I think I’m done painting the skins. No really, I’m done! Why don’t you believe me?

I even started to peel away the masking tape, so there’s no going back – Okay, okay. I know I’ve done this before but I mean it this time.

But seriously, I’m much happier with the finish now and can’t see me going back to do this again anytime soon.

There’s a few spot on the inner skin I need to clean up but it should be easy. It’s mostly the green undercoat that’s super thin and leaks under the masking tape easily.

Some bad news though – the top corner of the back door started to de-laminate once I’d removed the masking tape. The surface area for the glue isn’t very wide in this spot and I guess the epoxy was thin or non-existent. Once I get the panel inserts in place and epoxied, it should be an easy fix it without marking the paint.

I couldn’t resist laying some of the panelssee how things would look. Hopefully this week I’ll get some hinges working, and the permantent panels/inserts epoxied in to the skins.

I do need to clean up the epoxy on some inside edges of the panels as they’re not sitting exactly square, but overall I’m happy how things came out

I also went back and started to remove the tape and latex on the horse shoes. I scored the perimeter with a knife to help get a cleaner line

Next up, gluing all those panels in place and fitting the back door.

Here’s something else I’d forgotten I’d worked on before C4 and not posted.

The original dome periscope had a small raised lip around the side ports/windows. Neither my PVC or aluminum periscope kit has this so I improvised.

I used a 1″ Nylon gasket from the plumbing department at my local Ace Hardware store, and just superglued it in place. However, paint has a real hard time adhering to Nylon, so if I was to do this again I’d probably try and find an O ring made from something different. Also if you try and rough up it up you’ll get fine strands that will never go away.

I guess I’m posting this as an idea rather than a solution.

Not a whole lot going on. I did find a very cool surplus electronics store this week in Santa Clara called HSC. They carry a LOT of stuff at a fraction of the cost and the place is full of things that can be used on R2. I was hoping to find a slip ring to experiment with but I was out of luck. I did pick up a few bits though, including some red rectangular LEDs for the front slot on the periscope.

I did a quick test fitting on my aluminum periscope housing and they fit perfectly.

There’s very little published reference material for the periscope, but I have it on good authority that the front red light was made up of 6 of these LEDs.

I also worked a bit on my RoboteQ speed controller, adding a RS232 connection to the provided PWM cable to allow me to monitor things live from a tethered laptop. Basically I ran two wires (RxD/GND) from the 25-pin plug they provide to a 9-pin RS232 plug/housing.

The plug you see on the right may look like an RS232 connector, but it’s really used to connect just two PWM wires from the Vex receiver into the RoboteQ. It comes as standard with the controller, and they also provide a seperate RS232 cable to connect your computer. I really don’t understand why they don’t just provide one combine cable. Confused? Please see the RoboteQ manuals 🙂

Once the controller is connect to my computer I can use they’re monitoring software called roborun. It polls the speed controller and graphs live data like battery voltage, controller temperature, current being used, PWM data etc. It also allows me to exercise the motors without using my RC transmitter.

It’s been a slow Artoo week. In the last few days we’ve had big storms come through, loosing power for almost a day, 100mph winds and 8 inches of rain. There’s a break in the rain right now so I jumped at the chance to get some painting done this afternoon.

I’ve included some photos, but they”re all starting to look the same to me.

I went back and sanded down the rear skins to clean up the big run I made last time and gave them another coat.

I added an extra coat of white to the skirt and lower frame ring – but they’ll need several more, plus I goofed and put a run on the skirt 🙁

I rubbed down the long doors and the smaller panels and gave them another coat while I was at it. They would have probably been okay, but another coat of paint is always good.

I’ve also been busy work on the new astromech.net website with Wayne and PixelFiend. Stay tuned for some great new features.

Here’s my latest short video tutorial, this time it’s on cutting your inner dome holes.

This was one of the first things I worked on a year ago, and I’ve finally mastered video editing enough to put something like this together.

Enjoy.

Related Posts:

• First Dome Hole Cut

Last week I made a new aluminum dome drive mech to replace the Daren Murrer’s HDPE version I’d been using. There wasn’t much wrong with the one I had to start with, but I gotten it in my head I wanted to try making one myself from aluminum to go with my new dome motor.

The one I created is a combination of Daren’s and the original Atomic Pickle design design. Here’s a photo of my original HDPE mechanism on my aluminum frame.

I used some 1/4″ scrap aluminum that already had a few holes in it, so I had to work around them using the original bracket as the template.

I don’t have a mill at home so everything would have to be either cut on the band saw, Dremeled, drilled or worked by hand tools like a file.

I rough cut the piece on the band saw and drilled the initial holes

The long hole in the center was greater from three smaller holes I’d drilled and filed away to create one big hole.

One issue I knew I would have was making the center hole/cut-out large enough to accommodate the approximate 1″ wide lip/step on on the motor. Also note how the drive shaft is off center due to the gear box.

At first I thought I could file away enough material but it would be slow going. I could also have bought a $40 1″ drill bit but I had another idea. My Dremel has a router attachment that could create a lip on the long slot that I’d created.

I forgot to take photos of the next few steps, but the rest of the mechanism that bolts to the frame is pretty simple, and just two blocks with a few holes in them. I made the main support piece a litte wider than on the Atomic Pickle design as I wanted to add extra support to the main bracket that holds the motor.

Here it is installed in the frame. Note, in some of these photos the motor is flipped the wrong way and the shaft should be toward the center of the frame.

At the pivot point I drilled and installed a bearing like the original Atomic Pickle design, but on hindsight I probably could have just stuck with Daren’s idea of just having a regular hole with a bolt through it.

Here’s the motor position correctly in the bracket

Overall I’m happy with how it came out and given a template and basic tools anyone could make one at home.

Here’s a short video of the new mechanism in action

This is another post I should have written up last week and almost forgot. Better late than never I guess 🙂

I still needed to adjust the ribs on the skirt a bit. When I received the kit the angles on the rib pieces were perfect. But then when I came to attach them to the skirt they need cutting down or filing due to being too long – loosing the nice angle on some of them.

I flipped over my frame and with everything at eye level it was a lot easier to see which one’s needed adjusting.

I just filed the ribs with the skirt resting on top of the frame and my eye dead level with the hand file.

The skirt itself isn’t perfectly flat/level and I think I may end up with a few gaps in spot, but I don’t think you’ll notice once the frame is the correct way up.

Back when I was thinking about stepping up my Pittman dome motor to 24V, and not wanting to have the extra complication of tying two batteries together to make 24V, I’d ordered some small Voltage Converters from ebay to experiment with.

I’m probably not going to install it for the new Dome motor as it’s working fine at 12V, but I do have a 24V supply in the dome for the rear logic lights. This will allow me to have a single 12V battery and save some weight. There is a loss of energy and battery life due to the conversion, but it’s supposed to be in the 90% range.

Update 5/1/08: Andy tipped me off that these board can also be found here.