R2 Innovation: Three Aluminum R2-D2 Builds

The first Ah-HA was the changes to the body - once we looked at the resources and determined the new dimensions (specifically the data port, pocket vents, power couplers, and octagon ports), we found that the "new" dimensions had been there all along in the galleries. We found examples of these in every movie (in fact, couldn't find examples of the old dimensions). Sometimes the best stuff is right under your nose.

The second Ah-HA was how traceable and understandable the remaining differences were. There are multiple kinds of feet, yes. But once you study the chronology, you realize that there were likely 1976 feet and 1978+ feet. There were multiple center ankles, yes, but again you can identify the changes from movie to movie. The same is true for our specific droids - I realized after tracing the features that my Episode 1 droid was painted blue again and used in Episode 2 for the scenes when Anakin and Padme leave Coruscant for Naboo.

The third was how much more solid the build is when you take out all the extraneous features. We didn't really need opening doors, we didn't ever want 2-3-2, etc. We traded all that cool stuff for strength and durability, and it pays off well at events. I thought I might miss those options, but it turns out I like the dependability more. I would now encourage anyone looking to build a droid to stay away from the novelties.

EDIT: One more! When you change the overall length of the body as seen in the blueprints, it helps correct the amount that the center ankle cylinders stick out from the skirt. Daren had been talking about fixing that on his old droid for years... now the body changes helped fix it.

The final AH-HA is that even with all the work, there are still things we want to fix. Those large data ports... sure, we got the size more accurate, but the profile still needs some work. They may never be done! :cool

Makes total sense...And validates some of my old thoughts as well.

When I was helping John Sherrell QC the first prototype of laser cut skins, we were working off data that came mainly from the ILM R2 that was built for TPM...Which itself came from ESB era lineage. That particular body is already a generation or two away from the original that the mold was pulled from. Then, before the official skin file was finalized for the first run, changes were made to make the layout look more ANH. But those changes were pretty much eyeballed, and I'm not sure how many people actually had input before a consensus was reached. So while we had actual data from at least one real droid, some things got a little "lost in translation" as it were...

And you are dead-on regarding the different lineage...The original alu droids built for ANH are pretty unique...Then the fiberglass/composite ones for ESB...And everything since that time seems to be a descendant of the ESB droids. The "tell" is the front octagon placement, and the panel layout directly beside it. That's always the first thing I look at to see if I'm looking at ANH or ESB vintage.

And...again...I could not agree more with you regarding your choices regarding non-opening doors, etc...After driving around the ILM droid at C3, I decided that is what I wanted...Composite body, alu details and dome, lights, dome spin, and front hp movement...Easy, breezy, simple. All the bells and whistles are cool if you have the time and energy to do it. But I would much rather do what you guys did and build a solid R2 that just runs and runs well.

Awesome job...I may have to pull the 2.0 files for my build now.

Jason

PS - On a different note...The Dykem is SOOOOOO the color used for ANH...Chris's R2 is the best representation of the ANH droid I have ever seen...Bar none...

I think you hit on my next big hope for the R2 world - marrying the next generation of dimensions with composites. These droids are heavy. A solid, one piece body/skirt is great.... and a fiberglass version would do all that without the heft.

Plus, you could build a droid that looks like the ESB ones -


I've always loved those test photos!

Well considering the fact that I talk with Brett "Crash" on a regular basis, I could probably make something like that happen. He's putting the final details on his new composite BFF frame/tube hybrid, and hopes to have it ready to go by the end of December. While it does have the current inner-skin lines lightly etched into it for those that want to cut out doors, you wouldn't have to use them. You could easily have a set of R2.0 skins laser cut out of styrene or alu, and wrap them around his composite body...BOOM...Composite R2!

What was the outer body diameter you ended up with? The pics look like you may have edged it a little closer to the 18.25" dome diameter...Which is what Brett is also doing with that frame... :love

It's kind of ironic...Back in 2002 I was one of the first guys to start all the current alu craze when I offered some of the first machined alu details to the group...And back then I always thought I wanted an all alu droid...Until I had to pick one up! Now I wouldn't want alu at all...

Composites are definitely the way to go for numerous reasons. Just like you said before, follow the trail. There's a reason they never made any more alu-R2's after ANH...I'm just sayin'

Jason

The diameter is pretty much unchanged, but the body is now taller by a fraction of an inch.

I'm hoping Chris will chime in here and talk about the paint. That was a whole "Ah-Ha" filled journey in itself!

I enjoyed following these builds at the r2 forum as well. What center caster do you go with? I've been wanting to upgrade mine since day one of completing my double caster temp foot.

We tested various casters, but I believe the final one Daren found came from McMaster Carr (I think this one). It's a very heavy duty caster with a small swivel radius. The trick is to lock your center foot down so that it can't move.

Tell me more about the Dykem please.

Cool thanks

man those are beautiful, looking forward to reading the blog

That is so cool...................Cole.

I'll be watching this thread.

Will they go into 2 leg mode?

Stormy320 said:

Will they go into 2 leg mode?

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Technically, yes. The plates that attach the body to the legs have 2 sets of mounts: one for 3 leg and another for 2 leg. The center foot can also be removed with a hex wrench and 4 bolts. Getting to the legs would take a few minutes, but it's doable.

Just...unbelievable.

HoosierTrooper said:

Technically, yes. The plates that attach the body to the legs have 2 sets of mounts: one for 3 leg and another for 2 leg. The center foot can also be removed with a hex wrench and 4 bolts. Getting to the legs would take a few minutes, but it's doable.

Click to expand...

Damn - I can't find anything wrong with these droids. They're perfect. I think these are the droids I'm looking for :behave.

Amazing build

Awesome!

Tell me more about the Dykem please.

Click to expand...

Stormy I am sure that Chris will elaborate on the Dykem thing when he has time to tell the full story - but in short as you may know, Dykem is a brand of dye used to mark out metal for precision machining

you can see it in use in that capacity on one of my earlier attempts at building my own parts here

Coin slots of doom? | kimncris R2D2 Build

but anyway It has become the color of choice recently for dying aluminum parts for R2 that strange ANH blue. There is a big discussion thread about it over at astromech.net and several buiders have done amazing testing to get just that right blue finish in all kinds of light

Thanks everyone for the kind words on the builds.... They were really a lot of fun. I'll talk a little about the R2 Blue and try to guess/answer some of the questions.

I had decided that the R2 I wanted to build was a replica of the R2 as seen on the first day of filming for Star Wars at the Sandcrawler scenes. There are some unique differemces on that droid in paint and configuration and as I figured it that was the closest R2 was in the films to how the original builders intended him to look.

The blue has always been a major question for builders. It appears to change radically from scene to scene and even moreso from film to film. There are hints of purple in ANH and some very strong and interesting highlights going almost black off axis. That has been a very tough look to replicate with paint. I'm going to be running through a bunch of stuff here. If I miss something feel free to ask questions. I'll answer them if I can.

First, we know what color R2 was painted in the new movies thanks to a VERY well informed source. We call that Hypo Blue. Its based on paints from House of Kolor with a mix of metallic colors for a basecoat and a candy blue top coat. The exact ratios and technique are available on Astromech.net

It is my belief that the "Hypo Blue" color for the new films was to replicate the look of the droids in the archives at Lucasfilm, the bulk of which were painted (or repainted) for ESB and ROTJ. The droids in ESB and ROTJ were largely fiberglass so a lot of the silver details were painted on the bodies. the blue details on those bodies were also basecoated with a silver then topcoated with a candy blue paint. This can be seen in a lot of reference and I was able to verify through one of the original ROTJ era R2 guys that the candy blue was special irdered from a supplier in the US. (exact supplier unknown)

The Blues in ANH appear distinctively different from the other films.
The difference on the ANH era droids is that they were largely built of aluminum, not fiberglass. A lot of folks have been trying to figure that out and we had the same challenge. Mike Verta had done an amazing R2 build a few years ago and the blue was a big part of the look for his droid as well. Talking to Mike about the type of reflections that appear on the ANH R2 it became obvious that the blue was a transparent blue applied directly over the raw aluminum on the ANH droids. It has a very distinct look and gives the almost black off axis reflections just like in the film. Part one solved. It was a transparent blue of some sort. Now we had to figure out what the blue was.

Matching the exact blue hue was tough. Everything I tried seemed too shift the color too much to purple or green never giving the right black darks. Experiments with a lot of color tints also seemed to thick on the aluminum and never really adhered well. (Aluminum doesn't like to take paint.)

It wasn't until looking through a thread on Astromech where kimncris was machining some of his own aluminum parts as just mentioned above and using a machinist layout dye that it all fell together. The blue of the dye was perfect! it matched the highlights, had the dark blacks, in some shots a slight purple tint, and the thickness issue seemed to be totally gone. Its basically a permanent maker dye.

There are a LOT of machinist marking dyes out there and I started researching as many of them as I could get my hands on. This pic shows some of the test samples....


I kept coming back to the DYKEM brand Steel Blue dye. (the two left most samples in the above pic) The same stuff Kimncris was using. Strange but true coincidence. That brand, different than the others, also has a brushable AND rattle can version. It seemed perfect.

THEN while gathering reference for an official illustration project I came across an amazing photo from Lucasfilm. It was from the model department for ANH and they were painting a miniature of R2 to go on the landspeeder model. He is painting the blue on R2. In the foreground... a rattle can of DYKEM Steel Blue layout dye that has been sprayed into a cup the model maker is using for brushing on to the model!

Another behind the scenes photo shows the original R2 under construction out of all aluminum with the Blue Dye in use on the dome for marking panels out for cutting.

One problem with DYKEM, even on the original droid is that it is not lightfast. It shifts pretty dramatically with exposure to sunlight. That IS fixable but it requires the application of a UV protective topcoat.

Problem two with DYKEM is that in person, because of the pigment, it appears very purple especially under incandescent light. It still photographs really great though and looks fantastic in photos. (The prussian blue pigment doesn't reproduce in the RGB colors of our displays or even very well in traditional photographic processes)

We didn't want our droids to look purpleish in person even though the DYKEM is in all likelyhood technically correct so we had to find an alternative. What we came up with after a bunch of testing was an automotive clearcoat with a candy blue tint mixed into it. The color we found and ended up using is a Dupont Hot Hues True Blue Candy Tint that we mixed into our clearcoat. Then sprayed through an airgun in multiple coats until the desired darkness and color were achieved. It photographs virtually identical to the DYKEM Steel Blue yet looks great in person.

Thats the story of our R2 Blue.... Hope that makes some sense of it all.

i need the R2D2 size and blueprint , who can provide for me ? ??