R3-BT (Beety, the bartender droid)

[lynellephi]

Delivered on Christmas Eve was a nice box with R3-BT's styrene dome. I've already started cutting the tabs and sanding. I also have a big box of wooden legs I bought on the Parts Junkyard on the astromech.net boards. They need some sanding and very little bondoing, but they are doable. I also found out size and quantity of styrene I will need for the rest of Beety. I've also got a few parts for the drink dispenser like tubing and metal sheets. I think the black rubber gasket thingy is part of a plunger or a very large plumbing gasket. I have some metal tubes in the garage that I'll experiment with (one is solid and very heavy, so I'm just going to use that to see if the diameter is right then find a light aluminum hollow tube).

Does anyone know of a good styrene supplier in the Denver area? I looked at USPlastics.com and IndustrialPlastics.com. The shipping and delivery of large sheets is astronomically high, like twice as much as the product itself. I think buying locally would be the best bet. Looking for 48x96 and 48x48 in various widths (0.125, 0.80, 0.40, and 0.20). Let me know if you find any locally in big sheets.

I'll try to use this as Beety's build log, but might go back to AL's old blog (r2al.blogspot.com). Anyway, third droid started. (but what about Goldie? she's getting new styrene skins, too)

[R2DEVO]

Cool!
I have only bought plastic at Fort Collins Plastics. I have no doubt shipping for large sheets gets quite expensive.
But if you are picking it up, be sure you have a way to get them back home. 4x8' is big!

[DarthMunchies Profile]

I got the styrene for my feet from Port Plastics at I70 and Havana. It was like 52 bucks for a 4x8 sheet and they cut it in half for me so I could get it home.

Apparently it's where Jeff Rodriguez gets his abs from.

Also I'm building styrene main feet for R2 lol. I'll have to post some pics in my own thread.

[lynellephi]

A box with a wooden frame arrived. It was an "imperfect" cut I got from mjhendricks in the parts junkyard. He gave me a great price break on it. Will put it together this week along with the wooden legs. Continuing to sand the dome edges. Beety won't be complete, but at least he'll be standing.

And I made cardboard templates for the drink dispenser. Will piece all those together for test fit, adjusting the templates before I cut out the aluminum panels. Still looking for that weird black funnel thingy the "drinks" come out of. I might have to find a couple plungers, one smaller than the other, and piece that together. Lot's of droid building going on in the basement lab. Tons of things to do before mid-June, but I think R3-BT is coming along quite nicely. Working on it (her?) is a lot more enjoyable now that I have the theater seating with message buttons actually in my basement!! (makes getting zapped by giant bugs in Fallout 4 that much less depressing, too. LOL)

[lynellephi]

Almost finished gluing up the frame and sanding the dome edges (I nice sharp xacto knife is great for cutting off the plastic tabs, and then a long flat file where the tabs were to make the edges smooth). With really no time to work on anything until mid-July I won't get the drink dispenser done before Droid Con. Besides, while attempting to make a mock up (which I'm still in the process of) I forgot to figure out how to mount the whole thing on the top of the dome! I'm thinking some very large washers and maybe some kind of short pipe section on top of the dome to mount the dispenser, but haven't quite figured it out yet.

In the meantime I have to cover my coworker while she's on vacation, which means I'll be at work a lot the next two weeks. And I'm still working on the darn basement (furniture is in and it's DEVINE!!). However, the rest of the basement (where I do a lot of droid building) is a disaster zone. Need to clean up everything (does anybody need any books, old furniture, nicnacs, etc?).

[lynellephi]

Got a fiberglass skirt that was badly pulled (he gave me a big discount for it). It's a lot heavier than I thought and a lot more work than expected, and now I'm rethinking this skirt I got. If anyone wants to take a crack at fixing it let me know.

[R2DEVO]

Need pics!

[DarthMunchies Profile]

Yep, pop up some pics. I'm sure it's salvageable and I'll be needing projects once I'm done with Han.

[lynellephi]

I'll post pics when I get back, still super busy this week.