Cutting the Dome

Today I did some of the final cutting on my dome. Its been a while since I started the task. You can see me cutting my HP and PSI holes in a previous post. Cutting panels has been a completely different task. The previous work was done with Chris James hole cutter but for the panels I used my dremel tool.

Being nervous about cutting the curves of the pie panels and taking too much material off by accident, I hated the thought of attacking the job with a thick dremel in hand. I had also added a personal requirement that the scrap cut out be in one usable piece that I could attach to the bottom of the opening panels. So I tackled the problem in 2 ways.

First, I put the etching cable attachment on the tool but with the rotary blade. The cable slows things down a bit but that was ok because I did not want to witness the firepower of this fully operational tool.













After tracing my panels on to the dome and masking off the areas with some blue tape for a clearer guide line, I etched the lines on the dome at an extremely slow speed. Then I took another pass at slightly higher speed to form a groove.

Once I had the groove at a comfortable depth I turned the tool up near high and carved about a 1.5mm deep line that could be followed easily with a hack saw. After that I kept the dremel in one place long enough to create a starter hole for the other saw.

You can see the final dremel cuts in the pic below. I know my dome has several scratches and nicks that have come with constantly taking the outer dome on and off, but most of that wont matter once I clean it up with some sand paper.













With the lines nicely etched and the starter holes in place, cutting the panels out is super easy and clean. There is very little filing or sanding to do. I was confident enough with the ease of this last step that I even let my little apprentice to take a hand at it. Since she is interested in robotics and all things Star Wars she is very excited about this droid building process and is learning a great deal by helping out. So far, she has helped me mount the ankles and has cut several pie panels out of the dome.




For those wondering, she isn't leaning on the dome. I thought so at first, but she showed me that she was simply holding it in place. She already knows better than to mess with a delicate dome top. :)