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Troop no 78 Event Name - Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Scottish Rite Hospital, The Zone - Atlanta, GA - Event Date 02/16/2020

Whoop Whoop! Congrats Sly!!!

Chopper is way simpler than an R2. He doesn't really have a lot of fancy strobe lights, no flaps... flapping away. He's is pretty basic and straight forward. When it come to additional features outside of just head spinning and moving on wheels, I decided I wanted to immediately start with having his arm (center of his body) move in and out. So while leg prints printed. I started putting together all of the piece to get this going. Again, I really need a clue.

So as I have been hanging out on facebook droid sites, I was asking around about a cut acrylic piece for choppers leds on the side of his head. I finally did get in touch with a guy whose post I originally saw but unfortunately, the sizes did not match. (Droids don't have CRLs so it's all up to artistic expression) This droid not being as popular as R2 definitely has a bunch of builds with differences some subtle and some obvious. A few days latter a fellow chopper builder reached out and said she would give it a try. She had me visit her etsy shop. Purchase some lenses for another item and remark that I needs this cut for my chopper. Well what I received soon after was amazing. The fit was spot on. The thing that impressed me the most about this whole deal was I basically gave her a drawing with some general dimensions on a piece of paper, hand drawn. This is what I got back! Blown away.

Days later, new pieces are looking good. New shoulder piece is currently printing and should be done by the morning.

So something is out of wack. But which piece, technically I have 3 pieces that can be the culprit and all of them are 24+ hour prints!! Someone on facebook mentioned a center hub needed to be printed, it was less than 24 hours to print so I decided to go for that. That should tell me if it is the 2 pieces I epoxied together or the rounded shoulder piece. Here goes nothing! Ok, so the hub doesn't fit. After starring at it long and hard, It looks like when I modified the slots into that lower shoulder piece I must have changed the overall size of the piece. (Curse you 3D printing gods!!!) So... I now need to reprint those two pieces because I was overly confident and epoxied them together instead of just letting them sit like I did with everything else!! Here is more proof that the rounded shoulder piece printed right. The hub matches the cut out perfectly. oh well, it's been a pretty smooth ride so far, right?

Next up and 24+ hours later... You know what, this is going pretty good. Why was I so scared. I should have know, everything is gonna be alright... Wha....! Why is this... it's ok, breathe... So I take it to facebook cause no one responds on the astromech forum and I get what I absolutely did not want to hear. Something is messed up. grrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

Here is another piece... Starting to look like something. Now I have 3 pieces left to go to finish this one shoulder.

So, IMHO, the legs are the freaking most scariest thing on this build. I am not sure why, it probably has to do with the fact that the leg files haven't been released to astromech.net yet because they are still a work in progress. Honestly, my bigger concern is that most of the 3d print chopper builds go undocumented. I guess I am spoiled or ruined by this forum. The amount of info shared on this site is amazing compared to others I frequent. Anyhoo... I started the legs, The guy that created the files made them with areas for captured nuts. To do so, you need to time it so you can pause the print and drop them in. Resume the print and in theory they become part of the piece. My issue with this is I usually have these prints going all night and day and definitely while I am at work. So,that's not gonna work for me. I decided in my over arrogance to take his files to tinkercad and modify them so I could complete the pint and just drop nuts and washer in. A couple of hours in and I think I did pretty good. First leg piece. This is the shoulder for the left leg. (about 25 hours to print) Next up, the modified lower part of the shoulder! Close up of the slot I made. A little sloppy but I will just file them. So printed that second piece went right for the epoxy! Feeling super good!

So I have completely epoxied the head, no going back now. I cut a piece of styrene for the lid of the dome and I have started to sand and get it prepped for paint. I still need to order all of the electronics for the dome alone. Following a builders log, I need a couple of neopixel leds, an arduino, a usb stick, a couple of neopixel stick for his power LED on the side of his dome and lastly, a clue. Then more sanding and I need to place a layer of spot putty/bondo on the dome for sure. I completed all of the skins on the Jan 23rd. So that was a little over 2 months, almost non stop printing to print out, the dome, the body frame, the body skins, the skirt and some random parts as I tried to use up the remnants of all the spools I have laying around. Also, in case anyone was wondering. That's 50 (fifty) nuts and bolts. Just to attach all of his panels. Next up... Printing legs... for days...

On a couple of facebook groups people have ask and the response has usually been it's pennies on the dollar. Oh well, what a couple of more months at this point!

My wife keeps asking me that same question. Haha!

So I have 4 panels to go to complete the skins for this guy. Unfortunately for my patience, to fit my printer I had to cut them in half, thank you microsoft 3D builder, you made that process super simple. If you haven't used it, it's free, if you have windows 10 it should be loaded on your computer and it's as simple as tinkercad. So far, each of those panels will be taking my printer approximately, 1 day, 18hours and 11mins according to Cura.

While all of that was happening my little printer that could continues to churn out panel/skin pieces. I have the front armature pieces printed as well, just need to stop at the Depot to pic up some PVC pipe and nuts and bolts.

Clamps and glue, clamps and glue. Big step fellas, I laid the epoxy down. No going back now. A little sanding and leveling before... clamps and glue...

Haha! I know right. You guys are currently up to date. That was almost 2 months of printing. Get your TK first then buy a 3D printer. Honestly it’s a lot of fun and I definitely recommend the Ender 3 pro. It’s been nothing but good times. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here is Chopper with some panels. Everything is is just held together with painters tape.

Printing skins, printing skins.

Hey, that wasn't so bad. See, just keep swimming, just keep swimming... And I printed and purchased some eye balls. I even started to glue! This is my first pieces glued together. I will be cutting a styrene top for the dome. I have a periscope and side doors to print to be fully complete with this dome but not needed at the moment to get this guy going. I'm off to start printing the skins for this dude.

In comparison, these pieces are sooooooo small! It's gonna take forever!

So much printing! Excited to see the dome come together! This is 6 pieces and just the top ring. I now have 12 pieces for the lower ring to go. All of those prints are 22 hours each!

Q - Jorge, are you really gonna post up every print pic? A- Yeah, what else am I supposed to do. I have a lot of time in between prints!

I going for the dome! I order PLA+ in orange. My OCD/ADD/XYZ will not allow me to print this any other color. I understand it will be painted with gray primer but I am gonna be staring at this thing for month before then. I need to see his head in the color it was went to be. Here it comes!!! One piece done and 17 more to go!

Honestly, I am amazed by the people who design this stuff. Its a work of art in itself. All the skirt pieces are the same with the exception of one which has holes in it to attach the caster mount. and it's done. At this point I am starting to realize that I will be spending a lot of time gluing, using auto body filler, sanding, priming, filler and sanding again.

What do I print next, Chopper has what they call a skirt. In the show it's where his 3rd wheel or rocket booster comes out of. Do I print that or do I start on the dome. The legs scare the poop out of me so I may just leave those last! Skirt it is!! days and days of printing...