2 Domes become 1!

I've taken the step and passed the point of no return... I've mated the Inner and Outer Domes together!

Yep, that's right. With the holoprojectors and mounts ready to be final installed, that means I've come to the point where it's time to mate the two domes together.

I had a bit a trouble with getting the Outer Dome to fit on top with all the holoprojectors installed, but figure it out when I realized I need to uninstall the front and rear ones, then install them after the domes have been mated together

I decided to just glue the Radar Eye to the dome because I couldn't get the screws to thread into the plastic mount like I was hoping. Instead of struggle with it until I was going to break something, decided to just take the easy way out. Also noticed the PSI mounts, they pop out nice!

After everything is fit up nice and snug, I moved on to mounting the LED light boards into the mounts I had previously installed. The dome is definitely starting to populate now.

All the light boards already have mounting holes on them, so all I had to do was screw them into the mounts installed on the dome. Pretty simple, just drilled a few holes and screwed in a few fasteners. Once I have everything final installed I'll be cleaning up the wiring a bit.

Now with that out of the way, I moved on to the PSIs. Currently there are just open holes in the dome for the front and rear PSI ports/ If you pay close attention, you'll notice in the movies that they are actually opaque and have a milky transparency sheet covering the opening.

So I did some research and didn't find much. I decided to head to the local Target and try to get some inspiration. I walked the ENTIRE store, looking in the office section and arts and crafts section for a semi-transparent sheet that I could use. Nothing.

...Until I made my final stop at the culinary section. Right away I spotted some cheap cutting sheets, and found exactly what I was looking for!

The blue part is a 3d printed mount I created to attache the PVC light board holders for the PSIs to the dome. So I traced out the size of the mounts on to the cutting sheets and went to work with the scissors. Got my 2 cutouts that I needed and proceed to get them glued up to the dome.

These should be perfect for when I install the PSI lights, as they will now be a bit more blurry when seen from the outside, instead of the individual LEDs. It should turn out pretty nicely.

LOOK INTO MY EYE!!!

Next week I will be installing the PSI mounts to the dome and getting the lighting effects all wrapped up.

Dome Integration has Begun!

I've now gathered pretty much all the parts I need to start with integrating the lights and movement effects into the dome.

One of the members on the Astromech forum has created a really clever mount system for controlling the holoprojectors inside the dome. Today I installed these mounts, plus some of the mounts for the lighting effects as well.

Not only do these kits come with the mounting frames, but also all the required hardware to fasten everything up. Once again, the builder's community has delivered!/

Assembling the mounts is pretty simple, I just had to locate and drill the 4 mounting holes for each mount on the inner dome. I started with the front holoprojector first.

It's a 2-piece clamp on the bottom of the holoprojector that then ties into the actuating plate where the servo is mounted. On the pic below you can see it fully installed with both servos installed/

Of course, instead of continuing one with the rest of the build, I HAD to try them out, so I hooked up the servos and gave it a shot. The Arduino program sketch that is already installed for the lighting effects also has the automated movement control of the front holoprojector written into it, so I went ahead and tried it out.

I got some movement, so that's good enough for now! My plan for the future is to have all 3 holoprojector moving randomly. I will need to look into this a bit more, but I think I've already found an Arduino sketch to make that happen. Will just have to figure out to hook everything up together.'

Also mounted up the other lighting mounts, and painted the inner dome it's final color of black. 

Things are starting to come together on the dome. Just need to install the lighting effects and get all the holoprojectors moving and I'll be pretty much done.

Back at it!

It's been a while since I last made a post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working! I've got a ton of pics to upload, so I'll break them up for several post over the next few days.

It's been about 2 months since I've last made a post, and majority of that time has been used for gathering parts.

Parts on parts on parts on parts....

Most of the time has been spent 3d printing all the detail parts for the leg assemblies. Almost have all of them done at this point. Will need to then clean them up and paint before they are ready to be installed to the legs.

Also purchased the leg sets (that brown box in the background of the above pic). These guys come in a kit that will need to be glued together to create the actual leg strut. More on that later.

At the same time, I purchased the frame too! Both the leg struts and frame are made by the same guy, one of the more senior builders in the club. Lucky for me he leaves only about 30 minutes away so I was able to pick them up in person!

I originally wanted to go with the nice aluminum frame made by Com8 (builder in the club), however costing over $1000 I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So the other alternative was this wood frame that hundreds of builders have used with great results, and at only $260, I couldn't pass it up.

Right now I have it temporarily put together until I am ready to glue it in place. I am waiting on getting the aluminum body skins first, because I need to use the skins when gluing the frame to ensure that everything fits up nice before I pass that point of no return.

Next post I will cover my starting of the internal dome integration! I will post about the HoloProjector mount system I installed and talk about setting up the automated control movement for these guys.