Skin Work

On the first build night in October Jason, Clay, Nate, and I got together to do a little R2 Building. Nate marked his top and bottom frame plates so he could route them out later. Jason worked on separating his skin panels and Clay worked on cleaning my skins (after a previous builder borrowed them to glue up a couple frames and left them a mess). THANK YOU CLAY!!!

Painting Dome Inserts

I started painting the dome accessories. I'm using Krylon Fusion Satin White(2420) spray paint (for plastic). I'm putting a thin coat on the logic surrounds so they will accept the aluminum paint later. The radar eye will be completely white and the solid holoprojectors will have a white cowling and an aluminum colored top. I covered the bolts with tape so I wouldn't have a problem later trying to put nuts on them.

Filling Dome Holes

I filled the dome holes/imperfections with gel super glue. Once it dries, I will sand it smooth and try to smooth out some high areas left by the DAP Plastic Wood.

Lens Fitting For Radar Eye

I couldn't sleep this morning. I stayed up late last night watching several games I really didn't care about and was still up by 5 AM today. I think it's because I'm excited about the Huskers playing tomorrow. The game should be an easy win, but Husker football is Husker football.

Since I was up I decided to do a little work on R2's radar eye. I got the lens for the eye back in May, but didn't alter the radar eye to make it fit. After my work smoothing and leveling the eye to get a tight fit against the dome I am only left with preparing the eye for the lens and painting it.

I will need to use a Dremel to grind away part of the rear edge of the radar eye center hole so the radar eye and lens sits flush against the dome. I determined what a level distance would be from the front edge of the radar eye and made marks. This took a little work because the eye is not a consistent size all the way around the center hole. Once the marks were in place I added tape to serve as a guide while I'm using the Dremel. Once the tape was in place, I cut the tape hanging out the front side of the radar eye hole so it would hold in place and not bend while grinding.

I used the lens to draw lines on the back of the radar eye so I know how much to grind away.

Painting Stopped

I added a couple more coats to the dome and decided that I needed to fix a fix dome imperfections. I need to fill in some small holes created when adding the holoprojector mounting screws and sand a couple of DAP Plastic Wood areas that are too high. So the painting was stopped and I will start again once the problem areas are fixed.