Alternative 'RED' Booster colour's 2021

March

Something that I have thought about over the years, was being able to do a colour change for the Leg Booster covers. It has been talked about over the years, including 'covers'. I had thought about and tried, applying vinyl stickers, but this isn't a two minute job to apply and there's the very slight potential to damage chipped paint. I didn't fancy making another set out of wood again lol and had even thought about trying my hand at casting and moulding, something for the future.....

I decided on 3D printing them as these can then be swapped for R5's blue Booster covers. As my Boosters are 'unique' lol, although made to the plans, they're location pegs are custom, so I decided to draw up a set of booster's that would fit.

For the first cover, that I drew up in CAD, I split the file into three sections for easy fitting on my Tevo 3D printer. I then mirrored them in CAD for the other side, so only having to draw up once.

I added some some tabs to help with glueing the sections together, but this wasn’t acceptable for me.

So for added (guaranteed) strength, I hot welded the pieces together using a soldering iron.

(The boosters are hollow, saving print time and filament).

After some filing and sanding, I applied wood filler to joins and low spots. Here I've started applying, whilst waiting for the other half's to print.

I printed off four location pins, which will be fitted to each half section as can be seen in the picture below.

April

The second booster was printed in only four parts this time (rather than six), one piece ran out of filament just at the end, but not to worry as it still fits together okay.

Wood filler applied after welding the lower parts of the booster on. Still need to apply location pins before joining the two sides together.

Grey primer applied over the filler primer. Whilst this was drying I got on with sorting out the location pins for the second Booster cover.

Here's the second Booster cover, test fitted onto the leg. The location pins were again, welded onto the Booster cover, top and bottom. One of the lower pins needed a bit more modification to be able to locate and this was then also be welded to the cover.

Second coats of filler primer applied to the second Booster cover.

Next up was grey primer to the second Booster cover.

And whilst that was drying...... I was able to spray a coat of red onto the first Booster cover.

Really pleased with this!

Once fully dried, I painted on the silver detail first coat.

Next up will be a clear coat before weathering.

R0-D4 Dome update 2020 (part 1)

 This dome has been sat patiently on a shelf waiting for me to finish its dome ring I upgraded a few years ago. Original the ring was wood, but when having to upgrade the dome to the new rockler style bearing, I had to deconstruct the neck ring to be able to get the old bearing surface out.

Check the link for the beginning of this building process here:

Building R0-D4’s wood dome.

On with the update 2020:

I had glued the 3D printed panels together, but then ‘welded’ them using a soldering iron and extra PLA filament. Melted plastic is a much stronger bond than super glue. Forward to 2020:

I smoothed over the not so perfect joins, before hitting it with filler primer.

The neck ring is detachable so spraying is easy. A few coats of primer before spraying up red & white.

More updates soon.

R0-D4 - new 3D neck printing 2019 - 1.5

R0-D4 original neck

Been working on finishing off the 3D printed neck for the R0 dome upgrade.

I had super glued the pieces together and some of these had been test fitted and screwed down onto the lower ring. But I still had two more pieces to get printed off. In the meantime, I had to fill in the gaps between the printed pieces, so I used some leftover filament and using my soldering iron, melted it into the gap and smoother over. So eventually, I got round to being abe to print off the last two neck pieces via works printer, lol.

These last two pieces needed some addition trimming to fit.

This is the reverse side, face up. The two ends of the new pieces can be seen with magnets holding the glued sections together. The black marker lines with the X indicate where the upper domes vertical's go, so have to make the tabs trimmed to fit.

Once I've filament welded these last few joins, I can get on with finishing off and then spraying up.

R4-D4 Dome work progress 3.4 - new neck skin 3D printed

I took the dome into work so that I could check that the new ring panels would best fit, where cut-outs would be required and where clearances would need to be. I missed the fact that the panels I had been printing were the wrong height.

This wasn't made apparent until I took the dome home to check for diameter clearance.

So I had to start re-printing the correct height ones. Due to the groove on the outside, I can't even modify the pieces already printed.

Here's the correct pieces fitted in place so far.

The connecting tab to help strengthen the two pieces.....this was the plan.....see below re: Gordon Tarpley 

Cut out for the supports

I follow Grodon Tarpley on You Tube, and on Instagram. He posted up the other day about using a soldering iron to melt/join PLA together.

So I did a test piece on two wrong height pieces and it worked. So I 'welded' the above pieces together. This has helped strengthen the thin lipped edge.

Welded the two parts together

I'm still printing off the other panels for the neck, whilst the printer is doing this, I can carry on with filing and sanding the ring.