For the past couple of weeks I have been working on mostly dome stuff, but first I want to show off a couple of body pictures to go with the last post about the legs. The legs have been put on and taken off a few times already because there are vents and other body parts that are easier to get on without them attached. I also have pictures of the coin slots that have been completed and the 3D printed vents with the filler primer on them. Looks pretty good and the chrome looks pretty good on the vents. Some of the 3D printing still showed through, there did not seem to be a real way of getting rid of all of the ridges.
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| Legs are on |
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| Coin Slots on either side of the center port |
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| 3D printed vents with filler primer on them |
Now on to all things dome. I started reworking the dome by polishing it one more time before cutting out the inner panels. I thought it would be wise because the inner dome really gives stability while pressing down so hard. Went from 600 grit, to 1200 to 2000 and then some Brasso to polish. It was a wet job as all of the sandpaper I used was wet sandpaper. I did every round twice making sure to hit the small dome pieces between the panels just as hard. The dome came out looking really nice, not a mirror finish but I may try another polish later, Brasso may not be the best one for aluminum, but it still looks great. I need to find a way to be able to clean off fingerprints though, I have already put two on it.
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| Sanding the dome |
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| Shiny Dome |
After completing the polishing the real dome work started. I started thinking and researching what to do next with the panels before I glued on the colored panels. Almost every blog or post that I read online showed people cutting out all of the panels from both domes before hinges and gluing. A few days earlier I had attempted to put two of my panels back on the body of R2 with their new hinges. I had already glued the panels together and the skins as well, so I was unable to drill holes and bolts the hinge in place. Glue was the only other option. I had a load of trouble (twice) trying to line up and stick the panel door into place snuggly. In fact, that door is still not on the body.
With that trouble from the panels, I stared into the dome and thought about what to do next. It seemed silly to me to cut out all of the panels in the inner dome and then measure and glue on hinges and then go ahead and drill holes to bolt everything back together. It seemed like a lot of extra work. I thought, "Why can't I just glue the hinges onto the inside of the dome, drill my holes, and bolt them on before cutting them out?" A couple of guys online said that the panels may not open properly with the outer panel attached when I posted the question online, but I thought I would attempt one sample panel first and see what happened. It would save a lot of headache later if it worked.
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| Sample panel cut out with hinge glued, not bolted |
I glued all of the hinges on with the dome part pushed as close to the laser cut hole as possible. I figured that the panel, when cut out, already had a an eighth of an inch laser cut for me, it should clear with no problems. I carefully used my Dremel cutting disc to make about 5-8 passes to cut one section off at a time. After cutting both lines off, the panel dropped into the dome still on the hinge. It seemed to have worked, but I still had to test the red outer panel with the outer dome on. Everything seemed to have worked just fine. The panel freely went through the dome and the outer panel sat nicely in the outer dome. Test success! Then I went through and drilled all of my holes from the inside out, that way I could use the hinges as guides. And it was a lot of holes too, 32 to be precise.
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| Holes drilled and panels numbered, just in case |
After drilling the holes, I countersunk the outer holes (which needed to be drilled through again after countersinking). Another mistake had been made in ordering and I didn't find it until I tried to bolt on the hinges. I had ordered the incorrect nuts for the tiny captive studs, they were lock nuts and I could not tighten them the way I was supposed to. Luckily, I found lots of the same sized nuts with other screws I wasn't using yet and was able to keep going. I hate stopping when I'm on a roll.
I bolted on the panels with a set of needle nosed pliers and set off to cut the panels off. I discovered that the cutting discs would slip when going from the left to the right and after a couple passes I could plunge in at the right side and very slowly work my way to the left. I got through all eight panels with 5 discs (I only had 6 :)
As I cut each second line on the panels I got a satisfying thunk as the panel fell into the dome. After all of the panels had been cut out, I use the sanding cylinder to sand the edges of the holes straight and smooth out the panel adages too. I also decided to score up the inner panels to allow for greater adhesion when I glue on the outer dome panels. I had a little extra time and decided to go ahead and drill the holes for the logic surrounds and the holoprojectors. Next week I will be doing the final gluing after installing the HPs and screwing in the radar eye.
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| Thunk! |
