Last year, I believe it was May 4th, it was announced that Star Wars Celebration 2017 was going to be held in Orlando.  Awesome I thought, maybe I'll have my droid finished and I can take it along or whatever it is people do with these things.

Then in late June, an "Official call for droids" came out on Astromech.net.  To which I was like " wait, my droid is still not finished" how can I apply?  The call for droids is basically the group's way of organizing who will get to display their pride and joy in a themed room especially for us droid builders.  So I applied and furnished the pictures I had, but sadly was turned down, naturally my droid wasn't complete.

As the show drew closer I discovered from reading on the Astromech forum that they didn't turn away finished droids, and that I would, at the very least, be able to park my droid in the builders storage room during the evenings.  So somewhere around the late fall of 2016 I decided I'd need to complete my astromech and get it to the show regardless.

At the time I had probably 30% of the build remaining.  I had started work on this project back in the fall of 2013, holy smokes it had been nearly 3 years.   I had the foot shells to finish and mount on the drive system.  I had the battery boxes to complete and the foot hoses to mount.  Then the dome still needed the radar eye installed.  Lastly the entire body needed to have all of the parts 3d printed and installed, and the skins mounted and painted.  It was a huge amount of work to wrap up in just a few months, and with the holidays thrown in for good measure.

So I started by writing everything down in notepad on my phone.  I called it something like "Hella important tasks to finish" .  I tried to make it as detailed as possible, and as I went along I checked each part finished.  This turned out to be a life saver.  So I worked as efficiently as I could, working on weekends and after work as often as my schedule would permit.  My build log on Astromech.net was kept up as well as I could, but mainly I focused on getting the work done, and catching up the blog was secondary.  As you can see, I didn't add anything to this blog during that time.

Anyway it all worked out.  I finished up the droid, I named R2-J8, just a few days before the start of SWCO 2017.  Those extra few days allowed me the time to add weathering to the droid, which I think turned out better than expected.

R2-J8

Star Wars Celebration 2017 was a blast.  I can post more about it later, but I have to say that all the hard work of making the droid was rewarded by all the compliments, not only from fans but other droid builders as well.  Naturally some of the best builders in the world were there, I was both humbled by their amazing talent and at the same time, experienced a sense of pride at having my work displayed along with theirs.  The fans were amazing.  Best of all were the littlest fans.  To them, R2-J8 was real, and completely magic.

R2-J8 receiving secret plans

R2-J8 falls into the hands of the empire

R2-J8  sold on the Jawa Market

R2-J8 on display in R2 builders room

Don't you just love 8-bit art?

Okay, so if you own a 3d printer, you're probably thinking:

How can I make something useful?

I'm guessing there are a lot of things that can be done, provided you have the imagination.

If you're like me, and lack that quality, head on over to Thingiverse.com

Check out Thingiverse for the stl files.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1174471

We often set up a second or third small tree in order to display our more quirky or eclectic ornaments.  Otherwise I would'nt have gotten away with this one.  =)

You could print this out with yellow filament or just do as I did, and paint it using whatever you have on hand.  I used the basic acrylic craft paint you can find almost anywhere.

If you're feeling like a small electronics project, there is also a fancy version thanks to the folks at Adafruit:  it's called Starduino:
https://learn.adafruit.com/starduino-neopixel-8-bit-mario-star-tree-topper

Getting it all back together

As I was saying, I wanted the monitor back in the cabinet.  So today I started reassembling.

These cabinets have bolts that mount through the side of the cabinet, so I polished those up by clamping them in a cordless drill and holding them up to some fine sandpaper.  I then cut the openings in the newly applied side art and bolted everything up.

The lower marquee bracket and lower bezel bracket were both starting to rust away in spots.  I sanded those down and hit them with some Rustoleum high fill primer and then lightly sanded them down till they looked and felt smooth.  I guess I may have done this twice, and sanded the primer down each time.  Then I hit them with a few light coats of satin black.

I picked up a small led under counter light fixture from the hardware store and mounted that in place of the old florescent light fixture.  It was the perfect size and will run cooler and trouble free for as long as I'll care.

The bezel was pretty dirty and had some major stuck on gunk at the bottom where the lower bracket was attached.  This I cleaned up with some simple green.  I then hit the whole bezel front and back with a dual action car buffer and some Mcquires ultimate polish.  It seemed to clean it up quite nicely.

When I started this project over a year ago, I must have ordered most of the parts I thought I would need.  So in a box I found the new instruction card and new bolts for the control panel.  Which was really thoughtful of me, thanks john2015.

I also found the flat white t-molding in the bottom of the cab, guess I ordered that too.  So I put that on, knowing it would look like I had done a lot of work when really it's a super easy step.

I then mounted the main board inside the cabinet and hooked up the harness.  I had to add a new power cord and this I did by extracting the pins from the old two prong plug and re-crimping some new pins on the end of the new power cord.  I then crimped a ring terminal on the ground wire and got everything into place.

I crossed my fingers and turned the game on.  I could hear the same old Nintendo "boink" sound.  Then I walked around the front to see if the game was up, and sadly it wasn't to be.  I checked a few voltages, and they were down to around 4.8v.

This got me looking at the power supply.  I wish I had taken some pictures of it, but it was just a fidgety thing, lots of screws and tiny bolts holding it together.  When I did get it apart it was a mess of twisted grimy smokey smelling wires.  I replaced all the old capacitors with ones that I happened to have on hand.  Some I didn't have but I guess I can always get back in there and finish some day.

Anyway, long story short, I fired it back up, and the voltages were now just above 5.1v, so I was happy with that.  The bad news is the game was still not working, it appears to be stuck in some kind of constant watchdog reset.  Okay, maybe it doesn't work, but it's starting to look nice, right?

The PCBs are going to get shipped out to Mike's Arcade for repairs.

Side Art for DK

It's about time I get back to work on this Donkey Kong project.

If you've been reading along, you know that I recapped the monitor.  Well since then it's been sitting around the garage, and doing it's best to be a burden.  If I can get the artwork installed, then I can return the monitor to the cabinet, and that will be one less thing I have to move around.

So, I ordered the DK sideart from arcadeshop, and it arrived yesterday.  Rather than wait around for neatly rolled and somewhat expensive giant stickers to get stepped on, I decided I'd try to get them affixed to the cabinet as soon as possible.

After googling I found the consensus was that it should be 4 and 3/8 inches from the top and exactly 2 1/2 inches from the back.  There were lots of other suggestions on how to apply the artwork.  Such as using painters tape to align the piece and special rollers and such.  Well I didn't have anything but scotch tape, and my laminate roller seemed a bit awkward so I just used a squeegee thing that I had from another project.  I think perhaps the most important item to have on hand is some upbeat 80's music, I used New Clear Days, by The Vapors, vinyl is best if you can find it.

I taped it in place about midway down and peeled the backing off ( of the side art, not the old record album).  I then folded the sticky portion down and using a pair of scissors, removed the backing and carefully affixed the top of the artwork, using a squeegee and some car detailing spray as a lubricant on the top surface.  Working this carefully up from the middle, I had little to no bubbles trapped between the art and the cabinet.

The next step was to remove the remaining tape, carefully, since I had to use scotch tape.  Then I flipped the whole piece upwards and carefully peeled a portion of the backing off and downward.

Placing the backing in this way helps to hold the artwork away from the cabinet so that you can then carefully squeegee the material to the surface a quarter of an inch at a time.  Once again, I had very few bubbles.  I think it turned out well.  The second side was even easier.

Speed Controllers

So recently I've made a push to complete more on this Astromech droid.  My short term goal is to have most of the functions working by the release date of the new movies.  That's this December if you've been living under a rock.

Some clever folks on the forum worked out how to use the tiny and inexpensive PS3 navigation controllers to drive their droid and control it's sounds, head turns and movement.

Once I saw this I knew right away it was the route I wanted to go.  Who wants to carry around a large radio to control a robot that needs to look autonomous?  The Sony PS3 nav controller is almost hidden when held in the hand and can interface with the devices I have already decided to use in my build.  One member has already designed a method for interfacing this controller with the Marcduino control boards I am implementing for the lights, panels, and sound controls.  So it was a big relief to see these options all coming together.

Over the last month I've ordered in and installed most of my electronics.  The dome drive motor, I ordered up as a kit, and so that was a breeze to get working.  I polished up the Rockler bearing, and reassembled it, with much success.  The head turns nicely now, and relatively quietly.

I then mounted two shelves in the top portion of the body in order to provide space for the components I was going to need to get the droid rolling and moving about.

The components trickled in and I had everything ready for install on a Saturday afternoon, I think it was June 4th.  I spent the day with little to no interruption, just deciding where each piece should go, and carefully getting it all wired properly.  Later that evening, I was able to test the system.  I'm now quite happy to say the droid is driveable, and his head can be controlled or allowed to run autonomously.  It was an awesome feeling to have, what up until now, seemed like a pile of parts, be mobile.

 I built and mounted this little control panel in order to mount the main switch and two foot drive switches.  I plan to add whatever switches become necessary to the panel, if I need more room, perhaps I'll have to make a larger panel or re-think what I'm going to do.  For now it works and I'm reasonably happy with the look.

In my excitement, I sent this to James:

He followed up with this hysterical parody:  I LOVE IT!  He even does the bit where I hold the controller up! =)

Patching up the Donkey Kong Cabinet

I had a good amount of free time this weekend and I spent most of that patching up this old cabinet.  I lost count of the number of times I had to fill and sand with filler putty.  In addition there were several bad spots where the plywood was delaminating.  For those places I had to brush wood hardener between the layers, then clamp that all down with a scrap piece of wood to get it flat again.
 

The cabinet was sanded down, inside and out.  After which I noticed several more spots I had missed, and so the process would begin again.  I try to repeat this cycle as long as possible, but in the end it comes down to what I'm willing to live with, and I think this one is now good to go.

The inside panels got three layers of primer, sanded between each.  Afterwards they get three coats of satin black.  As before, not perfect but as close to the original look as I can reasonably achieve.

I took a chip from the inside of the cabinet to Lowe's and had them color match the paint.  I ordered a quart of oil based paint and picked up a quart of the standard Kilz primer.  While I was at the paint counter I asked them to tint the primer as well.

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The front panel needed replaced so I cut a new one from some spare half inch plywood I had on hand. You can see here, that like most folks, I removed the speaker panel in order to get a better finish. This and the new panel are getting two coats of Kilz primer.

I gave the sides of the cabinet two coats of Kilz and called it a day.  I'm going to allow the primer to dry for a few days and go back and sand it as smooth as possible in preparation for the paint.

It was a beautiful weekend, perfect for working in the garage and just hanging out.  My old friend Lee came over on Saturday and we listened to a good many records from his collection.  We also ventured out for lunch to grab some tacos.

This project seems to be moving forward nicely.  I'm even contemplating ordering new side art.

Pac Man gets capped

As I have posted about in the past, I usually have the game room/garage cleaned up and open for Halloween night.  Over the years I have drawn a small crowd of repeat visitors.

This last Halloween, one of my daughter's friends were playing Pac Man when the flyback transformer died and sent out a nasty cloud of smoke.  Not a big deal, the next day I swapped the G07 that was in the game for another that I had in reserve.  Just the other night I finally got around to doing a cap kit on it.  The horizontal output coil needs replaced but I didn't have one on hand.  The image was also too large to see the high score.  So for some reason I thought it would also be a good time to check the B+ voltage.  Good thing cause it was around 140V.  I adjusted it down to 120V and the screen shrank just enough to get the score on the screen.  I still need to replace that coil though.

So for posterity I decided to add a post here about the Pac Man.  I was looking at the blog the other day and noticed that the majority of my traffic is for the one Pac Man post were I'm applying the vinyl artwork.  Well folks here is a pic of how it turned out.  Nothing really special to see.  I suppose as Pac Man goes, this is a pretty nice one.  Better still would be to use the actual stenciled artwork painted on the cab as was original, but I'm not that much of a purist.

I had been having intermittent issues with the game not booting up.  So one day I got tired of that and sent it off to Slava Madrit to get it all fixed up.  You can find him on E-bay as Madrits. While he had it, he was kind enough to add the High Score kit that allows for initials to be entered, so that was special.

Oh and I added one of those little electronic Pac Man key chains to the mix, very special indeed. =)