Tempe SciTech Festival

I never heard about this before but it seems like fun and something cool to do for free starting around 5 PM at Mill and University Avenue. We had 2 full sized RC droids and another droid showing it in the process of construction.

R5-D4 showing his best angle.

You'll always see people with great costumes and others with whatever they could afford. Things like this are amazing at the local level of craftsmanship you see every 15 minutes. People come and go and you always have a smile saying "look that is so cool". I see a homemade Cylon costume that wasn't perfect but still it was cool. Wish I had a photo of it.

After a while this felt like Pre Comic con 3 but out doors and free!

By the time Phoenix Comic con hits here its either 90 or 105 so its a gamble on the weather. Tonight was 'cold for Phoenix', perfect night for something like this.

This pair of Predators were pretty awesome! The one on the left had around a dozen LED lights on each  piece of armor. A serious effect on detail went into that as a droid builder that I respect. This might not be 'hero' quality for a movie close up. But its pretty damn good that could be used for a team member Predator in a group shot. Kudos for whomever is the maker as its very well done.

Note:R5 is watching from a distance, ready to scram if he needs to in his own slow way.

The Walking Dead.

I took R5 for a trip around the place to troll outsides who didn't happen to walk past the droid area we camped in. I ran across this zombie women who had been bitted and was infected with rage or being dead or something.

Know I know that your average female can spend atleast 1 hour in the bathroom a day putting on makeup. How long did she take to put this blood all over here? 5 hours or 5 minutes. That's the question.

 

Lashing out at the crowd members For once the family friend event stopped. This zombie girl as I came across here was laying on the cement as me and R5-D4 drove by entertaining kids no less. She lashed out at us so we got the F out of there as fast as we could at R5's slow speed. When I reached a relative safety zone for R5, I stated taking photos of the zombie girl who just tried to kill him. 

A few events back somebody tried to kill R5 buy pouring too much beer down this throat and drown him in beer electronically. This time was a random zombie attack and its not R5's first encounter with a zombie. R5 is not worried because he's not alive and if taken apart a master like myself can just reassemble him in the future, thus he know he can't be killed and ain't afraid of no zombie who can die again.

 This is the final shot of 'it' before 'it' was finally put down by the AZ Ghostbusters. They saved the day yet again!

This is only 4 of the local AZ R2-D2 builders clubs with the builders and there droids. We grow in size each year except last year when we lost 2 long time members. So we gained 1 and should level off by Comic Con.

Holoprojector Porn!

Despite the lack of updates on here lately. I'm still working on droids, slow but sure. Here is a progress update. I have been collecting parts for to finish the domes.

Here is my current  inventory. The 6 HPs on the left were on Bob C's recent aluminum run. The aluminum HP next to that is one of the first HPs made in aluminum. Then I have 3 clear HPs made by Cal, very nice parts there. On the right the darker HPs are made by Don Jar, pretty brittle material so be very careful handling them.

I recently got these HPs and radar eye in clear resin from Cal. I can't say enough about how awesome these parts are! They are pretty solid. I think if one dropped one from 4 feet to the ground it won't suffer too much damage. Not that I plan on that but they are very well made IMO.

Here is each HP part side by side for comparison.

The old school HP is a little higher then the parts currently being run on and off.

I was surprised the end caps were interchangeable on these parts made by different people. They don't screw in all the way unless you use some grease and force but its pretty dang close.

Tucson Comic Con 2011

David and I went do to the Tucson Comic Con and brought a couple of droids with us.

Tom and Tom jr. in costumes and R5-D4 with the first ever built Clone Wars droid built by David.

We also have some DSG people and are well represented with the 501st, Rebel Legion, Mandos, droids and what not. Its also a pretty good time out spreading around the fun. I wanted to see if my droid would break down again as it always seems to do. This time the dome didn't break. But I had tons of problems with the RF again. The droid would need to be rebooted over and over. Either the sound quits working, or the JEDI control freezes up. Either way it needed constant rebooting and I need to stand close or it moves on it's own. 

I'm done doing events until I get this transmitter stuff fixed.

If you look closely in this photo there is a misty shooting out of the R2 droid. It always surprises kids when the fire extinquisher is activated.

I hurt my back unloading the droid from the truck so I'll be taking it easy for a while. I need a van instead of a truck to haul this guy around.

Worked on my antenna today

Today I tried to extend the range of the Vex antenna. Its really short like 12 inches long and means when I use the Vex transmitter I have to be atleast 12 feet away. Here is how I had it wired up.

The vex is the yellow box with the short antenna I had wrapped around the frame.

So next I soldered on about 3 foot of 22 gauge wire onto the Vex antenna. Then I put that antenna into a clear tube and zip tied it around in the circle as high up as possible in the droid. Doing a before and after test I gained about 5-12 extra feet of distance. But to safely operate him I still need to be around 15-20 feet away from the droid. Oh well I gained 5 something feet. I'll take it until I can replace this Vex system later on.

Painting My Tinted Dome

I finally got around to painting my tinted dome. I got burnt out on part building for a while and now getting back in action. Here's how I got this done. I believe this entire droid is about 9 months old and most of it is aluminum. I just love a black R2. I noticed at the last Con about 1 in 10 people liked this over the other droids. I'd hear things like "Wow! a black R2". You don't see this kind of droid often and its pretty rare.

Now that my HPs are here its time to get to work on all of my domes. I need to trace the panels from the styrene dome onto the tinted dome so I know exactly where the panels are.

First I put the styrene dome over the tinted dome so I know where to put the masking tape. I'm going to paint the inside of the dome so its easy to wipe off the dome. This is quite time consuming as I used blue tape and pin strippng tape from an automotive shop.

I'm doing this in sections so I taped the inside and decided to paint the pie panels in the next stage.

All of the sections not masked are going to be painted black. I used no primer just straight black paint, with 3 light layers. I forgot to use magnets to some areas to hold it very tight to the dome.

This black trash can is turned out pretty cool! I need to get her a skirt soon. There are a few areas of the paint in the dome that needs to be removed, overspray. I don't know if that's possible using a paint thinner might wreck it. I'm going to wait for the paint to cure another week until I do some tests to improve it.

After I touch up the paint I have the PSI and logics to install. I also have a clear radar eye to replace this eye and clear Holoprojectors coming in the near future. Then I have the electronic brains to ponder over how to do that. I also need to install the JEDI control system and get this droid running around.

R5 Made it on TV and a beer bong failure.

It was Star Wars day for the Diamond Backs and they invited some of us to show up and entertain people. I had a great time 6 hours flew by in what seemed like 2 hours. Here is a screen grab off a split second or so on national TV. I'm no Senna that gets to do Lucas TV commericials

I actually had a drunk idiot walk up to R5 and say 'here's a drink' and then try to pour his beer into the Large Data Port. I was shocked people would treat other peoples' property with such disdain. I should have asked security to kick him out. Its like sugaring a gas tank.

Again my dome motor with is brand new crapped out. I'll need to take him apart to figure out why.

My CPU Arm Project

I've been collecting more parts and now have everything I need to try and get this CPU arm working. I bought a Fergelli L-16 actuator which is the medium length model with a 100 MM stroke.

First I unscrewed the end plug.

Next I bought an 8MM metric stud with a 1.25p and cut it to length so the CPU arm would screw on it. 

I tapped the CPU tip to 8 MM and then cut the stud to the correct size and tried a few tests with 12 volt power and everything seems to work perfectly.

The tube came with this plastic plug. So I filed it down until the L-16 would fit inside of it.

I cut that mount off the rear because I need to recover that space. You gotta be careful not to cut off the wires.

With everything installed and the rear plug installed. I still need about 1/4 of space to get the plug to fit inside. So its off to the bandsaw.

I screwed in a 1/4 -20 rod and pushed it to cut off what I'll use later as a shim. DO NOT try something like this by hand. Trust me you'll need your fingers to operate a droid.

I'm almost a straight cut, but a little crooked. I filed down a square hole in the left over 1/4 inch piece of round aluminum.

That shim then goes over the actuator and holds the rear end of it centered and then the rear aluminum plug fits. So its time to test it out!

FAIL!

The tip came out as it has during all the tests and snapped off and fell into the cat's water dish:(
I was so close and ready to install it and the L-16 you've failed me. So its time to take the L-16 apart and see if I can fix it.

Here is the inside of the L-16. It has a screw drive that has a high pitch. One you can't fabricate parts for with a metric tape and dye set. The motor and everything works just fine. What happened is a piece of plastic broke off from the square limit switch.

This is a closeup of what I believe is the limit switch. There used to be a small tube of plastic that threaded to in the inner part to this screw shaft and its outer part was 8mm. So it was very thin and the weakest link in the system. Somehow I need to fabricate this square part seen and its tube part out of aluminum. Otherwise this L-16 is of no use.

So the moral of the story is don't follow in my footsteps if you were considering this route. After about 8 tries the L-16 failed and rendered itself to the junk pile. Now I'm not sure how to proceed. If I can find a tap set to duplicate this pitch I might just JB weld a small tube over this square piece. I'll try a few things before this hits the junk pile.

One day I will get this to work and save people from getting crushed in the trash compactor.