Oh yeah, about the feet...

Well, apparently I never made a post about being close to finishing my JAG feet.

It's done.

Seriously though, I've spent almost as much time upgrading the feet as I did building the whole droid the first time around.
Luckily I'm usually pretty good about grabbing my camera and snapping pics along the way.

Here they are.
Had to thicken up the center ankle a little bit:


Drilling the KHF holes with the step bit:


Holes for the power wires to pass through:


Center Foot detail strips applied:


Outer feet foot strips:


The foot strips are homemade, from a piece of 1"x1/8"x36" aluminum stock from Lowe's. Cut to length with the dremel, ends angled on the table sander, and holes drilled with the drill press and the step bit.

A couple of painted and detailed feet shots:



Center Foot mounted:


Center foot completely assembled:


Outer feet mounted:


Outer feet completely assembled:


You can see that the foot channels aren't tight on the ankles, mainly because when the bolts are tightened, the metal doesn't squeeze together like the plastic ones did...
To remedy that, I brought in some bricks from the backyard and used them under the front and back of each foot to level them out so I could add a locking screw through the foot and ankle next to the mounting bolts.
Thing is, I only brought in 2 bricks, and did each foot separately. And the bricks were 3/4" taller than the finished foot, meaning that the whole angle I secured the feet at was wrong. The feet sloped towards the ground in the back.
Luckily there was just enough wiggle for me to level out the feet and put some creatively made spacers in place to hold the foot level:

In that shot you can see both the "spacers" and the locking screws. The good thing about those spacers is, other than the small drops of superglue and the 4 inches of tape, they only cost 13 cents :D

That should just about cover it, although it's in much less detail than I'd normally go into, mainly because it's 8 months worth of work crammed into one post.

All that's left to finish before DragonCon now is putting on the battery boxes and the hoses, which are ready to go. Silly thing is, it'll take 3 minutes to do the work, and an hour to document it...

Re-Kridering the dome panels

Well, like the title says, here's my post about repainting the dome panels.

Two Sundays ago I looked outside, and saw that it was sunny and clear, which is something of a rarity this time of year, since most afternoons we get those big afternoon thunderstorms down here on the Gulf Coast.  I checked my weather channel app, and it said the temp was 92 degrees, with 76% humidity, but I went ahead and painted anyway, figuring "who knows when my next chance will be".

I had put a couple more coats of primer on the pieces on Friday afternoon and sanded them on Saturday, so everything was ready, with the exception of my paints.  I had everything I needed except for enough of the DupliColor MetalCast Blue, so I made a quick trip to the AutoZone to remedy that.  When I arrived, at first I was worried, because they had all the usual colors except blue, and they appeared to have added a very light teal color judging by the caps on the cans.  After picking up the teal, I realized that the cap had faded and it was indeed the blue I was looking for.

I headed back home and began the 2 hour process of painting the parts, using the timer on my iPhone to remind me when the 15 minutes between each coat was up.



Painting went well through the metallic blue coats, easy as could be.  The only problem came when I started to apply the Duplicolor.  Of course I had some of that left in the can from last time, so I was going to use it first.  Naturally, shortly after I started the first coat of clear blue, the can starting "spitting" and messed up a couple of the panels.  I immediately tried to blot up the spots with a corner of paper towel, but that really didn't work, so I grabbed the new can and continued painting.  The new can of course had no issues, and I was able to finish the 2 coats of clear blue without further problems.  When it came to the clear coat, instead of the usual 2 coats, I applied 4 coats, hoping that the weight of the paint would somehow settle the spots down, but that really didn't work.


You can see the "spits" in this photo:

I went ahead and brought the pieces inside and let them cure for what initally started out to be 3 days, and turned out to be 2 weeks, just due to procrastination,I guess.

Anyway, today I reglued them to the dome using my good old PolySeamSeal silicone.  I also used much less silicone this time than I did last time, just because you never know...



Here in just the last 5 minutes I've gone back and added some small pieces of painters tape to hold the pieces in place. Thanks to our old friend gravity, they were sliding down to the bottom of the openings.
The color is a pretty darn good match, although the old paint seems to be a little darker, possibly just due to age. Anyway, repairs done :)

De-Kridering dome panels :/

***I apoligize for the crappy formatting...it's Blogger's fault, not mine***
So, about a month ago I started doing my "DragonCon checkups" on R2. Some of you may recall the "Cleveland R2" wig I made for DCon last year. Leaving the wig on R2's dome for an extended period of time caused an ugly problem. There's apparently some sort of chemical that leaches out of the marine vinyl that I used as a base for the wig. It caused the clear enamel Rustoleum that is the top coat (or 3 top coats) to become thick and gummy.

Here's a shot:


You can see it's kind of ugly. The panels were originally attached with silicone. I decided the safest way to remove the panels without major damage was to use one of the flexible thin steel rulers.



I think it was $2 at the good ol' Harbor Freight. After taping the dome to try to avoid extra damage, I pried up the bottom corner of the panel just enough to slip the ruler underneath. I then hammered the ruler through the silicone until the panel popped off.



The panels were slightly warped from prying up the corners, but that was nothing that some tapping on the back of the panels while held in my hand couldn't fix. Next, I had to old silicone to deal with. I basically just "worried" it off with my thumbnail while watching TV to make the time pass. Here's a shot of what I had to work with:

 

Next up, I posted on FB asking if any other builders had any experience removing the paint, but got no replies. Must have been a bad time of day to post. Anyway, I checked on Astromech.net, and only found one post about removing krider paint in the last 3 years. It suggested "acetone and a clean soft cloth". I gave that a shot, but the cloth didn't even really turn blue with "vigorous rubbing". That meant I wasn't even getting through the clearcoat, which granted, is probably 4 coats thick. My next plan was more daring. I stopped by the Neighborhood WalMart and picked up a $5 2-quart aluminum saucepan. Once I got home, I checked the kitchen cabinets to find I had an old saucepan already. Can you say "upgrade"?  Anyway, as a test I poured about a half an inch of acetone into the pan, then put the top middle "donut" shaped panel in to soak. After a couple of minutes, I found I was able to just rub the paint off of the piece. The strange thing was the Duplicolor Blue and it's reaction to the acetone. It really didn't dissolve like the clear and the metallic blue did. It remained stringy and gummy the whole time. I added about another 2 inches of acetone to the pot, and proceeded to clean the remaining pieces. As soon as I started working on the first piece, the acetone turned the prettiest metallic blue color you've ever seen. When a new piece was added it would begin swirling around in the pan all by itself.



Anyway, after each piece had been cleaned, I rinsed that piece in cold water and set it aside. Once all the pieces had been cleaned, I then disposed of the old acetone and poured an inch of fresh acetone into the pan. I then gave each piece another bath, to remove anything the previous bath didn't get, then another bath, this time in warm water with dishwashing soap (Would've been Dawn, but the store was out last time I bought dish soap, so it was actually Gain) and a light scrub with a scrubbing sponge.

I think the oddest things of all are that the acetone didn't remove what was left of the teflon in the old pan, and that the acetone ALSO didn't remove the primer from the panels. I believe if I'd had something to scrub the panels with in the 2nd acetone bath, it might have come off.



The spots where the primer did come off were places where the panels had been scratched or chipped, and so the acetone was able to get into the primer better. Or at least that's the theory i'm gonna go with. Next step will be to let the panels sit overnight and completely dry. I toweled them dry, but I'm being lazy at this point. Tomorrow I'll sand them lightly then apply another coat of primer, which will cure tomorrow night. MAYBE it won't rain on Saturday, and I'll get to repaint...