Still More Dome Cutting

This some cutting thing takes a LONG time. Our weather has been pretty cool for July, but it was a really humid night. I took up residence outside the garage and did my dome work with the aid of a slight breeze. When the night was finished, I was able to get two more dome panels cut out.

Jason showed me how cut the excess styrene off the bottom of my dome plate. Jason and I scored the plate along the edge with an exacto knife and then used pliers to split the styrene along the score. I will need to come back later and sand the bottom edge of the plate to make it even.

Brad put his R2 Dome on R2-NU's body to see how it would look. I had to put an hammer inside R2 towards the back of the base plate to stop him from tipping over.

He haven't taken a group picture in a while, so we gathered everyone together before they went home for the night.

Routed Last Shoulder Hub

I routed out the remaining shoulder hub tonight's build. I spent a lot of time getting the routing to look exactly right on the first hub and I found out that I didn't need to be that precise. Using the first shoulder hub as my guide, I router the second enough to clear the shoulder bracket and hardware. I drew quite the crowd. I gave a clinic on all the wrong and least safe ways to work with a router. The hub got finished, and I came out of the experience without any cuts or bruises and with all my fingers.

Skirt

Jason and Brad continued to work on their fiberglass mold of the skirt. It's been a long time since I've done fiberglass. Wow, this stuff is messy.

Up On Two Legs

I worked on my motor mounts during the build day. I needed to add the U-bracket to hold the omniball. Jason helped me line up the brackets, drill the holes for the omniballs, and pop rivet everything together.

Once the modified Dan Baker motor mount/ankles were put together, another builder helped me attach them to the outer legs. Even though the temperature got hotter once the sun came out, I'm still not sure if I was being protected from the sun or being blessed.

Once the motor mount/ankles were attached, I got a little help disassembling R2-NU. I wanted to add some chocks between the feet and legs stand R2 on two legs during OSFest next week.

While I had the legs off, Jeff and Dawn wanted to see you I routed out one of the shoulder hub leg spacers to hide the leg bracket and hardware.

As I was showing off my shoulder hub, another builder decided to walk around the garage with my newly assembled legs as crutches.

I cut chocks the size of the game between the outer leg and the motor mount. I then drilled a hole in the center of the chock and held everything in place with a nut and washer.

FINALLY!!! R2-NU is up on two legs!!! Everyone was amazed at how stable R2 seemed without any kind of attachment for the center connecting pipe. R2-NU leans forward just a little. This will all be taken care of later when additional hardware is added for the 2-3-2 functionality, but he looks pretty good now!

Fiberglass Skirt Mold

The group got together today at Brad's house for a little building. Jason and Brad started us off by priming Jason's skirt and filling the holes and cracks left by the skirt assembly. I had to leave before they did it, but the two made a fiberglass mold of the skirt so the group can pour resin skirts.