Rear Logic experimentation

I dunno. I figured I'd try my hand at scratch building R2's Rear Logic display. Using the "rear logic" tutorial, I used the following materials:

• A left-over scrap of styrene plastic from the C&D Styrene Dome (I will trim it later so that it becomes the "bezel" for the rear logic -- once I paint it black.)
• Grid style solder ringed board which I purchased from "The Source"
  
• LEDs arranged in 4 rows of 25 each (note, the original specs seem to have 27). Why 25? More on that shortly...

I've done some soldering of the strands, but have a long way to go. I really don't know if I can pull this off, I'm still so new at soldering.

Here's the backside. Note the series of holes to the Left of all the wires. By enlarging the holes with drill bits (increasing in size) -- I was able to create a "template" to drill the styrene plastic (the bezel). Sorry for the blurry pics -- maybe I did that on purpose so that you can't see how horrible my soldering skills are ;-)



And here's the front side:




So because I used this "soldering" board's holes for the bezel template -- I was only able to squeeze 25 LEDs across. (i.e. With the rear logic "surround" in place, you can only get 25 LEDs across.)

I may go ahead and scrap this idea later... I've gone ahead and ordered Leon's PCB boards for the front and rear logics just in case.

Dome

I really wanted to get the 300mm Dome (aluminum) -- with all the panels cut out. But I just couldn't stomach the $450. Well -- that's not true. Problem is, the Canadian Dollar + border fees would have driven that cost for me probably up towards $650 CDN. Very pricey.

So I decided to go for the styrene C&D Styrene Dome Set as advertised from Astromech.net. For $99 US, it seemed like a good deal -- but would need a lot of work to lay out the panels, cut, paint, etc.

Here -- you can see a picture of my dome. Most panels are cut out.

The Story So Far...

To get things started, here's a picture of the wood frame I've put together using the R2D2 Wood CNC Frame Kit plans posted on the R2 Builder Yahoo Groups site. It's not glued yet, but fitted together (with some Dremel finesse). I'll probably still need to Dremel out some bits here and there, but for now -- it's done. One regret is that I didn't use great wood. This was plywood that I picked up at Home Depot. If you are going to go down the road of building your own frame -- I would think twice about picking up some good hobby-grade wood. I should note here that before this whole R2 project began, I never owned a router (workshop type router, not IP router...). So I learned along the way, scorched a bit of wood here and there, ruined a bit or two -- but I think by the time I was finished this frame I had learned quite a bit about the do's and don't to routing wood...

From a Galaxy Far Away...

Well this is it -- my very first blog. I've seen so many people's R2 Building blogs, I figure it's about time to start my own. I've learned so much so far -- it would be a pity not to share my accrued knowledge so far!!