Standing Droid

This week Chris came over and we talked through a few of the problems that I was trying to work through on R2. He has challenged me to get the droid up and running for WonderCon at the end of Feb 09 which will be one year since I met him and discovered the group.

When he looked at my parts collection he recommended that I get everything that I have put together so that I know what I really need to deal with before the goal date.

I took his advice to heart, but it left me with some work to do.

First, I had to unpack all my feet that were still in grease and get them cleaned up. I filed down the area where the ankle connects until I got a decent fit and then put a few coats of primer on them.

Then I began the assembly of the legs-feet, finding out that I needed a run to Ace for some hardware. It turned out that the screws required by the threads in Ryan's legs were larger than the holes in the ankles so I had to drill the ankles out a bit.

All of that done, I was ready to mount the legs, but the bushings that I had for connecting to the frame were the wrong size. Rather than spending money for different ones (not even sure where they came from) I just used the grinding wheel and whittled them down to size.

Here is the result of all that work:



So now we have R2 standing in the living room. His center ankle is not attached to the base plate, nor is the center foot attached to the ankle. I don't have any of that hardware yet. Either way, he looks good standing there and my family was very excited to have something to see for all the work that has been put in this far.