It makes my heart happy
Adam Savage likes to refer to his R2 as a "happiness machine".
It just makes you feel good looking at it
This is a great thread with a better story behind it.
I doubt I’ll ever build an R2 unit, but I’m still enjoying the stories here.
Carry on!
Great update Duncanator Love the way you opted for real alu pieces for your R2 unit. Nothing beats the look of real metal.
That being said...
Making these logic surrounds REALLY kicked my butt.
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First I had to mill long strips with all the angles on them, then cut and mitre them to fit together. Getting all the angles to line up properly was trickier than it should have been.
And then getting the proper curved bevel on the longer surround stretched my machining skills in a whole new direction. I spent so much time setting up the cut, it was crazy!
And then I decided to weld them together rather than use screws.
ahem..
My TIG welding skills were brand new when I did these; and as often happens when a new skill is acquired, you look at every project as a chance to use it - even when it might be wiser to use a different technique. The thrill of joining two pieces of METAL into one piece with welding is intoxicating the first time you do it! It feels like magic after years of screws and glues. The lure of fusing metal with fire was more than I could resist!
So it took a few tries (and failures), but eventually I had some finished parts that I was happy with.
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I was fortunate to have the brain-trust in the modelshop.You making them yourself is damn impressive sir!!