Month: September 2016

 

The Build:

The first thing I’ve done is get the parts for the actual R2-D2 frame cut out and set aside (I’ve decided on polystyrene plastic from McMaster Carr as my material of choice). The way the build process is broken down is essentially into five major components: Legs, Feet, Frame, Dome, and Skirt.

For no particular reason other than I felt it would be one of the more satisfying parts to begin with I decided to start with the frame. After many weeks spending time painstakingly cutting out paper templates and gluing them onto the polystyrene sheets, I finally was able to cut them out on a band saw I got access to.

The first step of building was mounting the rectangular verticals to the rings of the body to connect the bottom and lower rings.

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I then went on to the upper ring and attached the long verticals that will make up the majority of the body height. For added support at this stage the wider vertical panels, which will eventually have the legs attached to them. In the view below the bottom ring you see is actually the top-most ring. The legs will attach at the shoulder just above it.

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The rest of the long verticals resting at the bottom in the above picture have been attached in the next. I have then taken them and attached them to the two lower rings in the first picture. At this point the frame is about 75% complete and spans the full height of the droid. The parts that are not in pace are ring segments that well go between the verticals.

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At this point I needed to cut out more pieces to continue to make any kind of significant progress, so I had to call it quits. As of the time of this posting I’ve gotten additional parts laid out and am planning on getting them cut and ready for assembly hopefully sometime in mid-late October.

So I decided I needed a new project for the summer and it led me to what initially thought was some harmless daydreaming about building an R2-D2. Well, the thought got stuck in my head long enough that I ended up deciding to investigate it further. It turns out that there is already a community of people dedicated to exactly this endeavor. Seeing how big Star Wars fandom is in the world I really should have guessed that this was a thing already, but I guess I was unprepared for the vast amount of detail available. They have blueprints, part breakdowns, very precise measurements and more. Below is an image of one of the user’s complete R2’s as an example of how high quality they can get.

Upon investigating, I saw that there were three primary materials used for construction. The one pictured above is made of the most desirable and difficult to work with – aluminum. Droids made of aluminum will frequently cost in excess of $3000 in aluminum alone. The additional electronics, motors, screws, bolts and tools can increase that further. This in addition to the fact that you need good tools to properly work with aluminum and that mistakes are essentially irreparable meant that I quickly ruled this out for myself.

The other two options were wood and polystyrene plastic. Honestly, both of these options would probably work for myself. The plastic and wood are similar in cost, with the wood likely being a bit cheaper and both are easy to work with, requiring only normal tools such as saws, dremels, routers, etc. to properly build with. In the end I opted for the Polystyrene plastic because a user had recently created a newly updated set of schematics with an R7/R8 skin that I thought looked especially cool.

The skins pictured above immediately struck me as Boba/Jango-Fett esque and I fell in love with them. As soon as I saw it I decided that I had to make one in a Boba Fett paint scheme. The current plan is to have it ready for Pax East which is in April of 2017. Based on what I understand is a normal build time of 8-12 months I’ll have to make sure to put in plenty of effort for that to happen, haha!