Droid Builders UK - limited edition collector challenge coin

 Advert for the Droid Builders UK

Droid Builders UK

have available a new challenge coin,

all are individually numbered

and will be distributed

as per the date of your order.

Only 100 coins have been produced, so they won’t be available for long.

Celebrating 11 years of Droid Building

Numbers 1 and 100 will be auctioned for our chosen charity,

details to follow.

Postage includes tracking.

Another mini project 1.9 - Trading Card Dispenser

Yesterday I uploaded the stl files and the assembly instructions to the UK builders club forum.
The components take a while to arrive so it will be a few weeks before I get any feedback. But as I’ve printed the same version, there shouldn’t be any problems lol.

The other fun part was creating instructions for 3D printing (orientation & support placement), assembly of the bought components and then fully assembling of the unit itself.

Created a PDF to be downloadable with simple instructions.

I finished printing my frame holder to fit into R5 so hoping to get this all installed and tested soon. There’s still work to be done with alignment etc, so more posts on this to come.

Optimus Comic Con - Bristol (UK) - Sunday April 8th

This is the third Optimus Comic Con event in Bristol.

Though this will be my first  time.

Paul, who I'll be joining with his R2-D2,

he's attended in the past

with his B9 Robot from 'Lost in Space'

The UK R2D2 Builders Club

will be there
(that's us two, plus Rob will also be there with his R2D2)

UK R2 Buidlers Club - New Logo for 2017

The UK R2 Builders Club has been running for 6 years now

and it was time to upgrade the logo.

So I've now added and updated my Blog picture to include it.

New Club logo, added top right

If your interested in building your own R2 or any of the other Astromech's, have a flick back over my R5 build history,

see the column on the right (if viewing via a PC),

for short cuts to specific parts of my R5 build.

Or you can click on the links below to take you

to the world wide club forum & the UK R2 Builders page,

where you can join up and follow thousands of other builders

in re-creating their own Astromech Droid.

R2 Builders Club @ www.astromech.net

UK R2 Builders Club @ www.astromech.info

Both groups also have FaceBook public & builder pages.

UK R2D2 Builders Christmas Event 2016

29.Dec.2016
I hadn't been able to attend this Christmas Event in previous years, but this year would be the first of many to come! Lol, two things more important than Christmas, were Rogue One & this builders day :D

My two youngest came along and enjoyed the day, and like myself, meeting new fellow builders & the 'Usual Suspects' builders too lol. We arrived about 2PM, driving up with fellow Bristol builder, Paul Felski, who followed.

The event also doubles as an inspection of the droids, for safety at events. Control and stability of these is very important!

There was food layed on and a Death Star, two flavoured cake, thanks Emma!

The last time there were this many astromech's in one place, I'd say, would of been Celebration.

My daughter, was NOT operating R2's dome lol, but a toy BB-8

  

Just some of the droids.

Then we had the group photo....

Another great day, that flew by. Looking forward to attending events in 2017

R5-D4's Dome control system 1.2

Back in November @ Collectormania 22. I saw Owen's R2, a fellow UK R2 Club member, who has a similar control system to Victors, but his has a linkage system to his micro switches, this I like.

Soldered up the wires to the two micro switches, and heat shrunk the contacts. This includes wires to connect up with the 'test' power, which is a 6V battery.

I tested the motor on one of the 12V batteries and to me it seamed to fast for my liking, where as the 6V gave a more movie style movement. This is a personal choice, which kind of goes with the sad R5 feel from the film.

All wired up and tested and YES, the micro switch idea works (more excited my soldering works lol)

January 2015
What with Xmas and being ill, I've not had a chance to get on with any R5 work.....until one night last week. I wired up the servo and tested out the idea of it switching the micro switches, using the transmitter. In principle it worked lol.

Saturday 17th - Fitting of R5's dome motor!
The idea was to fit the motor with a pivot point and spring tension. But I found that the metal bracket has enough 'flex' in it not to need the spring. The rotating disc is not perfectly round lol, so I found the smallest part of its diameter and screwed the bracket into place. There was a bit of movement from the bracket when the motor moves, but the flex is okay.

This next pic you can see the screws in place.

This pic shows the limited space.

You can see the inside of the dome structure also.

***** Chippenhan Sci-Fi Day 2014, UPDATE *****

** GUEST UPDATE **

Sarah Louise Madison (Dr Who - Weeping Angle) won't now be attending

due to work commitments.

R5-D4 and other members of the UK R2D2 Builders Club will be in attendance.

I've set up my own...OK....R5's own Event page over on FaceBook, just for fun.

***** Events for the UK R2 Builders Club 2014 *****

If you want to catch R2, Artoojayzero, R5, Emy, Zoe and Astromechs

the UK R2 Builders, then check out the

Event's Calender

For a recap on past event's attended, click here.

On the UK R2-D2 Builders Club page

*** Corsham Charity Sci-Fi Day 2014 ***

R5-D4, Artoojayzero (UK  R2-D2 Builders) & friends, will be at Corsham.

Come on down and check out all things Sci-Fi!

Check out their website and FaceBook pages.
*** Latest, the council have suspended parking fee's for the day! ***
*** So FREE parking will be available ***

Memorabilia Comic Con: 22nd - 23rd March 2014

At the weekend the UK R2 Builders Club attended
Memorabilia @ MCM Birmingham.

I wasn't able to attend with R5, but lots of Club members did.

http://www.astromech.info/home

There are loads of pictures on the internet so keep your eyes open for one or more of these fantastic Droids....... These are the ones your looking for!

Two of these can be seen in this report on.....

Dome electrics......LED upgrade work

I wanted to run all the Dome LED's off the one 9.6v recharge battery to make life so much easier.

I dug out my LED's etc and I found my battery state indicator that I made at collage, 25 years ago. I've fitted it to every car I had, except the Zafira. Thought it might come in handy in R5 :-).
.....Now NOT to be fitted......

I was looking into how to drop the voltage from my 9.6v battery to be able to also run the other dome lights off it. The Eye lights [blue LED's] came out of novalty glasses, I think they run at about 3 volts, adding up the three mini button cell batteries. I had some great advice from fellow builders over on the UK R2 Builders Forum, but decided that I would just buy some suitable Blue LED's, as I know I would of blown them, and then would of needed to buy more lol.

5 x Blue LED Lamp Light Set 25cm Pre Wired 5mm 12V DC

I only need three for R5's Main 'Eyes', though am sure I'll find a use for the others....as long as I don't burn them out!! hahahaha.

Whilst I was looking around I also found this Digital Panel Volt Meter. I've seen tthis type of meter used recently on Prop made Pulse Rifle, similar to the amunition counter ('Aliens').

Anything to give me an idea of how much charge I have must be a good thing right??
DC 3-30V 0.36" 2 Wire LED Digital Panel Volt Meter Voltage Voltmeter Car Motor

10.02.14
Came home to find my Blue LED's and digital volt meter had arrived.

11.02.14
So last night I set myself up ready for work. I stripped out R5's original blue light set up. They did a very good job for their one and only event lol, but wanted to utilise the 9.6v power unit.

Using a terminal block and spare cable from work, I then daisy chained (right terminolgy?) positive and negative's to the LED's and the digital volt meter, and placed the switch inline to cut all power.

Also R5's red led was connected, not sure what to do bout the motivator LED, it can be disconnected when pie panel is needed and in place.......this is next to do & also to fix LED's and terminal block in place.

So two hours later I was very happy, and the fact the wife let me work on the dining room table ;)

Another Year of R5-D4 building

The month of January is the anniversary of starting this project to build my R5-D4 Unit,
back in 2011.

But it all started about 10 months before in 2010, with these two Droids........

I had heard about a local Sci-Fi event in Corsham

that I thought me and my children might like to go to.

Check out the

Corsham Sci-fi Charity

and find out about the money they raise and up and comming events.

This years is 26th April 2014

My Son was really into Boba Fett at the time so it was a bonus that Jeremy Bulloch [Boba Fett] along with others was going to be there!

For us, the main characters were the Star Wars ones, inparticular, R2 & his fully automated R6 buddy. Seen in the pictures above. All the kids, not just the little ones, were suitably impressed!

On closer inspection, I could see that they were both made from WOOD!

Those famous words every Dad knows so well, when asked.......

'Dad, can you make me one?' Came out of my Son's mouth,

on my stunned uttering of the words, 'I could build one!'

I soon searched the web and found the maker of these Astromach's @ Podpad studios.

And started to follow the build of his several other creations.

This gave me inspiration that I too could create and build my Astromech Droid.

And so after months of research and the realisation that a wood build was my only and cheapest build option, I began. It's taken a while to build, as only in my free time, late evening's, weekends & lunchtimes in work. I've learnt new skills, shortcuts, and so much more from following Blogs like this and also on the two main forums I'm a member of.....

The UK R2 Builders Club [this is the main UK info page]

&

Astromech.net [which you will have to register with]

So I'm now, hopefully, on the last stretch of the build and hopefully,

will get him motorised and Fully Operational ;)

So stayed tuned.........

"@ukr2builders" - Twitter Account

The UKR2Builders decided that it could be useful to be on Twitter.

This way we can Tweet any relevant news out to the masses easily.

It should also be used for the public to tweet stuff about us at the event

or directly mention (@) us so we can catch it too! 

To mention us in a tweet just do the following in your message "@ukr2builders" and we'll get it! So go on follow us and press the button below!

Follow: @UKR2Builders

Paul Johnson - Artist designer of this R5-D4 Astromech Unit

A few months ago a new member to the UK R2D2 Builders Club,

started on a different kind of building, on a computer, an R2-D2 Unit.

His next Astromech was R5.....WOW!!! Here is his work so far. I'll let the images do the rest of the talking!

For more info and the latest updates on these creations and some more exciting updates, follow Paul on his twitter account Pauljwiz

UK R2D2 Builders Club - Jedi News mention!

JEDI NEWS

UK R2 Builders Launch New Site

Reported by Mark on 22 Sep 2013 23:22

Mike Filippidis over at Astromech.info has gotten in touch to drop us a line about a vital new UK website. We at the UKR2Builders have just launched our public website, so people can see what we are up to and where they can catch a glimpse of us. Check out the new website at Http://www.astromech.info

Front Vents - Resin Set 2.0

Originally written last year sometime lol.

I wasn't happy with the front vents that I had made. I know I spent a lot of time making them, but I wanted them to especially look right as these are the bits that people will focus on. So was looking to buy a set from Don Jarr via ebay.

Well I don't have to save up as was kindly offered a spare set from a member of the UK R2 Builders club. These are very much appreciated indeed!

I measured and marked a centre line for the centre vents. Then drew roughly where the outside cut should be, then I started with a drill hole and then started sanding out to size with my dremel.

This is one of the brackets I fitted to support the top vent.

There will be more substantial supports for these as I can imagine these

being pushed in by kids! lol

And here's the top vent test fitted.

R5 - Top Vent test fitting

10,000 hits

Well, this evening marks R5's build page hitting the 10K counter mark :)

I didn't think when I started this blog that anybody would want to read about my journey. Especially as there are so many other build's that are more advanced in build & quality!! lol.

 

The lucky 10,000 view was

 

mentho1ite

Who is also a fellow builder on the UK R2 Builders forum (see link to site below)

 

Well to everyone that has viewed, commented, liked on R5's facebook page, thank you.

I hope it's has helped entertained lol and been informative :D and also helped avoid mistakes or just helped in some small way. Here's to the next 10,000 hits....... :D

Check out the UK R2 Builders forum here:

ukr2d2.proboards.com

Also on Facebook

UK R2D2 Builders Club - T-shirt

I put my name on a list to recieve my 'club' t-shirt.

The Group also has a Facebook page

UK R2-D2 Builders Forum

A new forum mainly for UK R2-D2 Builders.