Skin work...giving up on dome sanding!

After spending what seems like days on sanding the dome (I have about 20 hours invested in it), I've decided to have it sent to a professional. Wayne Orr was kind enough to share the name and address of the place he's had his R2 domes sanded and polished up. Its not an outrageous amount and the dome just needs more work than I'm capable of. I can't wait to see how it looks when they get to work on it.

So I've moved on to working on my second set of skins. I have a serious love/hate relationship with these things.

For some reason, this set is giving me an amazing amount of difficulty. Almost none of the panels want to pop free without a struggle. I've broken 7 razor blades trying to free the panels. Its almost as if the laser was too fine or something. Honestly, I just wish they'd cut out the panels completely and include those when they ship!

So here's the skins ...


I've also taken the doors, from my other set of skins, and clamed them together to "form" for a few days. In the next day or so I'll clean them with acetone and dry them. After that, I'll adhere the door to the door frame with contact cement. Contact cement stays gummy like rubber cement for a few hours, so any excess is easy to peel away. Then, any edges that "rise" a bit I can hit with Superglue.

Notice the utilty arm cutout on the bottom. It took a lot of ginger effort just to remove that from the skins. Its bent up pretty good despite my best efforts.

...and as you can see, thanks to the lousy laser cutting, the effort to remove the piece has left a warble in the top part of the skin. Hopefully this will smooth out when bonded to the inner skins. But again, it truly sucks that these skin cutouts can't be done better. I spent an hour trying ever so gently to remove this one piece. Grrr.

I know, its not nice to complain about an otherwise excellent part. But it would be truly outstanding if cut-out process wasn't so problematic. I can only hope they use a larger beam, like what is used on the inner skins, on the outer someday.

Grumble Grumble.

Another day of Dome work

Today I dedicated a great deal of time to getting the dome sanded. I tried to take pictures as I made progress throughout the afternoon.

First, it was time to go right down to the rough stuff...150 grit.



Then it was time to hit the thing with 220 grit. I didnt focus too much on the panels on the bottom since those will get more detailed attention when they are removed.

After a LOT of time going round and round with 220 grit, hunting down the spin lines, I decided to have a little fun. I took some 800 grit, then 1000 grit, to the front of the dome. Pleased with what I was seeing, I couldnt resist dabbing some Mother's polish on there and buffing it out. Alas, some shine.

While it was fun to see some shine, there are still some more lines to sand down. And I also think the entire dome needs a once over in 320 grit.

As for the desired finish...well you know, I was aiming for the borderline shiney/not very polished. But the more I see other R2's with the non-shine (like Victor's and R2-R9), I'm begining to lean towards leaving it with that brushed look.

But again, we'll see. I just keep changing my mind!

Leveling the foot and skirt #2 arrives

More updates!

After having a conversation with fellow builder Wayne Orr, I shimmed up the omni-wheel so that the foot sits level with the drive wheel. As you can see from the photo below, the level shows that its all nice and, well, level!


Wayne Orr, Victor Franco and Mike Senna have been enormously helpful with the questions I have had regarding the center foot. I had three 2" omni-wheels mounted in there. However, from what I have heard from others, the best way to go is with a castering wheel, ideally one made of a very soft material. I am in hopes I can find two 3" ones that will be able to simply bolt into the mounting plate I have already. Here's a picture of how the center foot looks now, while I research the castering wheels more.

And yesterday the UPS man brought me goodies! This is the aluminum skirt and I intend to use this on droid #2. Darren Murer was kind enough to sell me his. I missed the original run and these are not made very often!

I bough a 3M 100 grit sanding block that I'll use on the dome tomorrow. Hopefully that will do an excellent job on those pesky spin lines!

More later!

Some more "foot" work

Well I had some motivation today to do some more work on my R2! Today I figured I'd trim the other battery box much as I did the other one in the previous blog post.

With both of those done, I thought I'd go ahead and mount in the wheels since I plan to buy the foot motors soon.

As with everything in this project, all it takes is one small detail to delay you. In this case, the axle is a "smidge" too large to fit thru the bearing...





...so I hunted around my powertools to figure out the best way to trim down one side of the axle. I figured my best bet was to grind down that segment with my Dremel. So, slowly and evenly, I trimmed material off until I had a smooth kit thru the bearing.

I then bolted the axle & wheel into the foot drive frame, making sure to put the drive belt in before securing everything! Then I screwed in the 2 inch ball and then secured the frame to the foot shell. Here is how it all looks mounted up...

I've heard from others that they remove the 2 inch ball while others keep it. I'll just have to wait and see. But at any rate, the feet are largely done, just waiting for the NPC motors. One more hole will need to be drilled to allow the wires to pass up into the ankle. Once that's done, these are effectively ready to be painted!

And I couldn't resist posting a picture of my "co-pilot". Pudgey is your typical shop cat, can't wait to help out, watch and...well...generally be in the way.

Also, the "KHF" parts (Knurled Hose Fittings). These are the parts that go from the battery box to the feet. I already have some, so these are going onto Droid # 2.

More later!