The nearest and dearest project to my heart, my full size replica R2D2, built over the course of many years...upgraded...loved...one of the pride and joys of my creative talents. This is what I like to call the V2 upgrades that were done to R2 to make him more accurate.
This is the 'final' product of the many years of work on R2. We always say that our R2 is never done, and I'm sure somewhere along the way I'll look to upgrade more pieces and parts to make him even better, but for now I'm very happy with his look, the electronics, and controls.
R2 posing with a young fan at a local baseball park, I take R2 out for free events in the local area. I love seeing the look on everyone's face when he rolls up!
This was R2 prior to the 2nd round of upgrades, as you can see he was missing some crucial pieces for details, the dome wasn't as polished, etc.
Whenever doing my 2nd round of 'upgrades' to R2 I had decided that it was time to go back on the dome and give it a better 'shine', the dome originally had spin lines in it from the creation process (spinning aluminum). I had always built the blue panels to be removable if needed for later upgrades or cleaning which came in handy here.
Lots of sanding and polishing later and here is the result.
Time to ugprade the lights, this was a set of boards that a member of our group designed, I purchased all of the eletric components and got to soldering!
The original center vents for my R2 were constructed from cut styrene sheets (think 3d puzzle), they had always been a weak point for poking and prodding so instead I went with a machined aluminum set.
Hours of soldering later and here it was! The LEDs are super bright which comes in handy for any daytime events I have R2 out at, in the original movie the logics were powered with fiber optic strands, maybe an upgrade for the future? We'll see.
Stripped back down to the frame. This is one of the best shots I Have of the original frame, it is an ABS, lasercut frame that fits together similar to a puzzle. Whenever i stripped R2 down for the V2 upgrades I decided to heavily reinforce the frame to make it stiffer, the added weight of metal parts and pieces make the frame have a bit more shimmy in it otherwise.
One of the big V2 upgrades I was making was to actually make the dome spin via remote (something I'd planned on during V1 but never got around to). This is a drive setup/wheel and surplus motor that was meant to drive the dome rotation. Unfortunately the motor ended up being a dud and frustrating which lead me to another upgrade you'll see further down.
This is the new soundboard! 2x25w amp and two small 3" Pyle speakers. My original sound system was a gutted ThinkGeek soundtrack tshirt hooked into a 12 channel remote, this was a HUGE upgrade in clarity and loudness!
This was a personal touch I added to the bottom of the electronics board rear panel. The build date was my completion of what I call V1 of R2, the rest of the numbers have special meanings to me (birthday and my 501st TKID).
This is a great view of my ENTIRELY new electronics panel. I hadn't planned on doing this whenever I went to V2, one thing led to another and here it is. The center is the 'brain' panel so to speak, it communicates with the motor controllers (top left) and the sound board (bottom left) in controlling the entirety of R2, a simple and clean setup!
Laser cut and rolled aluminum skins were removed to start installing the new detail pieces.
This is a better view of the legs with the detail pieces broken down, you can see that everything is keyholed to fit snuggly onto the front of the leg, yet easy to disassemble.
These were actually a V1.5 upgrade that I did prior to a job move. The frame of the drives was cut from aluminum, the motor and wheels are actually from an E100 Razor scooter!
The old hand-me-down drives, they served me well and were retired with honor!
This is all of the lighting wired up into the dome, you can see that many of the lenses have a simple PVC pipe fixture behind them to hold the boards, a simple solution!
These are resin castings of original parts, they needed to be an 'aluminum' to match up with the aluminum detail pieces I have so I painted them to look identical...it's actually pretty close.
Battery Boxes assembled!
Initially weathering was one of the things I feared the most, why dirty up such a perfectly clean droid?! But Star Wars to me is the 'gritty' look of things and R2 had to get the same treatment. I took various shades of browns and yellows, even a hint of red and gray and used washes to come up with this look, I was EXTREMELY happy with it.
