Saturday, March 19, 2016

Final Touches on the Outer Dome

It's been difficult to find time, but I was able to squeeze in final painting of the Outer Dome.


It's been raining a lot here in Southern California lately, so I've also been delayed with final painting for that reason as well.  But the planets aligned and I was able to paint!

Since I had already done all the masking, it was a quick few minutes of work to get the metallic gunmetal color painted on the Outer Dome.


I was VERY careful and made sure to make multiple super light coats rather than only a few heavy coats. I was definitely worried about paint bleeding through the masking I had done, especially since it was a couple of weeks between when I masked and when I actually got to paint.

I let it cure overnight, and went right for removing the masking the next day. It was a tedious process, but then again I may have been a little too cautious when removing. I REALLLLY didn't want to mess up the red paint underneath.

Look at that!


I have to say, it came out perfect.There was absolutely no bleeding onto the red parts. Very crisp and clean paint job.

It looks very Sith-like with this scheme... wasn't anticipating that, but I'm digging it. 

It was now time for the final clear coat. I spent a good amount of time considering the type of finish I wanted,and in the end went with a Satin textured finished. 

This muted the colors a bit, and gave a rough cement-like finish to the Dome. I think this gives it a more hardy, durable feel, which a military droid should be, right? It also looks like it will protect the paint from pretty much all but the worse damage.


In the mean time, I've been starting to acquire detail parts for the leg assemblies (3d printing like crazy!) as well as the body frame! Frame should be here next week, and then still waiting on the Holo Projector mount and control system, which will be the final part assemblies for the dome.



Wednesday, March 2, 2016

It's been a while since I've posted, but this is a quick update about starting the final paint process for the Outer Dome.


As I am waiting for more parts to come in, I took the opportunity to work on prepping and painting the Outer Dome. 

It had been some time since I had last worked on the Dome, so the initial primer coat was definitely cured and reading for paint. My idea was to paint the red panels and other details first, mask all those areas up once they cure, then paint the remaining base gun metal color.

Painting the red details was the easy part. I took some 400 grit sand paper and hit all the areas that would be receiving the red paint as it's final color. Didn't care much about the other areas as they will get prepped prior to final paint.
Candy Canes? Christmas in March...
The satin finish turned out pretty well! Color is definitely what I was hoping for on the Dome.

After letting that cure, I went straight into masking up all the areas to prep for the final gunmetal color. All I did was using typical blue painters tape and covered up all the areas that would stay red. I'm hoping this works as well as I have envisioned come time to paint.


All masked up and ready for final paint! 

Now just to find some time away from work.... the weekend can't come soon enough!