Maker Faire 2011

We went to the Maker Faire in San Francisco last weekend.  Once again Chris James did a lot of work to organize our presentations of R2D2 there.  We also had Mike Senna, Victor Franco, and Mike McMaster from southern CA come up and join us with a Wall-E booth.  It was a great event.  A few pictures.  Grant Imahara from Mythbusters stopped by our booth along with Don Bies (another droid wrangler and builder from Lucasfilm).

We gave Chris James the well deserved "R2 Builder Lifetime Achievement Award."  Over the years, Chris has done an enormous amount to foster the builder community, he's innovated R2 design and components, and he's helped so many of us learn.  Thanks again Chris!!

Max spent hours helping out in the bubble booth creating enormous bubbles for the crowds.

After much pleading, I convinced the owners to let me drag the 30,000 pound Colossus sculpture around by myself fulfilling my "Conan on the Wheel of Pain" fantasies.

Wonder Con 2011

Just came back from two days at Wonder Con.  Lots of great events, booths, dealers, costumes and people.  When I was bringing R2 back into the house tonight I noticed several rather luscious lipstick kisses on his dome. I'm not quite sure what to think about that.

 

Wonder Con

The Bay Area R2 Builders are headed to Wonder Con in San Francisco at the Moscone Center tomorrow.  We've got a panel discussion on Sunday at 12:30 in room 220.  Please come by and see us.  We'll also be roaming the convention.  The San Francisco Chronicle wrote up a story about us and the convention here:

R2-D2 Makers an attraction at Wonder Con in S.F.

I'll post pictures soon.

Gauntlet progress

Once I got the curved pieces formed for the gauntlets, I went to work building up the rest.  Here's where I am with the left one at the moment:

This is a little rough to look at now, but it's all coming together.  I'm going to have to mess around with the underside by reshaping it.  I also think I'll take the inside layer out and add some thin styrene to make it less bulky.  All these little pieces were cut and glued together with PVC glue.  Once I cut out the templates and taped them together into a 3-D model, I could see what the overall shape and relationships were.  That made cutting and building decisions a lot easier.  It looks like the right gauntlet will be a bit easier.  And after these, the armor should be a lot easier.  

Boba Fett 2 Gauntlets

I took some time over the weekend to make up some forms for shaping the pvc expanded cell board for the gauntlet base pieces.  There are curved pieces that wrap over the top and bottom of the forearm that have a bunch of stuff attached on top.  Wizard of Flight has some curve guides for them.  I transfered the curves onto some pieces of plywood, cut them out, mounted them, and then wrapped them with some card stock.

Then I cut out some pieces of board slightly oversize to the plans.  When you heat this stuff up, it tends to get some irregularities and curving at the edges.  So I figure I'll get the curve in there and then cut them to size, square them up on the belt sander, and clean them up.  That way I can be sure to cut the piece from the section that has the right curve.  I got a big pot of water to a full boil, then I dropped the pieces in one at a time.  It only takes 30 seconds or a minute for them to get floppy.  Then with some gloves, I put the pieces over the form and shape them down to fit.  As soon as it cools, it holds the shape:

Cool, huh?  Don't worry.  These are oversized on purpose, and they are supposed to have some slightly different shapes for the assemblies that attach on top.  

I got to thinking about these after I made them.  These are 1/8" thick.  There's another piece that double over the tops of these with some cut outs.  So that'll be 1'4" thick total.  That's too thick and cumbersome, I think.  So I found some 3/32" thick stock in my pile in the garage.  As soon as I have time, I'll redo this in the thinner stuff.  Eventually these will be painted and weathered to look like they are metal underneath.  

Boba Fett 1

So I've been scheming about building up the full Boba Fett costume for a long time.  I actually started in earnest on it before Halloween.  I tracked down a Sgt. Fang helmet.  I'll post more about that later.  The particular pull from the mold that I got from him has a lot of problems and will need a lot of work to make it right.  I'm pretty disappointed after all the raving about Sgt. Fang and the Mystery Helmet on The Dented Helmet.  But for now, I've been gearing up to work on the jetpack, the gauntlets and the other hard goods.  Jetpack first:

Scratch built Boba Fett has to start with the great set of drawings that Wizard of Flight has made available on The Dented Helmet.  Look for the sticky note links under the forums for the different parts of the costumes.

I downloaded all the plans and spent a while playing around with the pdf printing variables to get them the right size.  WoF drew the jetpack at 15" wide.  At the time, I think that was his best estimate of the actual width of the jetpack from lots of reference pictures (also posted on The Dented Helmet in the galleries.)  I've decided to scale the jetpack up a bit to about 16.25"  Two reasons:  1.  I'm a taller guy (6'2") than the Boba Fett actor, and 2. some new pictures and some careful sizing makes it look like the real thing is bigger than 15".  Even WoF seems to agree now, but he hasn't changed the official drawings yet.

Another challenge is getting the pipes that serve as the rocket thrusters and tanks the right size.  To keep the project cheap and light, scratch builders go with plumbing supply PVC pipe.  So I'm using 2.5" inside diameter pipe for the outside tanks and 4" I.D. pipe for the main tank.  These are both really close to the sizes on the originals as far as I can tell although WoF has the middle tank a good bit smaller.  So using readily available pipes requires tweaking the plans some more.  Here's where I am now.  I've got a number of the main pieces cut and fitting together with screws:

I went to Interstate Plastics in Sacramento and bought some expanded cell PVC foam board.  This is the Sintra (trade name) that guys are talking about on the boards.  A sheet of 4' x 8' .25" board is about $50.  I also got a lot of 1/8" pieces for a great piece out of their scraps bin.  I can't say enough good things about this stuff.  I used a lot of in on the R2.  It cuts easily, the edges clean up, it can be painted.  It's lightweight and easy to work with.  You can heat it up, bend it, and it will hold the shape.  You can glue it and create really strong joints with standard plumbing pipe PVC cement.   It's just about the ideal material for prop building.  I got enough to build several jetpacks and the gauntlets.  

The back of the jetpack or inside curves across both the X and Y axis. So I used a thinner piece (1/8") there and I've just temporarily screwed it together for fitting:

WoF's plans appear to be different from the real thing at the bottom here.  On the screen used jetpack there's a recessed box.  I'll be mocking that up and adding it.  It'll be more detail and work, but not difficult.  Once I've got all the modifications on these basic pieces sorted out, I'll be gluing all of these up.  That'll add a lot of strength and integrity to the whole thing.  The goal is to have it be tough, durable, but lightweight.  I'm also going to cut some big pieces out of the pipes where they are hidden under the pack housing.  That'll shave some more weight off.  More soon.  

Halloween 2010

Built a lot of props for Halloween this year, including a Road Warrior costume.

I used a set of football pads off of Ebay, added some spikes from some Goth Halloween store accessories.  The crossbow is a cheap pistol version that I sawed off and mounted to a shin guard.  I also got a set of catcher shin guards, modified them, added mounts for crossbow bolts.  I made arm and elbow guards from shin guards.  I used a handful of leather belts got cheap from a second hand store for straps.  The torso armor is a rubber walkway carpet protector from Home Depot.  The rabbit skins came from the Internet.  I added some fake bones and teeth, painted to weather them, from the Halloween store.  Then there's the mohawk with some temporary red dye.  A black feather boa worked for the trim around the neck of the football pads. I painted everything flat black and weathered it with brown and grey acrylic paints, watered down heavily.   The boots are some SWAT boots I already had.  And I got a military issue gasmask at a Halloween store, painted the filter bright red.  I also modified some old filters on my paint and fume mask and wore that.  And I had a pair of industrial looking goggles that went over my glasses.  

I put together several other things for the Harrison's Halloween party and for our house.  Today I had a bit of time and I threw together a rough Gonk Droid from stuff I had in the garage.  Another day of work on it and some paint and I think it will look pretty good:

 There are two 18 gallon tubs, a 9" baking pan, several scrounged parts screwed into the pan, and some simple 2x4 legs and feet with dryer vent hose over the posts.  This needs a lot more work but it was a good quick start on the project.  

I should also mention that I recently did a little event at a local Gamestop when The Force Unleashed II came out.