And now, for a few words about mistakes...

Just to be clear, this is by no means an expert blog. It is me documenting my attempt to build this 'droid, both for my own future reference and for others to pick up and learn from. And part of that is me making mistakes and documenting them so that I don't do them again, and hopefully others can avoid them altogether. Let's have a look at the utility arm print I did as an example.

This morning before work I did the final sanding, and glued all the bits together. This evening, the paint came out, and I gave it the standard Krider blue treatment. Here is the result:

Looks good in this picture, doesn't it? But let's look a little closer, take in a few details:

Gyhhh, what's that? I'm afraid that's carelessness. I waited for the top paints to dry, then rolled it over to paint the bottom. Unfortunately, I positioned it on a part of the newspaper that was still wet, so it stuck. By this point I had already decided this was a no-go, but I sprayed it real quick to see what it would look like. As you can see, the result is not great.

As you can also see, the seam is really quite visible. Even after last night's adventure with the belt sander, the seam (which is quite smooth to the touch) is nevertheless quite visible at all join spots. Which leads us to the second mistake:

I basically tried to "paint over" the seams to cover the blemishes and faults. Unfortunately, that's a bad idea. Painting should be done in short bursts back and forth, not blasting full throttle. I have the worst time with that. Here you can see the paint has flowed down to the end of the arm and puddled up horribly. So yeah, painting over your surface issues does not work.

Speaking of surface issues:

You can see where where I joined some sections together and tried to smooth the transition with XTC-3D instead of bondo or similar. Part of it seems OK, but there's that big bit on the end. And also I didn't take time to sand it down properly, as you can see.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to make up for the fact that this isn't a single piece. More skilled hands might have pulled it off, but I unfortunately could not. So, lesson learned: I'll be getting this as a resin cast version.

Meanwhile, still acquiring bits and pieces for the Teeces lighting system. My components and the boards are on the way, and I just ordered a bunch of LEDs (you need just shy of 300 for the full setup; I got 600 bulk for just about $20). Due to advice on the boards I avoided the "water clear" LEDs and went for the actual tinted ones. Some of them are flangeless but a box of mixed I got for the 5mms are flanged. The boards advise taking nail clippers to them. I'll let you know how that goes.