The old hinges are the small ones in the center of the picture below, they are great for small panels but not that accurate for long doors like the ones pictured.
The new hinges have way more surface glue area and reinforcement to keep the doors working properly.
I still have a bit of epoxy to remove from the inner skins before I mount the new hinges.
I do not know yet if I will use epoxy again or try something else. I also want to install some other servos while I got the doors off.

Repairs, repairs

I have noticed at the last few events that Patches has had a bit more of a lean than usual.
I checked the markings on the inside pipe and there were off a little bit.
The bolts holding the pipe were not to snug so the vibrations after all this time must have been letting the pipe move.
I repositioned the pipe and tightened the nuts back down. Now he looks like he should.
Once that was done I started taking the doors apart to install the new hinges.
The top hinges came off easy but the bottom ones will not budge. I need to figure something out to get the epoxy to release. Once I have the doors off it will be much easier to add the rest of the door servos.

More Progress

Recessing the inner skin screws I attached the outer skins on R4-ED. There are a few places I got to add an extra screws or strech the outer skin a bit more but for now they are on. Now to take them all back apart and paint them white.
Chris James is the winner of figuring out what my next project is. Congrats Chris! That project is K-9 from Doctor Who. Yup a robot that is not Star Wars related finally! I got most of the drive system parts together and a couple of servos. Now to order even more parts!

R4's skins

After fixing the Gonk I decided the next thing that needed cleaned out of the garage were some of R4-ED's parts. First I sanded down the bump in his frame I have been meaning to fix then put him downstairs.

Later that evening I decided to see how his custom skins fit and decided to attach them so they would be out of the way as well. Here are the inner skins attached. It will look a lot better once I clean them up and add the outer skins. First I need to recess the inner screws.

Patches, arms and feet video

Got a little more work done on the feet shells today and the arms are dialed in (for now).

R2-CM almost together

It may not look like I got a lot done today but I did. The arms are finally brown and reinstalled.
Also they are now flush to the body and still work!
I also installed all the vents for now as well as assembled my foot shells for both outer feet.
The horse shoes are put back together as well and installed.
A few more odds and ends tomorrow and I take him back apart for the trip to CV. :D

Down to the wire

Running out of time to get stuff done.
I wet sanded and painted the skirt first along with the horseshoes.


Then on the front vent I added a piece of flat styrene after painting the top part brown last night.
Later I will make a vent that is three dimensional like it should be.
I was going to put the arms back on but realized the back side never got painted. Well hopefully it is dry enough by Saturday morning to put on.
I attached the beefy ankle pieces to the center leg and put a few coats of bondo on the wood parts. I sanded everything smooth and put a coat of primer on after taping everything off. Later today I will put a few coats of white on.