A slip ring, in electrical engineering terms, is a method of making an electrical connection through a rotating assembly.

In our case it could be used to route power and other signals into the dome, but still allow it to rotate continuously without tangling wires.

I’ve been toying with the idea of putting a slip ring in my droid for a couple of reason

• Remove the needs for extra batteries in the dome and save weight at the same time
• Easier charging of the batteries
• I’m upgrading my RC setup to 2.4Ghz in the next month, and this would allow me to eliminate an expensive second receiver in the dome.

Here’s a quick picture of a sample I picked up today.

It’s pretty small, but offers 18 circuits, each capable of 2A. The company that sells them is close to where I work and they also sell a much smaller 6 circuit design as well as 12 and 24 in the same size package as above.

I plan on testing it out in the next couple of weeks and will report back on my findings.

Another long weekend with late nights rushing to get R2 done for WonderCon.

I thought I’d take a break and post a few quick photos of where I’m at. I’m pretty sure I’ll have Artoo back together by Friday, it’s now down to deciding what do work on and what to leave out for now.

All the electronics and RC stuff have been upgraded and re-installed in the body with an all new wiring design. The charging system works a treat, and I can even run him off 120V when he’s parked up somewhere.

Legs and feet are also done waiting to be put back on, but before I can do that I need to finish up a few things inside the body.

Tonite I’m fighting the back door which is the last big annoyance that I need to work around. I was hoping to use magnets to secure it, but it’s not really working out too great. They hold it on fine, but it’s the alignment I’m not happy with, and there’s a balance between using strong magnets that take up a lot of space and block access to my swing out electronics panel (which lets me get at the batteries), or using smaller one’s that don’t quite hold well enough and don’t pull the door tight to the body or sags in spots that spoil everything.

I’ve got a feeling I may end up using screws or just leaving it off for the event.

Sorry for the lack of detail tonite, I promise to go back and cover all the work I’ve been doing the last few weeks 🙂

I forgot to post this small update a few days ago. I’ve figured out most of the other skin detail parts and made brackets to attach them, but still needed to work on the coin slots. There’s a slight problem with the design of the frame and/or the latest run of coin slot strips. It’s slightly to long and bumps into one of the frame rings – and either it or the frame needed ‘adjusting’. They don’t call this building for nothing.

I opted to just cut a small slot in the frame ring as it seemed easier than cutting the strip. It also save two screw holes in the strip to allow me to use them to fix it to the frame.

I put on the skins loosely with the slot in place and marked from the inside where it touched the frame.

I then took my Dremel and cut out the slot

I cleaned it up with a small file to make the corners square and did a test fit

All that’s left is to make a small L bracket to secure it to the frame, but I’m also tempted to simply silicon it to the skins permanently.