Utility Arms

Like a lot of my build I decided to make the utility arms from scratch out of wood and was reasonably happy with the results, although in hindsight I would probably have been better off buying resin versions of these, or getting them 3D printed.

I started by making a paper template from the blueprints. I glued this to a thin piece of wood that I will use in a later step.

I rough cut the template on the bandsaw and then used various sanding tools for clean it up.

I glued up two pieces of MDF to make a wood blank of the right thickness.

I glued another copy of the paper template to the wood blank and rough cut the shape on the bandsaw.

I screwed the wood template to this piece and then used my router table with a pattern cutting bit to cut the final shape of the curved parts. The one screw hole will be where the pivot point will go, but the other I will fill with wood filler.

The router can’t get into all the tight spots so I had to do some hand sanding and filing to clean up those spots.

With that profile complete I created another paper template and used it do draw on the other profile.

Once again I rough cut this profile on the band saw and the did filing and sanding to clean it up.

Here is the final product with a couple coats of primer.

Progress Photos

As I have mentioned in previous posts this blog is way behind my actual progress. Here are some progress pictures take throughout the years.

This is from January of 2016 when I did a test fit of the various assemblies.

Here is a picture from December 2018. The biggest different you will notice is that he is no longer a R5-D4. Once I had the body together and started to test fit the skins, I was so happy with the way it looked that I decided that there was not way I couldn’t do an R2-D2.

Finally, here are some picture from April 2019 just before his first public appearance at my companies May the 4th celebration. At this point it is just a static figure, but I have started to work on the dome lights and plan to do some other mechanical editions to it.

Read Door Frame

On the back of the frame I created a removable panel that allows access to the interior of the body.

Here is a pictures of the back of the frame where the door will go. I have seen two approaches to the power coupling that is at the bottom of the back. I have seen some people attach the power coupling to the frame and build the door around it. I decided to integrate the power coupling into the door.

Here are the frame components. I cut these using the same techniques as the rest of the frame which you can find in my earlier posts.

I wanted to be sure the door had a good fit to the frame so I first fit the uprights and clamped them in place.

I dry fit the top part of the frame and used some folded up paper to get proper clearance between the door and the body frame.

Hear I am fitting the lower rail into the frame.

Here are the rest of the components fit and temporarily clamped. I used folded pieces of paper again on the bottom to establish the proper clearance.

Once I was comfortable with the fit I took everything apart, glued it up and used a pneumatic staple gun to secure the parts.