Well I’m back working on R2. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything on him and I’ve still got a long list of big to-do’s. Sadly, instead of working on the small things I’ve been avoiding everything.

Inspired by reading Victors success with the Mist/Fire Extinguisher effect this week I decided I’d give it a go this weekend, hoping it would kick start me going back to work on more difficult things like the skins.

The mist is created by an inverted can of compress air normally used to dust PC’s and office equipment. When it’s inverted rather than spray air, a watery/icy mist comes out.

I decided to put the air cannister and output in the dome instead of the body. I really liked the idea of popping open a dome hatch/side panel and having something come out, and I thought this would be perfect.

I’d already bought a cheap solenoid which was part of a trunk release kit I found on eBay. I had looked locally, but eBay seemed to be cheaper. Wiring it in was a snap and it’s only a few wires. It’s triggered with a spare channel on my RF remote.

I cut a 1 1/2″ acrylic strip and bent it into an L shape. I bolted it to the Dome Mounting Ring and then used clamps to hold the cannister and solenoid to it.

I drilled a small hole in the trigger of the air cannister and connected it to the solenoid with a bend paper clip.

Here’s a rough diagram of how it’s wired

Space in the dome is tight and I’m sure I’ll need to move things around or lower/angle the cannister more to accommodate the periscope lift mech.

Here a short movie clip of the first test with the dome off

Then with the dome on

I still need to add a hinge to the hatch and power it with a servo. I did tinker a bit with the Robart hinges but decided to leave this for tomorrow.

My dome has a self contained power system, and I wanted to use the dome bumps as switches. Rather than re-invest the wheel I decided to copy what Victor had already done as it looked like a great solution.

The switches are from Radio Shack, Part #275-693. The original surrounds on the switches are square’ish and need rounding.

Here’s the switches before and after sanding. I carefully spun them against a bench sander to remove the corners.

Here they are all painted and ready to install

There is a catch to painting them. You basically have to do it twice because once you flip the switch it exposes an area that the paint can’t reach on the first pass.

Next up I had to drill out the inner and outer dome for the switches, but the drill bit I had wasn’t quite big enough so I had to fill down the last bit to get a good fit.

I’ve not posted in a few days – Been feverishly working on R2 for C4. Hoping once I get back I’ll go through my photos and post some retro updates.

Unfortunately a few days ago I could have almost cried. I’ve spent months nurturing my dome and just as I was setting him down on the table after applying the Silicon to bond the two layers together he slipped out of my hands and hit the floor hard. This was the result 🙁

I almost gave up at this point, but I’ve muddled through the best I can and finished the dome and I will have an fully operational R2 at C4.

I can see me buying another one to do it all over again.

Lots more dome work in the last few days. Focus was to get all the internal stuff mounted – Holo Projectors, PSI and Front and Rear Logics.

I wasn’t very happy with my previous attempt of drilling holes through the inner dome and using counter sunk screws. By the time I’d counter sunk them enough the holes had gotten so big that the screws could pull through easily. Attempts to JB Weld the screws on the inside of the dome didn’t work so well either.

Here’s what my old mounting system looked like

It really looked like I may have to do what most other builders do and that’s goop the crap out of each part – Locking them in place for good.

But a quick visit to see my friend Richard resulted in a cool solution that I’d not seen done before. He came up with the idea of having a single mounting plate for each side of the dome which would hold everything and be easily removed if need be.

After a bunch of prototypes this is what we came up with. Just 3 screws holds everything in place. I can’t believe how simple the design is.

The PSI’s are inserted into a cut down pipe fitting secured with a screw, the HP’s just press fit to the dome by the plate and the logics are held on using the bracket/box.

We still needed to secure the plate in place, and the only good way to do it was to bolt it to the inner dome – which hadn’t worked too well previously. We tried JB Welding the screws to the surface of the dome but they came off easy.

Richard remember the trick of pulling aluminum into a cone/dimple like on the side of a home made Luke Graflex lightsaber – the tool used to be called a “Shoulder Puller” back in the day when people still made their own Graflex’s. Here’s what Richard used.

Simply drill a hole in the dome and insert the screw and tighten down on the collar which is on the inside of the dome. I think we started it off with a thinner screw then switched to the final size. I should name it the Dome Hole Puller.

In the end we used 1/2″ 10-32 screws which are much bigger than what was originally holding things in place a few months ago. No chance of things pulling through now.

Plate is somewhat flexible, so if someone pushes on things then it’ll give a bit rather than failing or things popping out of place.

I also decided to switch back to the old style logic surrounds. Not having the front outer plate on the new version was bugging me. I’m hoping to get the panels cleanup and painted tomorrow.

A couple of screw ups/lessons learned along the way. JB Weld didn’t want to hold the screws in place, even when going through the dome. So in the end I notched the underside of each screw a bunch of times and scored the hole with a dremel. As of right now things seem very solid and once the outer dome goes on there’s no way for things to move…hopefully.

A big notch was also cut in the dome ring by mistake while making room for a PSI. I’ve tried to fill it with a piece of aluminum and JB Weld and I’m hoping it will not be noticeable once the outer dome goes on.

The marks in the top band will be covered by the blue paint, but behind that is the patch which is visible. It wouldn’t be so bad if the dome touched the dome ring at the bottom, but there needs to be a slight gap.

I also had one hole from my previous attempt of mounting things that needed fixing. It fell on a panel seam line and I ended up plugging it with a aluminum rivet I filed down. You can hardly notice it with the outer dome on.

And tonight I finally got all the pie panels cut out, so I’m very close to being able to glue the two domes together.

It’s been a long evening and I spent most of it working on my Front Logic Display. It’s something I’ve been putting off for months hoping it would either go away or a work around to my problem would magically come to me.

The problem is that my aluminum surround from Doug Olson does not fit the cool front logic electronics without going through some major surgery.

The surround is a one piece design and looks great, but it’s very precise in the way it fits. The more traditional two piece surrounds people had been using are more forgiving and you could angle the boards away from each other to get it things to fit.

So as I said, I’ve been avoiding taking my soldering iron to the delicate circuit boards for months, but it had to be done and tonight was the night. Without it I’m totally blocked on the dome. Luckily I only needed to separate one of the pair of boards.

I think if someone was still offering the front logic electronics then I wouldn’t have been so fearful of screwing things up, but I didn’t have the luxury of being able to fall back and simply buy a new set.

It took me hours to get it done and the good news is they still worked at the end. I’m not going to go into the hack job I did in fear that somebody may copy my method. But the tools used were soldering iron with a nice new tip, a de-soldering pump, one of those helping hand gripping thing and finally a small pair of pliers/wire-cutter.

Tomorrow I’ll get the surround fitted to the dome.

So, without further ado I present my new improved logics –

Click here for photos on Doug’s website of the logic board the surround.

Another big step forward tonight and I’m not really sure where to start or if I can remember everything I did.

Maybe it’s easier to say where I’m at – I now have a lot of the electronics installed in the body, from fuse block and power distribution to the speed controllers and sound system. I can now control the dome and periscope from my Vex transmitter and trigger sounds with my RF remote.

There was a lot of stripping of wires, routing them, testing, and moving stuff around to make it all fit on the back panels. I also installed a second Vex in the dome to control the periscope, and eventually it’ll control some servos on the pie-panels.

From the photo it really doesn’t look like a lot but there’s a lot packed in there

I’m now realizing that it may not be a good idea to run R2 around naked / skin-less at C4. I could easily see someone pulling on the wires and frying something.

Here’s a quick demo video as well.

You’ll notice in the video that the periscope doesn’t run up and down smoothly and it chatters. Some of it is due to the speed the motors run at which I can limit in the Vex, but there’s also a lot of play in the lift mech screw system itself which I need to fix somehow.

I still need to wire in the RoboteQ speed controller which will drive the feet, but you can see it at the bottom of the frame.

One problem I noticed again is that the Vex in the dome has problems receiving a signal. This maybe a big show stopper unless I can route the antenna somewhere else.

The 12 channel RF Remote also has a “problem”. The new models have a little speaker/siren on them which makes this awful bleep every time you press a button on the remote – I’m sure for most applications this is fine, but for R2 it’s got to go. You’d think it could be disabled easily, but I can’t find anything. I’m going to have to fix it before it drives me nuts.

I must confess I screwed up the Dome Drive install early today. I’d rushed to get it done and in the classic DIY trap I had some extra parts left over. I had thought they may have been for the A&A frame install, and my setup was working RIGHT…. but it had a problem. The bracket was sagging and the extra parts were need to give it some extra rigidity. A quick email from Daren with some photos put me me straight.

Another mistake I made, I had pushed down the wheel too far onto the motor. It needs to sit up like this

However, once done I realized I had another problem. The power connectors to the motor were getting in the way of my new electronics panel. I can here you say “No problem, just flip the motor!”

Well I did try flipping the motor around, but the drive shaft is not centered, so now my wheel is further away and the spring which holds it against the dome bearing is too short.

It’s late and I’m going to sleep on it, but at least my new door closes!

I received my dome drive system today and I’ve already gotten it installed and working. I still need to wire it up to a speed controller, but that should be relatively easy and I’ll work on it tonight when I make the frames electronics mounting panel.