cheating...

ok, It has sunk in how much time I have left to get something working if I want to get to CIV...so commence the cheating.

Dome is looking good. From this distance atleast.


Nothing is going to fall off under normal conditions, but there is a few pieces of tape and superglue in use here.


Darth Will, and Victor provided a few files to fake led solutions for logic displays. I grabbed up some transparencies and made a few.

Oh, here is a closer look at my dome which hasn't been seen before. You won't be able to count the imperfections that I have been ignoring. Again, anyone that etches a dome and makes it look really nice.. has my respect.


in other news.. dome electronics are coming along. I need to come up with a few PSI housings, and get a few more LED's. I have a pretty good blue, but my red, yellow, and green are really dim and not acceptable.

I also spent some time on the Carl's electronics pic flashers just to find out that the crystal is probably bad. Waiting on some information from the group before I seek an alternate solution.

Dome ring sanded and primered. Tape and Paint tommorow.. and repeat on Friday to finish dome.

no progress

Wife had to work most of the day. I managed to drill holes and get a bit of work done on the radar eye, but not enough to post a picture.
Bondo on the dome ring didn't happen either. Im cheating a bit and just trying to fill a few cracks with gorilla glue. That stuff expands well, but lots of air pockets so will see tomorrow.

I still need to drill holes for the dome bumps. I plan put radio shack switches where the dome bumps are to control the lights.

I may try to spend some time on designing the wiring diagram for the electronics tonight.

Dome Work

Lots of work on this R3-T2 dome today. I managed to get the resin radar eye sanded, still needs a bit of work but I hope to have this done tomorrow.
The alu version will go on my R2-D2 dome.


I got my dome ring coming along. It needs some bondo and sanding before I paint.


Rockler bearing mounted. Thanks Andy for answering my questions last night in chat. The answers cleared up several questions I had about mounting this to the A&A frame.


Dome ring on rockler bearing.


Holo projectors. Got them painted and mounted.




Would like to finish up this dome tomorrow, but I know that the dome ring is going to take another day or 2 because of bondo+sanding+painting. I also have a fair amount of electronics to work on for this dome. It will hopefully be completed by the end of this week, and then I can start focusing on other tasks.

Paint it Red

Dome is painted. Again the camera gives this dome way more credit. I know I could have done a better job, but I am satisfied with my efforts.

I plan to finish this dome completely before I move on. ...And the fact that my basement workshop still isn't completed could be another reason.. more later. Enjoy the pics





This is an image that I grabbed from astromech.net. This is what R3-T2 looks like.

My little girl is 1 year old

My Daughters first birthday went really well. This picture is just before she got real messy.

I am itching to get back to building. Hope to get the basement cleaned up a bit more this week, and start bringing tools in this weekend.

Going to focus on finishing up the R3-T2 dome and get that out of the way. I am really using it as a teaching tool, to become comfortable with some of the electronics, painting, and detail work.

Parts stacking and Salmonella

My daughter will be one year old tommorow. I did some parts stacking to show my progress to my family.


In other news.. if you have been following my blog, I had an entry saying that we were all pretty sick for a week.. not sure if this is the cause but if you have a Jar of Peter Pan peanut butter.. check the stock number.. if it matches the first four digits on mine, you should throw it out.

My Daughter, My Dome, and Me

dome shot.. still need to pickup the red paint. This dome will be an R3-T2 dome. My aluminum dome should arrive sometime in March.

some pics

Just a few pictures that I never got around to posting. Most of this work was done last week.

the etching is done and the Holoprojectors and logic display parts are taped into place. The discoloring is from sanding the clear aspects dome.


Dome is primed up again.



Primed a bunch of little parts at the same time.


silver metal spray paint.. not sure how I feel about these at the moment. I may try a coat of the spray crome to get these to shine a bit more.

sneaking in some work on electronics

I picked up a victor 884 and a few parts from IFI. Just finished a few quick tests.

Used the arcade mode 2 motor, hooked up the Victor 884 (which has a blinky light.. which will continue to blink until it is connected properly) to motor port 1. Have to have the signal driver cable, and it must be connected in the proper direction.

connected 12v to the v884, and then connected a meci saturn motor.(it gave a little click when I was hooking it up) I pressed up on the channel one stick on the remote, and the motor started to spin.

One drawback I can see so far is the connectors that Vex and IFI products use, they are intentionally backwards apparently. I am talking about the connectors not the wires themselves. This is by no means a road block, but I was expecting everything to just plug right in, but that wasnt the case.

I got the programming kit and just ordered all the rest of the motor controllers that I will need... it was kinda pricey, but I think Calvin was right, the RC/autonomus ability of the Vex system is going to really add that extra touch.

I will probably mockup all of the controllers and sensors when they all come in, and start working on my code. 2-3-2 control just got super easy...as far as electronics. Fabrication is a completely different situation, although I think I am getting closer to figuring out what I want to do with the leg rods.

out of time

Looks like I will need to put my R2 on the shelf for about 2 weeks. This weekend we are remodeling the basement. This is going to open up a larger area for me to use as a work space. Next week, we have guests coming into town, and my daughter will have her 1st Birthday party. After that I will be aquiring several tools from a buddy that is going to loan me a table saw, drill press, router, and other things. These tools will stop me from scratching my head so much, but at the same time allow me to destroy things in a much more efficient way.

I do have some recent pictures, and If I find time within the next few days, I will post. I have gotten a ton of parts, and made some serious progress on my Aspects Dome.

learning to be patient

During the week, I am finding it difficult to get much work done. In the evenings I usually have less than an hour to use power tools of any type. This includes my dremel. The main reason is that I do not want to disturb my daughter who is about to be 1 year old. She is getting use to the noises, but I don't want to wake her up if she falls asleep.

Over the course of the week, I have managed to get more etching done on the aspects dome. I am not really happy with the way the etching is coming out. I have managed to gouge it up alot, but I picked up some bondo... I figure I could try and patch the places that I messed up and then primer the dome again. I test fitted one of the holoprojectors tonight, using tape to hold it in place, It was very cool to see the two parts together. I would like to have the dome ready to paint by Tuesday night.

I also worked on my frame and dome ring. I pretty much destroyed the dome ring trying to decrease the diameter. I think I will follow some of the instructions that Mike Senea provided on one of the R2LA videos and use sentra or styrene to create a dome ring. He made it look so easy.

I took the frame apart to install a few rings on the satelite motors. My frame is still in pieces, but I should have it back together soon.

more parts came in.
The led blinking kits from Carl's electronics
Holoprojectors from Azman.

Mike's DVDs arrived. They are fantastic. Highly recommend any R2 builder to head over to his website and get these videos.

I'll post pictures again sometime this weekend to show my progress on the dome.