Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Shoulder hubs are in, radar eye is mounted for now

Well the deadline I set for myself, rolling and lit up by Halloween, is going well! Technically, I have met that goal...but there are several detail pieces I need to mount.

The shoulder hubs lay in the leg tray nicely. I was going to velcro them into place but there's about a 1/4" inch of distance between where the shoulder hub sits and where it meets the leg. Recalling how much fun I have had with magnets, I found some thick washers I had and siliconed them inside the leg. Since you don't want the washers to fall and clank around inside the leg/ankle, I taped them after applying silicone to the washer.



With that drying, I siliconed the detail pieces into the shoulder hub. Once dry, I flipped the shoulder hubs over and used Super Glue to glue the round magnets to the back of the shoulder hubs. I was amazed how fast the bond took between the magnets and aluminum hub.

A few hours later, I lined the hubs up and the magnets have more than enough power to grip the steel washers...


Finally, after much debate, I used double-sided foam tape to hold the old radar eye into place. Since its just tape, cleanup will be a cinch later. I fussed for a long time over the eye position and think I came up with the proper location based on the Empire Strikes Back movie.

Next on my to-do list is the center vents, then a few smaller tasks.
Those would be covering up a panel in the dome, installing a sheet metal cover behind the utility arms and adding a small shim to the center foot casters. That will lift them up about a 1/2 inch, leveling out the outer feet a bit more.