Monday, April 25, 2016

Getting R2-Q5 on 3 feet and realizing I have a big problem.

Getting the droid on 3 feet is a massive accomplishment, until you see some thing has gone terribly wrong.
 I know I got the center foot properly, that pretty much can't be screwed up. But these feet are way off or atleast one of them is. So I looked over at my other R2-D2 to find out what is the proper distance to give me some idea.

The leg on the left is correct the leg on the right of this photo is sticking out way to far. No way I'll hook up the drive system and try to drive this and break something.
Here is a few from the side. How is this even possible? Both the legs simply bolt onto the frame and I had this droid in 2 legged position before and on my first time on 3 legs its all messed up. At this point I don't know whether to laugh, cry, get mad or head to the creature cantina and shine one on. All I can think of now is Captin Picard.
How many thousands done the drain for a crooked droid? What short bus did this guy come off from? Surely this can't be the fault of the man who designed these, they'd never sell so many and I'd be the first who caught this? No way the error has to be on my end. So I study the droid and figure the right leg is the one that is not done right, but how?
After taking some measurements on the side plates I found out the screw holes didn't match the the left plate. I highlighted the 2 top holes with red circles.

 The left hole in the rear comes down 2.1 inches and the other hole is about 1. 3/4 of an inch down. That's enough to make the difference so the fix here is just to take the parts off that mount the skins mount to then flip the plate around 180 degree and put the leg back on as my awesome green arrows I drew clearly show.
That fixed him:)

 So then the moment of truth, I wire up the legs turn him on and get ready to see him move for the first time in 5 years. The sound track of Rocky starts in the background I power on my transmitter and get ready to scream out "I did it Adrian I did it!" Then I turn on my droid and wait for him to breath and come alive.

Nothing, lights are on the electronics on but all radio control has died in the past 2 hours somehow. That turned out be a loose connection but he runs now. That happened when I installed a strap to hold both batteries to the frame so I can tilt him without the batteries falling through the robot.I think I should replace that electronic parts as it can/will stop me from RC in the future now that I know that needs more solder somewhere.

I'll be tweaking that next to my liking but "I did it Adrian I did it!"

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