zv288bot

Welcome Monica! So excited for you! Keep up the good work!

No worries Trooper. One step back but many steps forward in the future. You have a lifetime to accomplish this as well as many other things. Talk to you soon.

It's been a wild ride. I started this journey on November 11th 2019 and completed it (never complete) at the end of May. My little printer (Ender 3 pro) ran pretty much 24/7. I went through roughly 26 rolls of fillament. I do have a box of bad prints (haha). I will continue to work on getting his periscope to work. I can already see that I may need a larger power amp. I am currently running 20w but talking to some of the droid guys they seem to be running 50w min. I also will work down the road at adding an effect to making his arm extend and using some LEDs to make it look like a zapper. Who knows. As usual thanks to my brothers and sisters in white armor for the support. Here is a link to my facebook account if anyone wants to see him moving with some sound. I was trying to video and move him so it's a little (a lot) wonky. Thanks again!!

And he is done... And no one believes me when I said he literally tried to kill me! Just kidding! (not really)

OK here is the final batch! Before After Here is the dome

Heading off to work! I will update tonight with the finished product! Can't wait!!!

So... I have an arm. Now how to I attach it. Here I come Tinkercad!! I like to consider Tinkercad to be 3D modeling for dummies. It's so easy, it only took me a couple of minutes to get the hang of it. Granted I am really only doing simple stuff with it but it's a great program if you want to design some thing yourself. So choppers dome is designed to arms to come out of his head. The system is complicated and intimidating and something I don't even see myself trying to attempt any time in my life time. But popping in a static arm that I already printing! I got this... So see that square hole to the left of the clamps? I need to make a holder. I am going super simple. I box to fit, with a hole just big enough to fit but small enough to hold it from falling out. Here is what I made. Whoop whoop!!

As you guys know, I'm in the 501st (duh) and I have some (very few actually because they are murderers and thieves) Rebel legion friends. One of them does an amazing Hera and I want to recreate a scene from the show so I need an arm for our photo shoot in the social distant future! I am using transparent PTEG, I got a deal on it. It's super weird to see through everything.

and I want a static arm for his head too. Anyway, while paint is drying and my head is killing me from all that is going on I looked for the simplest solution to mounting a speaker inside Chopper. I removed the very front center plate, used these mounts and some tie wraps. Speaking with a R2 builder here in Georgia, he mentioned just having his speakers out not enclosed in any kind of box. This is a cheapo amazon speaker by the way.

Ok, the foot shells need filler and paint. When I assembled them I wasn't fully aware of what needed to happen and so they aren't perfect. I need to do lots of filler, primer and sanding to get them smooth enough to pass. I also need to work on a hose detail chopper has on one leg. This has not been an easy task, the bends are a change and obviously being an animated droid, there are no physical limitations. I need find a place to mount a speaker as well as getting the front arm servo connected. Lastly, he has a periscope that will come out of his dome. That will be phase 2 cause phase 1 is nearly killing me.

This was my first holy smokes moment. I did it! I can't believe it's standing and rolling and recognizable!!! (I mean if you watched the show) Still have lots to do including some minor details and of course, weathering this entire thing!

OK so I powered this guy up and of course I had issues. I had tested all of the components separately and they all responding as they should. I wired this guy all up (I may have had a beverage or two while at it) and it definitely acting erratic. Here is a drawing of my wiring diagram. I thought it looked good! Turns out I had a 5 volt wire from the receiver going to the dome motor controller that was bugging the whole system out?! Don't ask me how I figured this out. Honestly, I am pretty sure I stumbled across a forum on the manufactures web site when I was frantically typing stuff into a google search. Here is the culprit! This is the board, There is a 5v slot on the top of board in this image you can see it's blank cause I removed it.

Got the final components to do get ready to power Chopper up. Ugh, I forget I needed to come up with a battery mount. I went the power tool route. It seems like it's a direction all the kids are really into these days. and it doesn't fit... plus the batteries are too close together so it makes it super awkward to reach in and swap them out. I'm cutting it down to one. (I am actually running the whole droid on one. I was just using the second slot as a holder for a fully charged battery so I can swap them out when one dies.) Mucho more gooder...

Electronics are coming in. Ordering them from everywhere. Amazon, ebay, hobbyking... I have only a little idea of what I am doing. I have been reading as many build threads as I can find. Annoying some of the local droid builders and trying to make sense of all of this. I realize today, that I have turned into my parents with patience. I know am asking these younger droid builders to set the time on my VCR. Just testing for fit. I cut this plexi board to size. (I borrowed it from my wife's crafting closet, hopefully she wont need it ever) Controller...

Lot's of primer and filler and sanding but I got some base coats on the legs.

I put together the foot shells and I glued and assembled them, then I realized I shouldn't have assembled them until I install the drive motors so that was awesome! super tight squeeze! Hope those nut are on tight enough?! ugh, it took 2 days and having to go through lots of trial and error.

Holy smokes! I have lots of updating to do!! Get ready for the mega dump! Here are a couple of leg pics. I need to go back through this thread. I noticed some or a lot of the images are gone. I am pretty sure when I was moving stuff around in imgur I didn't realize it would just remove the images completely. anyhoo...

Donated!

Oh I did also get lights going in the dome.

Currently printing up the foot shells for this guy. This is literally taking forever!

Excellent detail as usual Joseph!

While waiting on legs to print, paint to dry and all the sanding I did also work on a smaller project for this. It's a periscope that will pop out of the top of the dome. It was a easy print and I was able to source all of the metal (nuts, bolts and tubing) from Ace Hardware.

While all of this has been printing I have started to spot putty the dome and also sprayed primer on the frame. 3D droids guy say to use Rustoleum Filler Primer. I forgot how much the smell of this stuff lingers after it's been sprayed. I'm going on about 4 or 5 days and I can still smell it. This is only the first round. I am gonna be sanding, filling and adding more primer in the near future. The weather here in Georgia has been wonky and it's prevented me from taking this outside.

Still printing legs. It feels like forever! 5 more pieces and everything will be printed for one (1) leg... ugh. I still need to go back and print all of the same parts below the shoulder for the other side plus one more shoulder piece. I don't remember when it was the last time I wasn't printing a leg part.

Looking for my 75 badge please and thanks!