Wally's Astromech Build AKA "Marvinrobot's Robot"

[TB 0101]

Wally, it's turned out fantastic! Great work!

[seven skulls]

When's the first troop?
Nice work on the weathering too.

[the dark knight]

come on wally, the 70th needs to see it!

good job!

[Marvinrobot]

Thanks...Looks like Mar might be the first opportunity to take him out.

[InvaderSith]

Gotta get him a wig so he looks like R2-Cleveland.

"Beep boop beep. I said there ain't a pack of menthols on this planet!"

[Fleetfang]

UTINNI!
[smilie=yahoovk3.gif]
Congratulations Wally! Good luck with the last 10%... can't wait to see him in action!

[Marvinrobot]

Front Logics done...I set it up with a second 12V battery just sitting on the top ring to get the pictures. I'm thinking on doing a board that attaches to the rockler with a smaller 12v battery attached to it so it doesn't impede the dome rotation.

[R2-S5]

he's looking good Wally!

Darryl

[Marvinrobot]

Last night I got down to the nitty gritty of putting power in the dome. I know I wanted to do some sort of board to mount the battery but then I was lost as to how to do power distribution...well a trip to Auto Zone solved that:



This little baby was $24. It distributes 12v to 4 channels and uses a pressure switch to turn them on and off. Here are some pics:




Here is a pic of the whole board mounted to the Rockler:


And finally a movie of R2 moving about with the new setup. The cool thing for me is I can now run a microprocessor in the dome without worrying about how to power it.

[the dark knight]

that is to cool man! good job!

[seven skulls]

Just wonderin'
How much does R2 weigh?
Are the sound effects on a loop or can you control them with your RC gear?
It would be so cool to see R2's first troop. Where do you intend to do it and or what type of event will you want to bring him out at?

[TK3446]

It's freakin awesome! Great job!

[Marvinrobot]

Just wonderin'
How much does R2 weigh?
Are the sound effects on a loop or can you control them with your RC gear?
It would be so cool to see R2's first troop. Where do you intend to do it and or what type of event will you want to bring him out at?

He's fairly light at around 150lbs. The sounds you heard is the long loop I have on the sound board...it's a modified Thinkgeek personal soundtrack shirt system rigged to a 12ch RF remote. The system can do 20 trakcs but I only have 12ch. The sounds are on an SD card so I can change them up any time I want. I use a sound lab to create the different loops. Bottomline he can do up to 12 different phrases. As for first troop I may be able to make it up to the C2E2...only problem is I'm in the process of learning a new job while doing my current job and all indications are I will be doing 2 jobs for the next five months...

[Marvinrobot]

[QUOTE=marvinrobot;35172]So I'm finally at a point where I went looking around for hoses. I know that the bronze hose is the ideal but I also saw folks use the brass hoses made by Watts. I was going to weather them using the same method as used for the bronze but I couldn't find anyone saying they had done that before. So I ended up doing the following: I filled a small sterilite tub with household ammonia and threw some pennies in there. I then soaked the hoses in the mixture for about an hour covered. When I went back a saw that a part of the hose that was sticking out of the ammonia solution was almost black...I realized that the fumes was the real trick so I pulled the hoses out of the solution and laid them across the small tub and then placed a bigger 20 gallon tub on top. An hour later here is the result:


Obviously this is still too light so I decided to do an black acrylic wash over them and now I'm fairly satisified. Here is a comparison pic.



All of them :


I'll check on them tomorrow to see if they have changed.

Oh yeah here is my scratch built booster cover:
[/QUOTE]

[Marvinrobot]

More updates. I've been scratch building and I'm down to only 2 parts to finish. Here is a picture on my scratch built shoulder hydarulic:




I also used this stuff:



To make this:


Which goes here (not yet painted silver):


And here he is with the booster covers I built and the leg cylinders:

[Arcturus1020]

Simply outstanding work! What kind of paint and color did you use for the blue? The video is awesome, and I love how the head can rotate a full 360 like that . . . very cool!

[Marvinrobot]

Simply outstanding work! What kind of paint and color did you use for the blue? The video is awesome, and I love how the head can rotate a full 360 like that . . . very cool!

The paint is a Krylon X-metals purple as a base coat, followed by Krylon Cobalt Blue as a top coat and then finished with a glossy clear coat. I appreciate the compliments. Yeah it's been a labor of love and next Sat is his first troop...hopefully he doesn't fall apart or decide to hump an ATM

[Marvinrobot]

Say hello to my little friend....



Woooohooo finished for now....

[Rebel Doughboy]

Its...so...beautitful! This is hands down one of the coolest threads I've ever read on the net. Nothing like this project, and the hard work definitly shows to have paid off. Congratulations!!!

[Marvinrobot]

I think it goes without saying domes get dirty. After the event this past weekend I found my once shiny dome covered with finger prints. I tried to wipe it down with water but the problem is aluminum finished styrene does not clean with water as a matter of fact it got worse. So I thought I would try to clean the dome by applying Rub and Buff (silver leaf) on top of the aluminum paint...I think it turned out nice:




I figure all I have to do now is carry Rub and Buff along with a soft cloth and I can keep the dome looking decent especially for longer events.