JEDI Control and Battery Boxes

I decided to put R5 together and install the JEDI controller and see if I could get it working again. But first I needed to mark both battery boxes and start cutting out the section needed to clear the NP motors.

'Squeaks' came by to inspect the work and sniff each part for something.

 I cut out the hole I marked. With a test fit its too small to fit. Also the lower part of the frame is in the way. So, I'll need to take all the legs off and keep trying with the foot only to get this to clear the NP motor. I'll work on this more next week. Its a small job to take the batteries out of the droid, unscrew the middle foot and outer legs.

I spent most of the day on the JEDI control installing it. I hooked up the JEDI and it don't work anymore. It does the sounds, but the entire servo channel don't respond to anything. Plugging in a servo has no result. The dome motor no longer spins and a long shot on getting the Sabertooth 2x25 was dead in the water. I'm so close to driving him but so far away.

R5-D4 Now on 3 Feet!

I can't even describe how happy I am. I hit a new milestone in my build. A droid on 3 feet I can push around. This weekend I'll try to install the JEDI control and start working on driving him around. Also since I polished the Rockler ring the head certainly spins more freely. That's also some good news.

This thing is big! He takes over the living room, which is pretty cool.

It took about an hour to repeat what took me 90 minutes yesterday. I was able to mount the JAG drive to my other foot and only have to cut once and then mount. Everything was flowing smoothly so I kept on going.

Next I attached the JAG ankle to Ryan's feet. This spacer rests on this side of the foot. The 2 black bolts are attached to some nylon nuts.

Now its put together I don't see how this is re-enforcing anything since it only attached the leg to the leg. LOL. I think maybe I should make a steel plate with 6 holes or something and have them screw into that. I dunno yet.

You'll need to use a round file inside the ankle so the copper bushing will fit in. You don't want to file too much so it slides in by hand. Just enuff that it starts to nest in each hole. Then push them together for the good solid fit.

So the 4 bolts are going through the spacer and then screwing into those other 4 inserts. I think if I add a steel plate to connect all 6 bolts. That will do a decent job to re-enforce the ankle to foot. R5 is top heavy so I don't mind some over kill in some areas.

I'm not used to having him stand so tall now that he's on all 3 feet. Now the real fun begins. I'm almost done with the basic assembly and construction phase.Soon work on the R2-D2 head that will sometimes  a go on this droid. Lots of electronics work ahead. I also have Q5 legs and ankles that need to be put together and attached to that foot drive I put together last week. Soon that droid will be on 2 feet, since I don't have a center foot for it yet.

This took a lot of work, a bunch of money and a few drops of blood. But its worth every penny.

Foot Drive Attachment

I mounted the JAG foot drive to the foot shell. I stripped all the main parts out of it. Then I marked where I'll need to cut a tiny hole for the NP motor.

I disassembled the JAG drive and then finished marking the hold I need to cut. In some photos I've seen holes that are quite large. I'm going to take out small sections at a time.

Then I drilled 4 holes at each corner so I could fit in a jigsaw blade and cut out the hole.

Now with the rough hole cut I remounted it. Thankfully it don't quite fit and I have to trim more. I marked the area where I need to trim. It seems like I'm quite close. I'd rather have this too small than too big.

I like my laser guided jigsaw but this curved area won't work with it anymore. Time to break out the dremel and the new easy lock cut off wheel and trim this off in no time.

Wow! I can't believe it. After 2 cut it fits! That almost never happens. Usually I screw something up. The real test will be to see if the NP motor fits.

The NP motor fits! I'm on a roll now. I'll file this hole into a nice clean square later when I work on the battery boxes.

A closeup. I'll need to file the bottom part some incase I need to do later tweeking to adjust the motor into proper position and the make sure the drive belt is tight.

Here is a look at the other side. I don't know how many months I dreamed of getting this far in my build. I'm almost there to the point I can get R5 to drive!

This entire process took 90 minutes. 1 done and 1 to go. On Friday I'll do the other foot and have both feet ready for the first test.

Then I got to work on my back door, which of course never ends. Today I mounted the super 1.5 inch magnet on the back Power Coupler. I don't dare put the same size magnet on the droid frame. It would rip off that Power Coupler if I did that wrong.

The other side this attaches too I decided to use two .750 rare Earth magnets. But later learned 1 magnet is pushing the main magnet away and I need to order another set of these. Thus, this project won't end any time soon. Someday my grandkids will take over this blog and update with their progress.

I also did some painting. I took the new bars that arrived the other day and masked then, primed and painted them black.

Then they got 2 coats of copper on them. After 2 days of cooking in the hot AZ sun they'll be ready to touch and install without fear of leaving finger prints on them.

If everything goes right on track sometime around Sunday I might be seeing R5s first steps. If this droid don't fall apart he'll be driving around the next Phoenix Comicon.

Foot Shells and bars

Today I worked on screwing together my foot shells. They're made out of aluminum and quite light weight. I had to make all my own holes. I could of done this a while ago but I wanted to wait until I had some ankles to test it out. One ankle didn't fit so I pulled the U channel a bit wider. All the sudden it nearly split in 2 pieces and definately weakened the weld nearly tearing it apart. I nearly had a heart attack as that would nearly stop my droid from driving for another 8 months.

 Next up I need to either mount the JAG foot drives to the U channel or cut out where the NP motors go.

I also received some new parts to replace the broken Don Jar parts. The bars are 1 piece of solid aluminum. I'll mask tape it and prime it, then paint it black and then copper. The copper paints in only 2 coats if you first lay down a black layer. Otherwise it takes 4 coats of paint and forever to dry.

MAGNET FAIL!

My new 1.5 inch rare Earth magnets arrived! I certainly miscalculated here. These are way, way to strong and over kill in power. I had no idea they'd be this thick and strong. They are so strong I have yet to pull them apart. No way this will work on my droid. It would rip the power coupler right off since its only JB welded on. They'd probably rip a David Shaw screwed in power coupler right through the skin. That would be a sight to see.

So instead of waste $23 on these magnets. I'll use only 1 of them and use a less powerful smaller magnet on the other end. That's when I figure out how to separate both of them.

Magnets this powerful are good for making your own Ninja gloves, knee pads and feet so you can walk up a steel building. 

Jag Ankles Arrive

I've been waiting a while for the last and run of ankles to finish up. They are well worth the wait. Here's a test fit.

My legs are almost complete. Now with this final piece of the puzzle I can get both droids up on there drive trains soon. That will be my primary focus until that project is done.

Aluminum heaven! Its just like Christmas month after month.

I think I have this correct. The spacer plate goes over the outside and then the outer ankle goes over that. Then the screws tighten it down. My main question those is on the hardware used to fasten this together. More on that in a minute.

Here is a look inside the leg. These were made by Ryan in his leg run last summer. I think the threaded inserts are steel because of the rust. But whats holding them on? All of the weight of this heavy droid depends on 4 of them per leg not to fail. Its not welded but whats holding it?

Here is a look inside my other legs which are on R2-Q5. These legs have inserts on both sides of the leg.

Ryan's leg has holes that line up with the JAG ankle. However these legs don't line up with the holes. So I either gotta make new holes in the ankle to line up with the inserts or make the inserts line up with the holes or move them elsewhere.

These bolts came with the leg. They're not long enuff to fasten using the spacer plate. Are these really long enough to hold a 200 pound droid together? If those spacers fail my droid will face plant.

Here' is a pic from Paul's blog where the insert has broken off.

He used longer bolts to go through both sides of the leg.

I'm tempted to also go this route, but wonder what other builders have done to secure the ankles on the best they can.

Octoports and more

I had a busy weekend and didn't have much time for the droids. I finally finished painting 1 of the octoports after several tries to get them right.

I'm really, really, really, really reluctant to even attempt to install these on my droids skins. Just look at the octoport on the left its already cracked and ready to shatter. Now way to even figure out how I'll JB weld these without them shattering. I'll have to take my skins on and off several times to get them perfect. I should just try to get resin replacements and plan on not using these.

Next I cut this U channel I got from Droidwelder and mounted them to a set of JAG drives. It will be quite a while another I can find some feet. So until then this will have to do for R2-Q5. Next week will be quite busy. 4 JAG ankles for both droids should be arriving. Then I can start to work on figuring out how to mount them to the leg and then getting both droids ready to be mobile.

No update would be complete without something on the never ending rear skin/back door project. This time I made 4.5 inch long by .750 strips from steel and screwed them to the lower part of the skins to help re-enforce the magnet section. Now I have something sturdy to grab when I want to pull off the skins. I don't have to worry about this layered area bending. Nor do I have to worry about the magnets sucking in the skins to far with the steel on it. I was kinda of bummed over the months this project was taking forever and not working. 

Now I"m quite happy with how everything has turned out. If anybody else has a Comm8A frame and full back door this is the way to go IMO. I also ordered 1.5 inch rare earth magnets that should arrive next week so I can upgrade the ones on the back door for more magnet power.

At this point I could probably reattach the outer rear skin. I think I'll hold off, order more VHB or whatever its called tape and wait for the 2 Xlarge hinges to arrive for the full doors. Then maybe just maybe in 5 weeks this part of the droid is 'done' for a while.

More Rear Door work with magnets

Moving forward on R5. I took most of him apart today to get some work done. Batteries out and skirt off so I can replace the lower support rods that attach the skirt.

I was using the rod on the top with a bunch of washers. I just replaced them with the longer version that works with the JAG skirt better. Not like anyone will see this, but not it don't seem like its mish mashed together down there in my head. 

Now back to your regular programming of the never ending back door project!

Here is what I'm doing on my rear inner skins. Please think it threw before you attempt a full rear door, or alteast read what don't work. Anyway, I have screwed on 1 rare Earth magnet to the lower part of both skins and then mounted 3 4-40 screws with nylon nuts to fasten the bottom on. The strip above got 2 rounds of Gorilla Super glue. I think it didn't hold well last time because I painted the strip and then glued it on. Basically gluing the paint on  was wrong. Now I'm just gluing metal to metal.

Here is the other side. This creates a lip for the back door to rest on, other wise it falls through the skins. I made it a little bit too big so I can file it down to a perfect fit later (never ends). All the screws are counter sunk so the outer skin will hide them.

Its kind of hard to see. What I did here is drill and tap a 8/32 hole just over an inch above both lower support rods. Then mounted rare Earth magnets, and over that I glued on a plastic ring that came with the magnets. The idea is not to let both magnets touch. It takes too much forces to separate them and the skin is quite thin and it won't take too much to start bending it. I can adjust how far or close the magnets are by screwing this into or out of the frame support rod.

Another photo prior to gluing on the plastic spacer ring. The reason for this is to suck the lower skin as tightly to the frame as possible.

Here is one of many test fits. These magnets are quite strong and will bend your skin if you make too big of a gap.

This is working much better than when I tried to do this with velcro.

Now I made a prototype to hold on my rear door with a magnet and this piece of L bracket. The L bracket is a little to short but works. Since I put a magnet on my rear power coupler last week this should just kind of snap into place.

This holds the back door on so far but it don't take too much force to remove it. A bump in a sidewalk might drop the door. These rare Earth magnets are the best but under powered in this situation. I could add a few more magnets to make it stronger. I'm using I think 7/8 of an inch magnets. I should just order some 1.5 inch magnets for added power.

This never ending project now has a light at the end of the tunnel. I have pretty much accomplished the goals I set for myself to some degree. One thing I'll remember about this droid I won't forget is how much I wasn't looking forward do the back door from first cutting it out to its final magnet.