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My Last Crusade

To make R2D2 walk I needed more precise tooling than I ever thought. Machine tools are very powerful and I had heard of them while working at Motorola. I had even saw them performing under the cautious hands of specialists and wondered if I could too use them someday. Unfortunately you can get dangerously hurt with this type of machinery and I was not about to experiment with them as I did with fiberglass (which is harmless unless you inhale it!). So I found a place where short Machine Shop courses were being offered. I took them all!

Knowing how to use the tools prove useful but owning them was necessary to perpetuate the knowledge and actually build the pieces. The first tool I bought was the smallest lathe Harbor Freight tools sells. Six months after that I bought the milling machine and then the R2D2 project became once again a moving project.

Cylinder Body: The body was complete except for a lot of ornaments such as the exhaust ports, fans, aerial band, doors, programming ports and other parts. The milling machine (with the indexing head I bought six months after the milling) allowed me to build all this prototypes out of wood or resin blocks. This are the only parts which I feel look exact.

Dome Head: Head did not undergo more changes at this stage. I did had to paint it a few times and that is a nightmare as there is aluminum color and blue. I am not a painter and do not intend to become one, so my R2D2 painting is not professional at all. A lot of ornaments where missing. The principal eye was built on one of the first stages molding plastline and casting it with fiberglass. All other ornaments such as the sensor blocks and sensor eye were shaped with the milling machine. The holographic projector is a shower head I bought at the flea market at 10 cents!

Legs: Legs had to be reworked using the milling to add some missing ornaments on the side. Most ornaments on the leg are missing. The side cylinder that looks like a shock absorber and the related triangle, the cylinder on the ankle and other parts where never created. The truth is that I rather begin a new leg design than trying to fix these.

Feet Mechanics: This is the part that took most time but was only achievable because of the milling and lathe. The mechanics of the feet involve a transmission built with commonly available bicycle sprockets and chains. But the small sprockets were plastic so I had to build them out of aluminum. Try to do that with a router! Also to couple the sprockets to the motor shaft and wheel axis, the lathe was impressively useful. The transmission encasing was built using the milling. The precision needed to build this part required the steadiness and ease of maneuverability that only a milling provides

Psychology Profile: There was frustration sometimes because of the painting stages. I hate to paint! And the sad part is that whenever you finish painting you get this crazy idea that by reworking some pieces your design gets better. Why does this ideas wait for the painting job to be finished to appear? I had to repaint the unit at least four times. This implied sanding and filling holes (which I now have learned how to avoid).

Working with the Machine Tools is the most rewarding task of all. You begin with a piece of nothing and at the end a part has been created. The last year was very rewarding in this sense.

The result? A quite good replica of R2D2. It is not a 100% exact but I would have to build it again to make it look perfect. Will I do it. I have no idea! Sometimes I think I should and sometimes I think that I should devote my time to other droids.

R2D2 will always be fun to build but what about practical? I am an Electrical Engineering and if I invest 4 years to build one ornament I would be throwing away my talents. There are so much droids that can be build that are actually useful to the human race. So I believe next time I build a droid (really soon) it will do something useful. Maybe I won't have to clean my house anymore! Do you think such a droid would sell? Nahhhh..... (I am being sarcastic, by the way!)