Working with Lexan

While working on my electronics panel, I needed to add a bunch of hole that were close together and a few large holes. Lexan likes to chip if you drill it and break if it is near other holes. To get the holes I needed I used a spade hole bit for drilling holes in wood. Set to low speed it made short work of the Ledxan without any ninding or chipping. I could get the holes as close as i wanted.

Lots going on, no pictures...

R2 was taken completely apart and pieces were ground down and adjusted to make way for electronics. The feet now have the NPC motors mounted and new wires pulled up the through the new holes in the feet and legs. The wires currently are just pulled into the body. The new electronics panel was cut out of 1/4" Lexan and mounting brackets were made to fit it to the frame. Some of the vertical rods on the frame were moved back to allow room for the hinges for the doors on the skins. All this done in a weekend. I now jsut have to positions the motor controllers and fuse blocks wire them up and R2 should be moving. Then I need to finish cutting the inner dome for the hinges and the dome can go back together.

Just some little things

Updated status

Feet:
I have the battery boxes semi attached to the foot shells. There are some minor modifications that need to be done to get them fully attached. I will probably leave the lower attachment until I get the motors hooked up. I just need to make some adjustments to the KHF holes on one foot ans the foot shells are done and ready for their white primer. I have 1 braided hose done. I just need to grind down the nuts to fasten the KHF fittings on the feet and the battery boxes and the feet are completely finished.

Ankles:
I have 1 more wedge\cylinder combo to file and adjust to make it fit the center ankle. The only outstanding issue to to get the center ankle mounting block ground down to fit the ankle.

Legs:
I don't have to, at this point, but I will probably dill out the leg to ankle joint to upgrade the bolts that I already purchased. I have to finish mounting the under the shoulder details. The only other thing I need on the Legs is the Shoulder hubs. I think I have an idea on how to mount them, I just need to get some time to drill out the backs of the hubs to accept the magnets.

I will probably post an image of where r2 is at some point.

Weekend Update

Well the weekend was filled with the R2 building I had hoped. The whole "real life" thing burned up time and I was not able to get to the store until late Sunday. I am lucky enough to have a Harbor Freight store near my place. The only issue with it is that it is up the interstate, so during the week it is near impossible to get to during rush hour, or hours as it is around here. So I must weight for the weekend to head up there.

To continue with my skins I am in need of so clamps with more pressure, and lots of them. This is where Harbor Freight comes in. I went to the store and looked through there clamp isle. i had gone online and found the 16 piece clamp set for $5.99. In the astromech chat I was told of a 10 piece for $4.99, but 6 more clapms for $1 isn't bad. I didn't find the clamp set I was looking for, but I did find another one.

How about 22 clamps for $3.99...




Only issue I see with these is that I don't think they are going to go back into their container...

I did clean up the rear door a little more and I marked the cutout for the power coupler. Tonight I will cut the power coupler area out and hopefully glue up the skins.

Velcro Alternative

I was going around the R2 Blogs one day and while looking at Chris' I saw the reference about Velcro. In my travels at my previous job I had to find ways of mounting object to places, like the printer station that was basically a pole. This printer needed to be on the network, so I printer server was used. The problem was where to put the printer server. Well I found these little items called Superlock Fasteners at Radio Shack (#m's Dual Lock). I tried them out and they held. I was able to attach the printer server to the side of the printer.

Well I have always used these things when ever I thought about Velcro. If I bought something and it came with Velcro, it was replaced with the Superlocks.



Here is a link that explains a little bit about this product.

Another good link.