Sulla's Droid Building Blog

Not Dead

2011-06-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

I post these every few months don't I?

Well, R2 is not dead. I see him everyday in his sad little pile of parts in my man-cave. One day soon here I will get back to him. Right now I am consumed with family, Steampunk costuming deadlines for myself, my wife, and two of my friends, and an all-consuming obsession with replicating a Star Trek Enterprise uniform. You may need to be a member of the forum, but you can see this project here on the fantastic 1701st Community Forum..

So sit tight, I will be blow the dust off my droid and get him put together!

Leg Test Fit

2010-12-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

I test fit the legs last night. They still need to be skinned and drilled for cables. After I get the legs skinned I will start skinning the body. The main ankles are almost done too and the center ankle is all cut out and ready to begin assembly.

Christmas for an R2 Builder

2010-12-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

So I got some more regular items as gifts this Christmas. Some slippers and books, things like that. But I also got some R2-centric gifts! Yay me! My family does understand me a little after all.

Here are my R2's wheels, bearings, and motor controllers.

Finally, Some Real Progress After a Dry Spell

2010-11-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

I got some shoulder and leg work done over the holiday. I got the shoulders pretty much done. They have been skinned in the .040" styrene with an outer layer of 1/16” thick aluminum held in place mostly by 3M VHB tape and a little glue at the ends where the seam is. You can just see the finished shoulders behind the legs in the lower pictures of the legs.

The legs are all assembled and drilled, but I need to fill in some areas and even some others out with a little filing and sanding before skinning. While I do that I have started assembling the main ankles (not pictured.)

One thing I have noticed is that the bolts that stick up into the leg where the shoulder hub will go seem way too long. I am wondering if they need to be cut down to accommodate the shoulder bolt. I need to pick up a set of resin shoulder hubs to confirm the lengths for cut-off.

Budget Red/Blue Blinker

2010-11-28T19:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a tip from Jamie Papinchak on astromech.com I picked up a couple of snowman Christmas decorations with a red/blue LED flasher built into it. I took a picture of the blinker removed from the decoration and made a short youtube video of it in action. It's not the best option for your droid, but for the budget builder, it seems like a fine alternative. Now to find a green/yellow snowman blinker...

Proof of Life - Shoulders

2010-11-24T05:12:00.000-08:00

I promised my droid building was not dead! Though I have nothing super amazing to report, I did get the mounting holes for my shoulders drilled, counter-sunk, and assembled last night. here's a quick cell phone shot of it. More to come.

Starting a new blog and re-setting my droid build.

2010-10-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

No I am not ending this R2-A6 build blog, I am starting another one in addition to this one.

My man-cave/hobby room has gotten out of hand. It's turned into a dumping ground for unwanted tools and junk collected for future projects and unfinished ones. I am clearing it out completely, re-organizing and resetting my work space. I am finally going to college (it's been 13 years since I was in High school) and will need an office to take the on-line courses as part of my Bio-mechanical Engineering Technologies degree at Purdue. I also want to be able to pursue my hobbies like building this droid and other things.

With all this in mind, I decided to take this opportunity to totally re-do the room now dubbed my 'Ready Room.' This is pretty exciting as I've been waiting to get our next house to trek-i-fi a room for myself, but now with 4 years of college ahead of me before we can even look at moving I decided the time was nigh.

I am starting a new blog about it here.

I will be building R2 again soon. His naked legs and bare bones mock me every time I go in there and it's time to take things in hand. So hand me that hyper-spanner over there and lets get to work!

Oh, and the vacuum former is still in construction. got the major steel and wood body work done. A few more welds and I'll move onto the platten, oven, and vacuum systems. More to come on that.

Stay tuned!

2010-07-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

I have not stopped building my droid - I am working hard this summer to build my vacuum forming machine and a bunch of Trek props to fund my hobbies.

I'll be back on it as the weather makes it harder to work in my un-heated garage, so stay tuned.

Styrene Legs Begun

2010-04-19T05:07:00.000-07:00

I have most of the 3mm (.125" for us yanks) styrene work done on the main legs. I need to attach the top plates after I test all the reinforcements and glue joins. Then I will finish them up with the 1mm parts.

Wheels! Cheap Wheels!

2010-04-07T05:30:00.001-07:00

Trust Dave Everette to come up with a great source for cheap wheels for a droid... and also a variety of wheel hub sizes (even customizable ones - provided you order the minimum.)

4-7/8" x 0.8" wheels (we're talking $6.00 to $6.80): http://banebots.com/c/WHB-WS-498
6mm hubs and shafts (to work with the YG-2738 motors from the styrene plans): http://banebots.com/c/WHB-HS-M6

Main Ankles in Pieces!

2010-04-05T18:31:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post. I got my .125" pieces of the main ankles laser cut. I re-drew Dave's plans and had them laser cut (just one set for me)

I am awaiting the main legs from the laser cutter too. Not all the pieces will be laser cut, but the important ones that need to be as square as possible are. Plus I still have to sand/file all the chamfers.

Shoulders

2010-03-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've all but got the shoulders done. The reason they are still open on the sides is that I am going to wrap them in aluminum. I am also going to drill out the holes when I get the legs done so I can do it all at once for a good fit. That's why I am leaving the templates on them.

Styrene Frame Completed

2010-03-20T10:07:00.001-07:00

I had the week off from work. So during the day while my wife wife was at work, and my little girl was in day care, I spent some quality me-time and got the frame built. There are a few alignment problems, but all-in-all I am very pleased with the way it turned out.

BTW, I used this non-toxic paint thinner to remove the easy tack spray adhesive residue left on the plastic after peeling away the cutting templates.

It seems to a have a little give when twisted, but I have been told that once the skins are attached it should be a formidable column of sturdiness.Here are some construction pix and a few round about shots of the completed frame. Next step, shoulder hubs, arm carriers, and some resin casting...

Some Styrene Frame Work

2010-03-15T17:25:00.000-07:00

I used my new home-made router table today. I got the round parts of the frame cut. The first image makes the edges look rough, but that's just the paper templates ragged at the edge, the rings/disks are smooth edged and perfect as seen in the second picture. I couldn't be happier. My thanks again to Dave Everett for making his styrene droid building plans available!

Small beginnings-styrene frame started

2010-03-01T05:37:00.000-08:00

Not a great big start, but I have been gathering a nice little pile of supplies. I finally had to do something with my big roll of styrene before it permanently retained its curved shape. So I unrolled it last night and got to work cutting out the larger sections of the frame for a start. The multi-color printed pages are the rest of the frame cutting templates. I overlaid a colored 1” cutting grid in adobe illustrator to make matching up the 8.5” x 11” printed pages easier.

Gearing up for a change in direction

2010-01-27T17:59:00.000-08:00

I sold all my droid stuff. ALL OF IT. I am starting over for reasons best left off the blog.

This time around I am going with Dave Everett's styrene droid plans. Tonight I built my router table. It took me maybe 10 minutes. I had this pice of smooth surfaced MDF laying around, so I put it on some saw horses, drilled the center bit hole and the three screw holes (counter sunk) and bought some longer mounting screws to put my Craftsman router under there. I picked up an extra 1/8" router bit, a digital caliper, a nice snap-of blade knife. These tools will be used to cut out all the styrene parts

The styrene for the frame and skins will be here soon, and I am placing an order with Staples to print the cutting templates out. I also have some Weld-on #3 and a needle applicator bottle on it's way to me.

Besides those things, all I really need to begin is some low-tack spray adhesive (or something equivalent) to attach the templates to the styrene sheet for cutting.

I meant it

2010-01-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

Really, it's not dead, more news to come soon...

The Project is not Dead!

2009-10-23T11:01:00.001-07:00

I am still building R2. My free time has been reduced to 1.5 hours a night after the baby has gone to bed, and that time I usually spend doing chores or resting! Weekends are better.

More will come, do not despair.

Best wife ever

2009-09-05T11:48:00.001-07:00

This weekend is both my 31st birthday and my 6th anniversary. We spent yesterday just doing stuff together ending the day with a trip to a small town west of us called Mooresville, with my sister and her husband. He has family there. There is an apple orchard we wanted to visit. Anyways, we decided to eat down there and while waiting for our reservations we wandered around the small old fashioned main street.

We went into a game store and visited with some friends of my bro-in-law's. While I was in the back room talking with some of the gamers my wife was poking around the shelves of the shop up front and found this little gem and bought it for me. as a birthday/anniversary gift. God I love her so much!

The little 1977 model has all it's original pieces, assembly instuctions and the original box. The decals will have to be recreated, which shouldn't be too hard. I am actually impressed with the detail, despite the innacuracies. It's designed with a rotating dome, extendable computer arm in the long right side panel, 2-3-2 leg configuration with rollers in the feet and a removable rear panel with some made up inner machinery exposed when opened.

Frame Uprights

2009-09-05T11:36:00.001-07:00

I got the uprigts on the frame cut out and attached. They are made from two layers of 3/4" birch plywood screwed and glued. I had to notch one of them to fit an octagon port. The top ring is also drilled and ready for attachment, but before I do any assembly I have some work to do with the rockler bearing, center leg mounting, shoulder prepping, and bracketing of the uprights with some steel L brackets.

Paint, Skins, Body, Frame, oh my!

2009-08-29T20:46:00.001-07:00

Ok, finally some updates, but fiirst here's what I am not going to tell you about yet. Not yet pictured but needing to be posted about. In other words, these are upcoming: R2’s voice sound system, leg skinning.

I found my color. Hard to show in a picture, but the cup on the right has a base coat of very fine primer, an even coat of metallic gold, and topped with a Testors green auto model paint.

What I do have to show. Got some frame and body work done. I got the top and bottom frame disks done. Here’s the top:

To get the A&A skins to fit (they were a little big) I had to figure out the sizing and trim the sides. My thanks to David L. for the detailed instructions to do this properly. I had to trim the edges then trace the untrimmed shoulder circle onto the trimmed skin to get the right size and vice versa.

Once I got the skins to fit, I traced out all the things I need to cut out of the PVC body tube. Then I used my drill and saw to cut out all the bits from the base of the tube. I left these cut outs pretty rough for now. Then I marked up the bottom frame ring where the power couplers and octagon ports will interfere with it. These areas will have to be routed to make room for the resin parts I have to go in there.

Did Some Inner Dome Work

2009-06-22T18:18:00.001-07:00

First I drilled out a bunch of holes, close together, around the perimeter of the cut-outs.

Then I finished the cuts with some small dremmel cutting bits.

Then I smoothed them out with various sizes of dremmel sanding wheels. I followed this up with filing and sanding.

Here’s the panels and logic frames fit so far.

Laser Cut Dome Work

2009-06-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

Here’s the outer laser cut C&D Dome. It is a beautiful thing to see in person. The light weight and lower cost of styrene is great for ‘budget droid building,’ but add laser cut panels and you have one of the best domes available for the price.

One thing I noticed right off is that the club-spec resin logic surrounds don’t quite fit. A little work will take care of that.

After numbering all the panels for putting them back together, I began sanding the laser cut plastic ‘slag’ from all the cuts. I did this with the panels in place for getting a tight fit of outer to inner domes before removing them.

After sanding off most of the slag, I taped some of the weaker panels in place for fitting the inner and outer domes together for a final tracing.

I traced all the logics and holo eyes for cutting on the inner dome. I also traced a few panels and the lower edge of the outer dome onto the inner dome to help in re-fitting later.

Until now, I have left off the ring around the bottom of the dome (not the dome ring that you mount to a rockler, the blue strip that runs along under R2D2’s panels, or green one on my R2A6.) Now I put it in place and trace its location on the inner dome. This will tell me where to trim the inner dome along the bottom and to insure that I have an even fit between the ring and the rest of the outer dome. Note also that I have previously trimmed a lot of the extra off the inner dome, leaving only a ¼” to ½” of extra at the bottom.

I also left the laser cut tabs between the upper part and the ring to ensure the correct distance between the two.

Once that’s done, I cut the extra material off the bottom of the inner dome using a pair of strong scissors.

One I am satisfied with the fit of everything I cut the panels out with a hobby say and an X-Acto knife. This leaves the little laser cutting ‘tabs’ which I clean up with files and sandpaper.

Finally , I have cleaned up the laser cutting ‘tabs’ on the panels too. Some of the panels have an uneven laser cut edge which needed to be evened out with files and sandpaper.

More Leg Skinning

2009-04-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

I am off work today. Even though I am sick, I still decided to hit the workshop and breathe some dangerous fumes. Just what a medicated sinus infection needs, eh?

Got the sides of the middle leg all cemented up and clamped in place. I thought about cutting a strip that would wrap all the way around from the top of one side to the top of the other bending over the foot pivot point, but I decided to do those parts separately for simplicities sake. This will create a tiny bit of re-work at the end sealing and sanding the seams, but that’s acceptable to me.

On to the bigger legs while the middle one sets. I decided to start with the front of one of the side legs. I went ahead and bonded up the peg holes. I didn’t really need to, but in the interest of completeness, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I cut the plastic out (trimming a small rough hole for the shoulder hub-it will be finished up after everything is glued tight,) and test fit it before gluing.

Then I painted on the water based contact cement using a gray-foam brush. You can see the difference between the brushed wood surface and the bare wood surface (after curing for about 30 minutes per instructions on the can.)

Then I clamped it up and so it shall sit in the workshop over night. You can see in the up-close shot that I trimmed the styrene so that there was some overhanging the edge of the leg. I will do this on all my plastic pieces. This way I can trim it up after it sets so I don’t have to be too perfect when cutting the pieces out and fitting them to the legs; a nice time saver producing only a little waste.

Skinning a leg or two

2009-04-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

I got thee 3 legs assembled and sanded. Even got the outer legs routed with 1/8” groove. I also go the smooth handy-board cut, beveled, and glued in place.

Now that all that was finished up, I decided to take a page out of Dan’s book and skin my legs to cut down on dozens and dozens of hours of bondoing and sanding. I decided to start with the third leg to get a little practice. It is smaller, less complicated and the top side will likely be trimmed down so some errors will be able to be dealt with easily.

I am using water based contact cement. After applying the glue I sandwiched the whole thing between some scrap wood and clamped it tight. In a day, I’ll take the clamps off and see what I have.

I used a piece of .020” styrene I have for vacuum forming. Here is laid out.

I cut traced the center lag on the plastic with pencil and used regular scissors to cut it out. I left a bit of material around the edges. That way, I can ensure complete coverage; I’ll trim it later.

I would definately reccomend not using the roller. It made a lot of air bubbles and driping on the sides. I ended up using one of those gray sponge brushes. I will use the sponge brushes for the rest of the leg skinning.

Lastly I clamped it up. I’ll pull it apart tomorrow to see how well it worked.

Legs are done, motors have arived.

2009-04-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

Got the main legs glued together. Also recieved the motors and belts I just bought. They are 135 watt scooter motors. I have previously bought a single slightly used wheel/axle assembly on ebay. I need to get one more wheel.

Leg Work

2009-04-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

I got a little work done on one of R2's legs today. Admittedly, it's only cleaning up and gluing one of them, but it feels good to actually get something done. I am very close being able to get going on the whole droid. Except ffor feet and detail pieces, all I basically need is a plethora of fasteners and some wood for the frame.

Here's the first leg glued together. All I can say if you do one of these yourself, is clamps, clamps, clamps. I used almost all the clamps I had on this leg. I really wan to get the other legs glued up too, but I have to wait to re-use my clamps.

Some paint sampling

2009-04-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to some paint testing; thanks to better weather. I used Tamiya fine light gray primer, topped with Rust-oleum 7718 Chrome, with a final coat of Dupli-Color Metalcast MC203 Green Anodized. I will clear coat it later to see what happens.

There was a bit of marblizingtoo the textur of the pice, I think I over coated the silver on one of the passes.

Here's one shot in the sun. More pix can be found in this album:

http://s699.photobucket.com/albums/vv352/boozee2/paint%20samples/

Motor Bummer

2009-04-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

Well I bought 2 E100 Razor scooter motors from an on-line store. They only sent me one and refunded my for the second sighting 'out of stock for months.' This really bummed me out. I now have to go and buy another 2 motors so they match up. As David L. put it on astromech.net, "I have found that there are several manufacturers for those and you may have some problems getting your droid to run straight using two different motors as one may have a different RPM depending on who made it. All it takes to change the RPM is to add more or reduce the number of windings for the motor. There is no guarantee that the different manufacturers will all use the exact same number of windings."

Legs, legs, legs...

2009-04-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

I got the CNC cut layered plywod legs today. These things are fantastic. There's a hollow center for running the wires to the foot motors in the two longer legs. It also comes with CNC cut ankle bracelets and shoulder rounds.

The one on the left is all assembled (loosly). The center leg is the short leg that pokes down diretly benieth the body. The leg on the left shows the parts in a jumbled heap.

Got Some Big Droid Stuff!

2009-03-18T17:34:00.001-07:00

I got R2’s PVC body tube tonight. I have had the styrene skins for a while and was waiting for the tube and shoulders to arrive before I posted it. I got home today and there was David L.’s box with the body tube, shoulders, and a few other goodies for later posts.

Yay! I couldn’t resist, I taped the skin and shoulders on and put the dome in place. Granted, everything is a bit loose, and the head looks short because I have not gotten the dome ring ‘droid-ready,’ but I still had to see it like this.

I’ll take better pix as soon as I have some daylight to take them in.

Done with pie, now onto the top circle. And a motor.

2009-03-07T07:04:00.000-08:00

I finished cutting out the pie panels last night. Here's a shot of the dome with them out.

I need to get that top circle done.

And I also got my wood ring which will add support to the inside of the inner dome and make attaching it to the dome ring much easier. The wood ring is an 18" quilting ring I picked up at Michael's (a large hobby store.) I sanded off the wood blocks that had a through bolt on it and will have to shorten it a bit before I set it in place.

I also got my pittman 12V motor which I plan to use to rotate the rockler bearing that will turn the dome. More on that later.

Slicing R2 Pie

2009-03-01T16:05:00.000-08:00

So I finally hunkered down and plunged my little hobby saw into the pie panels atop R2's dome today. It was a little nerve wracking trying to cut a curved line in a spherical surface with a strait serated blade. But I did it, and here it is.

Lower dome panels done, now for some pie... panels

2009-02-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

I got the lower dome panels cut out. They need some trimming and squaring, but the hardest part seems to be done on them. I got the vertical lines cut on the pie panels.

Dome progress, skirt, and some electronics

2009-02-18T11:38:00.001-08:00

I got some cutting done on my dome lately.

I also started gathering my RC supplies to make this little droid roll. I got a VEX 6 channel transmitter and a multiplex receiver. Crystals are on the way. As are three RC robot building books…

Here is almost everything I need for the dome electronics. I still need a rechargeable 12V battery, a 12V power splitter, the rear logic LED plate (in the mail to me now), some resistors for the Rear Logic Display, and a lot of assembly.

I also got R2’s ‘skirt’ – which is the very bottom piece that goes on the bottom side of his tubular body. I need to trim it up, but even now I am impressed with it’s lines.

Research and Drawing

2009-02-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

Well, no real new build pictures, but I have done a few things to advance my droid building without that actual building part.

I put together a series of drawings for laser cut styrene parts for the legs. That took me some days and I have yet to turn it in for a price quote.

I also have been toying with the idea of putting in a remote switch for the lights and perhaps a motor to spin the dome and maybe even some R2 sounds. With this in mind I just picked up the book, Robot Building for Beginners, by Dave Cook

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1893115445/sr=8-2/qid=1233936144/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1233936144&sr=8-2&seller=

Droid room?

2009-02-01T13:22:00.001-08:00

Well, I didn't get any real work done on the droid today, but I did reset my hobby office to accomodate droid building. And after I untangled those wires under the table, I set up my laptop and external hard drive and made a graphic for the title of this blog. I need to revisit it with that text but for now it works well enough.

Work on the dome

2009-01-31T19:16:00.000-08:00

It took me three tries, but I finally got the right measurements on the pie panels on top of the dome. I used the same measurements on my C&D dome as are used on the 300mm dome. Once I figured that out I used the wrap-around template and a homemade tracing jig to finish up the side panels.

I made the horizontal lines with a couple of jigs made from some scrap styrene. The vertical lines on the pie panels were made with a star pattern paper template. The vertical lines on the side panels were made from the wrap-around paper templates and drawn with a straight edge.

I also got my Rockler bearing and pre-aged bronze braded hose for when I get around to making R2’s feet.

Working on the Dome

2009-01-25T17:07:00.000-08:00

I have been doing the preliminary trimming on the dome and ring. I started by marking the line on the inside of the pieces with a marker. This way it was easier to see while I cut.

I used regular metal scissors to cut the domes and the corners ooff the ring. I still need to trim the ring up. Once they are all cut, I'll take some sandpaper to the bottoms to even them out. At least that is the plan.

Domes and Bearings

2009-01-23T05:27:00.000-08:00

I got my domes and ring last night:

I just picked up my rockler bearing.
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=2272
This will allow the dome to be able to spin. I will not be motorizing this droid, though I am leaving the option open for future up-grades.

Dome Upgrade

2009-01-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

Great news for me! I just made some prop sales and was able to pick up a set of C & D 300mm domes and ring. Now that I am upgrading to a more correct dome than the old Aspects I need to pick up a Rockler bearing too. All in good time.

C & D domes (for the uninitiated) are styrene vac formed domes of the correct size and dimensions. The styrene ring is the lower part of the dome. In all-metal versions of the dome the ring would be part of the spun metal dome. The extra depth probably makes a good vac-form pull too difficult.

The nice thing about these styrene domes and ring is four fold. 1. I can paint them separately 2. The ring has the Rockler bearing mounting holes pre-marked, 3. Since the ring is a solid disk, there is no need to build inner supports for the dome, though I imagine I’ll need to cut some of it out in order to have access to the electronics I will be mounting in the dome, and 4. A two layer dome of the correct size is just so much better than retrofitting the Aspects dome to a correctly sized R2 body, which was what I was planning on doing.

Pictures will be forthcoming as they have not arrived yet.

Resin and LEDs

2009-01-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

I got my first shipment of resin parts. Mostly dome stuff, but I did go ahead and get my vent surrounds. I figure I can scratcch build the vents while it's too cold to work in the garag.

I also got almost all my electronics. I still need my resistors and a 12v battery. I am playing with the idea of putting an RF remote switch in the dome to turn the lights on and off. More on that when I figure it out.

I pulled the plug. Don't worry, it's a good thing.

2009-01-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

I got the plug out of the mold. It really needs some TLC. Putty and sand… Oh well, lessons learned, it’ll still work. I used hydra cal. I got it at Hobbytown USA. I bet it can be gotten cheaper somewhere else.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/boozee/DSC05051.jpg

I also got my electronics today. I got the pic flasher (left) and the blue/red flasher (right). I am still waiting on the LEDs and resistors I am going to use.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y297/boozee/DSC05054.jpg

OK, tried something new

2009-01-11T14:08:00.001-08:00

OK, not vacuum formed, but I did use the frame and the oven. I need to make a plug to form panels for my R2 dome. My oven is not big enough to form the whole dome, so I need to make a plug of part of it.

Now, I may be going about this backwards, but I decided to form the part of the dome I wanted by just pressing the hot plastic over it. Then I can use this to make a plaster plug by pouring plaster into it. You can probably see the little bumps and imperfections in the plastic caused by the tape on the dome. This will have to be fixed on the plug using putty and sand paper.

Here's shots of what I did. The dome is mounted on a scrap wood base to keep it steady while I formed the plastic over it.

Wood in dome, plug to coome

2009-01-11T10:17:00.001-08:00

I got the cookie cut and in place. This will keep the acrylic dome rigid while I do some plug making.

R2 Building begins. At least blogging it begins.

2009-01-10T17:02:00.000-08:00

I guess I should start with the perfect cliché: A long, long time ago... in 2002. I bought an aspects dome and realized I was way in over my head.

Nearly 7 years later, I think I am ready. I am starting with that same aspects dome I bought back then. I am currently waiting on dome electronics, the PVC body tube I wanted, styrene skins, and the first round of resin parts to arrive.

In the mean time, I picked up a good router and also built my first vacuum forming box. Instead of painting the blue panels on the dome, I am trying out an idea of forming thin styrene over the dome and cutting out the panels from that I'll then paint them and attach them. That is, if my idea pans out.