Busy weekend

Well, got a lot done this weekend. FIrst, cut the trim on the inner dome and the dome ring. The styrene on the dome ring is really thick, and cutting that sucker took forever.

Then, I made a quick Michael's run and picked up 3 of their 18" MDF floral craft rings. Here you can see a test fit inside the inner dome. Snug as a bug in a rug.

Unfortunately I have some bowing going on here. Going o have to see what I can do about that:

In the meantime, painted the lower ring to match the rest of the dome. I didn't bother with the center because it won't be seen anyway, and I'm probably going to cut a bit out of it. Though not the whole thing; I want a "perch" for batteries and such.

Friday, the Teeces boards showed up. As you can see, they're bare boards, but marked up with what components need to go where. Actually, I got most of the components that I ordered from Mouser on Saturday, but am still waiting on the LEDs to show up. Kinda have to do them first.

In the meantime, I glued two of the MDFs together. Gorilla glue didn't do the job, but some 3M 45 spray adhesive put 'em together solid as a rock in no time.

Saturday afternoon at the makerspace, I did a test placement of the dome components, and took reference photos all the way around. I gotta say. This is gonna look so good when it's done...

(Yeah, I know, I missed a couple bits that need painting.)

Meantime, I did some prints. On the left in white, a battery clip (as seen on those little boxes attached to R2's feet). The green things are the front logic display frames, and the thing in black is actually my own attempt at modelling a part. It's a logic bezel for the frames: they have matrices of 3mm LEDs, you see, and this is used to "frame" them. There are two slightly different designs--I went with this one ebcause it had the most complete information online. I'll have to do the other one as well before too long. It was an interesting exercise in modelling, learning Blender on the fly. 

Here it is coming out of the printer. A little rough, but workable.

Here I am,  working the holes open with a T7 and then a T9 screwdriver bit. I'll give it more work when the LEDs arrive.

Meantime, I've got holes to drill in the inner shell. Using the outer shell Saturday, I drew out the holes that needed to be cut and Sunday broke out the ol' drill. Step one: make a dotted line:

Step two, cut along the dotted line:

Step 3: file the Dickens out of the hole and test it to make sure it will look all right (oh, and per advice online, I sanded down the inner dome and worked it a bit so I'm still getting a bit of bowing, but not nearly as much as before. I can live with it).

End result: 8 holes. Now I just need to get my Holoprojectors and the rear logic display frame (the long slot at the bottom) and I can make final adjustments to permanently attach the inner and outer domes.

So yeah, not a bad weekend at all. Gotta order some goodies for the dome, then attach the radar eye, work up the lens... and hopefully by that point it'll be time to start assembling the lighting system.