Here’s a quick tip for the collector/builder who wants to use their pristine Kotobukiya R2-D2 in the workshop without damaging it.

Since starting on the skins and details I’d really wanted to have a good 3D model to ponder over. The Koto R2 is probably the most accurate in my collection, but being the paranoid/obsessive collector that I am, I knew he’d eventually get damaged or at best dusty in the shop – so I never took him down.

Then over the weekend while cleaning up my office I realized that he’d fit perfectly in one of those 50X CD-R cases. Problem solved!

I’ve come to the conclusion that external dome bump switches are a bad idea, for events at least.

I like the convenience of being able to quickly turn off the dome lights to save the battery, but kids quickly work out what they do and are constantly playing with them. They can’t do much damage but i’s very annoying, and I’m leaning toward replacing them with an internal switch even though it’ll be a pain to get at. I’m not sure if I’d leave the dead switches in place or replace them with simple bumps.

If you’re about to go down this route I’d personally recommend against having external switches of any kind.

Here’s a quick template I created to help mark out the hole in the battery boxes necessary to accommodate the NPC-2212 motors and the JAG/Dave Painter Foot Drive System.

Download and print the file at full size on 8.5″x11″ paper without scaling. I can’t stress enough not to scale or alter the margins.

I used a Dremel to cut out the hole and if I had this template to start with I’d probably saved myself a few hours work and a bunch of cutting wheels.

[PDF Template]

Note: Your mileage will most likely vary. This is not an official builders club document but based on my experience in cutting my JAG Battery Boxes. Everyone has a slightly different way of building a droid, so best check then double check all measurement before cutting.

Weather has turned a little cold and we’ve had some rain, so I got to work in the garage this last weekend.

It was a mix bag, from cleaning up space to work to jumping between painting some parts, cutting the skins and fitting the battery boxes and hoses. I also tried to troubleshoot some issues I’m having, like the dome speed rotation, but more of that later.

First up I really needed to make space to totally disassembled R2. I’d been dreading it and a few events throughout the summer kinda gave me an excuse to avoid it. Even though he’s not finished it’s still been fun driving him around and people love him.

So I started off by breaking him down and inspected parts for wear, missing screws etc.

I never did get a coat of undercoat on the center foot before C4, and some surface rust had set in. I was also surprised how well the omniball castor’s have held up given the terrain I’ve run him over.

A once over with some sandpaper removed the rust from all the center foot parts and I was able to give them a coat paint.

I also inspected my center ankle for any problems. George Luck broke a JAG center ankle right after C4 and I was a little worried about mine, but all the joints looked fine. I’ve heard of two ankles breaking now, and both times the droids had done a long cross country trek for C4. I’m wondering if that’s the problem rather than every day wear and tear. To be on the safe side I had ordered a spare center ankle from Jerry just in case, but hopefully I’ll not need to use it anytime soon 🙂

Next up, I finally drilled the holes in the outer feet for the Knurled Hose Fittings (KHF). I had a bit of trouble securing the the foot on my drill press, so had to use my cordless hand drill instead, problem was the drill bit would not fit. I had to use my stepping bit instead. I don’t think it like it much as the steel feet are pretty tough – but it got the job done.

The Kurled Hose Fittings only just arrived last week from Doug and they have a nice feature where the hose is easily secured with a screw-in plug.

With the KFL I also got some new braided hoses, but I wasn’t too keen on how gold they were. I much prefer the original copper one’s I got some time ago.

I had to insert some tubing into the braided hoses to make sure they held their shape and secure the hose in place inside the KHF.

Now comes the kicker with the KHF – there’s always a kicker right? They hit the main drive wheel once I got things back together

I even switched out to using regular nuts, but it looks like I’ll need to trim the KHF’s down by half

I decided to move on to cutting the back of the battery boxes to accommodated the big NPC motors. I couldn’t find a template anywhere, so it was a bit of trial and error. I started off with cutting the smallest hole I could, traced from the matching hole in the foot. It wasn’t big enough to slide down and over the motor so I gradually made things bigger until thinks worked. Once the box is in place you’ll not be able to notice the hole.

I’ll try and create a PDF template later tonight to share [update – here’s the template]

I also had to grind down the motor in three spots. In the Dave Painter tutorial it looks like you only need to grind the top sides of the motor, but I also had to grind the bottom outside edge too

So here’s the first foot assembled with the motor encased in the battery box ready for painting. Next step battery harnesses.

As I said at the start of this blog entry, I did a lot more on R2 over the weekend, but I’ll stop here for now.

As always more photos in the gallery section.

The weekend before Halloween Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos threw a two day Halloween bash, and of course I had to take R2 along for a spin.

They had a lot of children activities and of course encouraged everyone to show up in costume.

R2 was a big hit with children young and old and I had a blast running him around. For part of the afternoon I hid myself up on a balcony overlooking the main atrium and most of the children and adults alike though that he was autonomous. I a little trouble from some over excited children, but security stepped in to keep everyone in check.

The cutes thing of the day was probably the little “pepe la peu” guy running around, he was fearless and kept on sprinting toward R2. His mother though that R2 was autonomous and was worried the robot would run her child over 🙂

I probably hadn’t been to Hiller since the Pod Racer Exhibit back in 2001 and my first trooping event, but I’m hoping to go back soon.

A big thank you to the museum staff for making me feel so welcome, and to Jeff the museum Director for taking and sharing photos that are so hard to take when running R2.

[More photos]

I just got my copy of the new Steve Sansweet book “The Star Wars Vault“, and was pleasently suprised to see R2 featured on virtually ever page, or it seemed like it as I flipped through.

Then toward the back of the book on page 106, there’s a big photo of the R2 Builders from C3 with George, Rick and Don.