Treadwell WED-15 droid build : Part 15

With Celebration ‘Europe’ over for a few years lol, and after having a rest from it all, it was time to get back into building WED-15.

When at CE, I was chatting with Chris ‘3P0’ Williams about WED as he wants to also build one. Said I needed to clean up the 3D files and organise them to their latest version, that I had used or that had needed altering after I had printed them.

There are of course builders DIY blueprints , not the actual ‘77 droid ones unfortunately, but close enough. And as mentioned before, I had gone with the rectangular to rectangular eye version, which on closer inspection of screen grabs, I can see that these are wrong. Never mind. I may look at creating a square to square version later on.

April 20:

The new extended servo leads require connectors fitted. And the Claw arm ones needed to be insulated as they are inside the aluminium tube, with no connector blocks.

With the Claw arm servo, fitted lower down the mast, was a reminder of how fiddly connecting it up to o the linkages was 😂. I need a new clamping bracket for it though to brace the servo from moving.

The first three servo leads, are sheathed inside expandable sleeving. The arm servo lead is, for now, loose inside the mast.

Spent ages trying to arrange the servo leads for the neck and eyes so that they don’t catch on the metal rod that reaches up from the arm servo to the linkage pivot point.

New Lens mould:

3D printed of a much better, smoother finished lens blank. Sanded it smooth even further. Then mixed up the mould putty and applied it over the blank. I then flipped it over so that its base would be flat with the bench.

Left for a day and then removed the blank.

Left it for another day, no free time to actually do anything more.

Day 3, I mixed up the two part resin and poured it into the mould.

I used a lighter held over the surface to remove the air bubbles. Whilst this was drying, I removed the two first attempt lenses and tried to smooth out the print lines.

I also lightly sanded the new lens to make it more opaque. I could of bought opaque resin in the first place 😂.

• Looking to add some LED’s behind the eyes, so more wiring possibly required.
• Should really start working on the base.