(08-25-2012) More dome work...

Saturday I did more work on R2's dome.  All of the holoprojectors and the front logic displays are mounted to the inner dome.  

I ran into one small problem.  The lights were working perfectly until I installed them in the dome.  Once the front logic displays were installed I had to power them up and see the blinking lights in the dome, but they wouldn't work.    Blast it!

I am running an old version of the Teeces kit where all of the lights are in a long single chain, which is prone to problems.  I swapped out the longest cable in the chain for a shorter one and viola!  The lights all started working again.  Looks like I'm going to be soldering some wires onto my Arduino and changing the sketch to support parallel chains of lights.

All in all, a fairly productive day - even though the dome doesn't look that much more complete.  I was hoping to get all of the lights installed and to finally see R2's dome all lit up, but it wasn't to be.

(08-23-2012) More holes...

Last night Jody and I cut some more holes in the inner dome.  There is still a lot of filing to do to get everything to fit, but it's starting to look more like R2 all the time.  If all goes well I might get some lights mounted in the dome this weekend.

(08-21-2012) Holoprojector Holes

I have been dreading cutting the inner dome ever since I got it.  The worst part for me was making that first cut.  Here is how I cut the HP holes in my dome...

 Step 1:  After deciding where you want the holes and marking the hole and the center point, make a rough cut inside of the marks.  I drilled a hole in the center and then used a hole cutter (utterly useless - I won't be using it again, maybe next time I'll just use a hole saw) and a dremel with cutting disks (much better results - but hard to control).

Step 2:  Use a D shaped file and file until you think you're close.  Then test fit your HP housing to see how it fits.  I found that once I was close the HP housing would pivot on the narrowest part of the hole and I could file these areas until I had a perfectly round HP hole. 

Step 3:  Once a good fit is achieved and the hp housing sits flat inside the inner dome, put on the outer dome and look at your work.  Drink a cold one in celebration of a job (well?) done.

After doing the front and rear holoprojector holes I'm far less worried about the remaining holes.  I want to mount the two HPs to get the domes aligned before making any further cuts.  Hopefully this will help in making sure everything is lined up as well as I can get it.  I don't think the remaining holes will be too bad, except for the rear PSI.

(08-04-2012) More work...

I worked on sanding and polishing the dome some more on Saturday.  It seems I'm never satisfied with the results.  If this keeps up I'm going to go with a matte finish on the dome.

This weekend I also spent some time wandering about Lowe's and found some hardware to mount the skirt to the COM 8B frame.  It looks great!

And lastly, I have been investigating paint.  My current thoughts are to get some transparent blue powder coat and try it out.  This blue looks like it might be something close to what the R2.0 guys did with their blue.  The only down side to this is that it may be too durable and make it hard to weather the blue effectively (show paint chips with metal underneath).

(07-22-2012) Dome sanding and polishing

I spent some time this weekend sanding and polishing R2's dome.  It's getting there, but still needs a few more passes to get the smaller scratches to disappear completely.  I started with 250 grit, then 500, 1000, 1500 and finally 2000 grit sandpapers at this point.  I saw some 3000 grit that I may try later, but first I'm going to work the dome again with 2000 and see how it looks.

(06-17-2012) Working on the rockler bearing

On Father's Day, I worked on the rockler bearing.  I took all of the original ball bearings out and cleaned the races with alcohol.  The races were smooth for the most part, but there were a couple of spots where it seemed very rough.  I took some 360 grit sand paper and sanded the entire inner and outer races so that they were very smooth, then I used some mothers aluminum polish and gave them a quick smoothing and cleaning and then I reassembled everything, but this time I installed acetal ball bearings.  The bearing assembly moves much smoother, but it's also much noisier because of the lack of the heavy grease used in the bearing from the factory.  I think I will work on it more this week to get a smoother and quieter motion from the bearing.

I also worked on getting the pieces of the dome mount all assembled and tested.   I tested the rockler bearing with the A&A drive gear, the white plastic dome mount ring and an aluminum dome mounting plate (for the day when I might mount a life form scanner or periscope).  I'm still not exactly sure if I'm getting all of the pieces in the right order, so I'll keep researching until I get it right.

(06-09-2012) A small update

It's been quite a while since I've had an update on R2.  I've been getting parts as I can, the biggest change recently have been the addition of legs.  As each piece of the puzzle arrives R2 becomes more and more complete, but it's a slow process.  I have a few projects (not R2 related) going at the moment, but I hope to have some time to devote to working on R2 very soon.