Friday, September 30, 2011

R2: Back on The Wagon

Yup, I'm back in R2 building mode. My goal is to see just how deep into the build I can get before the Batmobile shell arrives. I forgot how frickin' expensive R2 building can be!!

The good news is that I've already gotten a TON of parts, and I believe that the main investment is already done. Also, from my first build I picked up a ton of tools and materials that will still be available and useful. For example, my air compressor, spray gun, paints, drill press, tap/die kit, drill bits, etc. The list goes on and on.

The big news today is that the internet rules. I was starting to poke around online to find a place that sells the rockler bearing (that's the thing that R2's head sits on so that it will spin) when all of a sudden a friend of mine on Facebook, John, started an R2 parts list with links to places to purchase them. Boom. Rockler was on there. I snagged one. 80 bucks.

For this second droid, I'm going pretty budget, but not total shoe string. In a quick conversation with John, I discovered that MOST of the parts on his are scratch built. Which is amazing for a number of reasons. First is that I would never have guessed, as all of his droid parts look amazing. Second, well, I can't think of a second reason. but it's amazing! But that's way too much work for me. I'd rather spend a few extra bucks just to buy a piece of resin, and then just clean it up. Much less work.

Fortunately, I have a TON of resin parts already, many of which I can start working on to get them cleaned up. I'll post pics soon. Anyhow, pretty exciting times. I'm tempted to also keep my R2 blog updated on mattmunson.com, if only for redundancy's sake. I kind of want to have it all in one location.

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