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!