January 6, 2008 - Battery Boxes

I know... what a boring title to this entry. What can I say, it's boring!

The picture above is one of the outer feet getting the center channel glued in place. When the styrene shells get placed over the plywood inner feet, there is a channel at the top of each foot to accept the bottom end of the leg. Each leg ends in a rounded pivot point, where the bolt goes through to attach it to the foot. This pivot point sits in the channel on the foot. I had planned to just paint the channel, but the plywood was pretty grainy, and would have looked like wood, instead of metal. So, I used Bondo on the sides, and glued in the styrene channel from Andy's kit. Amazingly, the dimensions of the channel in the inner foot was spot-on to the width of the styrene channel... something went right today!

With this minor victory, I turned my attention to the battery boxes. As you can see from the picture above, the battery boxes start out as a bunch of flat pieces. However, the top and bottom panels need to be curved, to match the curve I put on the outer feet last time. However, the battery boxes are a bit harder to do, since the curve is a full 180 degrees. Still, I figured that it had to be easier that forming the battery boxes out of MDF (which was my original plan).

In the picture below, you can see the (almost) finished results... next to the MDF blanks I had planned to sand and form originally. In addition to having the styrene versions on-hand, I opted not to use the MDF for another key reason: in most droids, the foot motors are placed inside the battery boxes! DUH! So, the MDF blanks are now just fancy props for painting other pieces. Anyhoo... the battery boxes, like the feet, will need a good coat of Bondo to help them out. The curved pieces came out OK, but the sides of the battery boxes don't quite match up with the rest of the shell.

Oh yeah... see that piece of red-and-white plastic on the MDF blanks? That's was another MacGyver of mine. But more on that later.

(deja vu on...) Next time, I hope to have RD-22 on his feet! (deja vu off)

Bob
January 6, 2008