Friday, November 27, 2009

Top Plate and Shoulder Plates






The top plate has holes marked that you will need to drill for the dome bearing
and the motor mount in the rear of the droid.
Lay the top plate down with the scribed marks facing up and set the frame on
top then glue all the top verticals in place.
After this is done and dried, You can glue in the Shoulder Plates in the sides.
The shoulder plates are for the outer legs to attach.

Top Rear Verticals





We glued the top rear verticals in place and it's the same process as
the others.
Once these dry, We can glue the top ring into place.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Front Vent Area







This area was alittle bit more tricky than the others.
Dave E. say's to pay close attention to this area and make sure you get the alignment
very accurate or the frame will try and twist.
I'm pretty positive that we got it right, But I won't know until I move on
with the build.

3rd Ring & Front Door Vertical







In the pictures from bottom to top, You can see the blueprint on the 3rd ring
and where you will need to scribe and cut the ring.
The next picture shows the ring after the cuts have been made and this leaves
you with 3 usable parts. The ring we are using now is the large ring for the rear of the droid.
Here again you work your way around the ring making sure everything lines up.
We also glued 2 Door Verticals at the front part of the ring.
These add support for the 2 large doors on the droid and you can see it also
adds support for the next ring plate.

2nd Set of Verticals






Now we start gluing the next set of vertical plates on top of the 2nd ring.
There are 8 verticals and like the 1st set, Take your time and glue them
around the backside of the droid frame.
Make sure again to check them for square and flush the outer edge with the
2nd ring.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Baseplate Ankle Insets & 2nd Plate




On the bottom picture, You can see the Ankle Insets being glued into place.
This area provides a clearing for the outer legs to pass the body if your
building your droid to stand on 2 feet and then move to the 3 leg position.
This movement is known as the 2-3-2.

The next picture shows the 2nd ring being glued into position.
There's 10 spots that have to be glued and the way I did this one
is to lay the plate on top of the verticals and align the plate as
best as you can with the scribed marks facing up.
Glue 1 vertical then after it dries glue another vertical across
from the one you just glued. Make sure you pay close attention to all
the scribes as you work around the plate.
I left the Ankle Inserts as the last parts that get glued after the
other eight.
I also used the Weldon can as a weight to keep the verticals in place as I glued
them.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Baseplate Verticals








In the bottom picture it shows how you start gluing the 1st set of verticals to the bottom plate.
We bought some small angle brackets to help support the plate as the glue starts
to set, We're also using a small square to check the parts as we glue.

As you look at the pictures from bottom to top, You can see how the process gets
repeated 8 times for a total of 8 verticals.
We now have 2 Ankle Insets to glue to the bottom plate.
These are lined up with the straight edges on the bottom plate.
When you cut the bottom plate you will have 2 small parts left over and these
get glued to the Ankle Insets and they provide support for the skins.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Frame Cutting

We spent most of the day cutting out more frame parts.
I'm not going to post pictures of the parts being cut,
Because the blueprints do a very good job of showing how
to cut the parts.
I will be showing the parts cut with the blueprint still attached
to the part and how the construction is done.
So far, We have used 1 4x8 sheet of Styrene to build the frame.
1 Sheet of 3mm Styrene cost $32.00 and you will have some
leftovers for small parts.
More to come :o)

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Bottom plate

Once you bond your blueprint to the Styrene,
You can get ready for the routing.
If you notice, There are 3 small holes in the center of the circle.
These are marked on the blueprint and I used a 1/8 drill bit to mark
the location of each.
The outer 2 holes are for the center leg to mount and the center hole
is your pilot hole for the router pin.
Carefully run the router around the 20x20 inch Styrene plate and you will get your
rough cut using the R9 pin hole.
Then using the 9 pin hole, Run around the plate again and you will get a nice
smooth plate.

Now lightly scribe the lines marked on the blueprint.
These lines will be used as a mark for the vertical plates to be glued.
The solid lines on each side get cut completely off the plate and saved for
a future plate.

Now you can peel the blueprint off the plate and I lightly sand the sides
of the plate, Just to make it nice and clean.


Router Jig

This is the router jig I made to cut the circles.
It's made of 1/4 styrene and you can see in the pictures how I bolted
it to the router.
I also have marked holes in the plate for a pin to keep it in place while
we slide it around on top of the 3mm Styrene.
I made the 1st cut with the R9 hole which is a ruff cut and then
I use the 9 hole for the finish cut.
This gives me a smooth cut all around the 3mm circle.