Jedi Training Remote

ok this kit is is expensive! dose any one a single cast of this part I could buy from them? IMG_3520.jpg
 
I can't recall off the top of my head. I know that the kit I have does not have enough that are chromed. I was planning to mold and cast the wheels and send them off to be chromed or experiment with some metalizer paints.

Does anyone know How many rear wheels comes in the semi truck kit? Do I have to get 2 kits?
 
If you use both kinds of rim in the kit (different amount of lugnuts) then it provides enough. IIRC, doing so is accurate, although better minds might chime in to comfirm/deny.
 
I've tried to find out how many and the location of the rims that have lugs. One person told me that there are only two that have lugs, the rest don't. No word of the position of them, but I do know that one is definitely on the top hemisphere.

If you use both kinds of rim in the kit (different amount of lugnuts) then it provides enough. IIRC, doing so is accurate, although better minds might chime in to comfirm/deny.
 
I've been wanting one of these for a while, so I decided to hop in and start a build as well. I've got one last kit arriving on Monday and I'll have all the kit parts I need.

In the mean time I decided to get going on the styrene annuli that surround the truck rims. I knew that I wanted to cut these from styrene that was conformed to the spherical shape but I didn't want to go to the effort of making a little vac forming setup, so I decided to just build a little wooden frame to hold the styrene sheet, warm the sheet carefully with a heat gun, and then pull the frame over a 6-inch glass globe lighting fixture. I did a test with 0.02"-thick (0.5mm) styrene and could see that the slight thinning from the stretching meant that 0.03"-thick (0.75mm) sheet was the way to go here.

5D3_5030_small.jpg5D3_5032_small.jpg5D3_5035_small.jpg5D3_5038_small.jpg

With the sheet conformed to the proper spherical shape I marked off one or two great circles to form the guides for the annuli centers and for the 7.8-mm gaps to be cut later on. Given the limitations of the size of the Evergreen sheets I used I could only get a spherical draw large enough to cut two annuli from each draw. I'll use the in-between scrap to cut some of the other rectangular pieces that are needed. Based on builds in other threads I measured off arcs along the sphere of 55.5mm and 32mm for the outer and inner annuli diameters, respectively. Then used a compass to mark off the annuli on the draw for cutting.

5D3_5054_small.jpg5D3_5040_small.jpg5D3_5051_01.jpg

I had thought about having the annuli laser cut, but decided that I could just hand cut them and sand to shape neatly enough to work.

5D3_5041_small.jpg5D3_5042_small.jpg5D3_5048_small.jpg

I really cannot recommend strongly enough how much nicer it is to have these stryene pieces cut from sheet that conforms to the underlying sphere. And it's not at all hard to do, even without a vac forming setup. That's why I posted this here, so others may benefit from seeing this easy alternative technique...

Dan
 
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That is friggin brilliant. I'm going to have to steal that idea for my build.

I've been wanting one of these for a while, so I decided to hop in and start a build as well. I've got one last kit arriving on Monday and I'll have all the kit parts I need.

In the mean time I decided to get going on the styrene annuli that surround the truck rims. I knew that I wanted to cut these from styrene that was conformed to the spherical shape but I didn't want to go to the effort of making a little vac forming setup, so I decided to just build a little wooden frame to hold the styrene sheet, warm the sheet carefully with a heat gun, and then pull the frame over a 6-inch glass globe lighting fixture. I did a test with 0.02"-thick (0.5mm) styrene and could see that the slight thinning from the stretching meant that 0.03"-thick (0.75mm) sheet was the way to go here.

View attachment 774252View attachment 774253View attachment 774254View attachment 774255

With the sheet conformed to the proper spherical shape I marked off one or two great circles to form the guides for the annuli centers and for the 7.8-mm gaps to be cut later on. Given the limitations of the size of the Evergreen sheets I used I could only get a spherical draw large enough to cut two annuli from each draw. I'll use the in-between scrap to cut some of the other rectangular pieces that are needed. Based on builds in other threads I measured off arcs along the sphere of 55.5mm and 32mm for the outer and inner annuli diameters, respectively. Then used a compass to mark off the annuli on the draw for cutting.

View attachment 774273View attachment 774256View attachment 774261

I had thought about having the annuli laser cut, but decided that I could just hand cut them and sand to shape neatly enough to work.

View attachment 774262View attachment 774263View attachment 774264

I really cannot recommend strongly enough how much nicer it is to have these stryene pieces cut from sheet that conforms to the underlying sphere. And it's not at all hard to do, even without a vac forming setup. That's why I posted this here, so others may benefit from seeing this easy alternative technique...

Dan

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, awesome. I grew up in Lee's Summit. I'm in South KC now.

Ive begun this build as well! Good to see another Kansas City resident here! I am in Lees Summit.
 
Spent much of the last two weeks working to finish my build:

5D3_5084_small.jpg5D3_5089_small.jpg5D3_5092_small.jpg5D3_5121_small.jpg5D3_5131_small.jpg5D3_5139_small.jpg

Seemed a shame to grunge it all up, but that's how it has to be to be properly finished. :)

7D2_6591_small.jpg5D3_5181_small2.jpg5D3_5179_small2.jpg7D2_6596_small.jpg

Nice to see the reflective tape doing its job! I'm going to stare at it for a few more days to decide if I want to grunge it up a bit more. Seems like the actual prop has a bit more and what is there seems to have a bit more contrast to it (of course, I've only ever seen photos on the web - I wish I could see it in person). But I'm going to let this settle for a bit (it does look pretty nice in person - hard to get the photos to show the subtlety of the layers of wash) before slopping a bit more on.

Dan
 
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Thanks!

Of course, when gluing the two dome hemispheres together there's never a perfect match fit at the seam. There's a little misalignment by half a millimeter here and there around the circumference. I found the best native alignment I could to minimize the minor misalignments and then made sure to mark that orientation so that I could map out my 45-degree sector marks and have it all fit together again when it came to final gluing. I did feel some minor registration marks that seem to be molded into the domes, but I ignored those and even sanded both edges flat and smooth to get as close a fit as I could. Advantageously, the 15-minute epoxy that I used to do the actual final gluing effectively created it's own gap filler, so all I had to do when it was all set was to rough sand to take all the edges and extruded epoxy off and then smooth sand to finish. There was one small section of an inch or two where thought maybe there might still be a bit of a seam so I ran some Elmer's white wood putty filler across that and smooth sanded again. I did a test when done of just closing my eyes and running my hands around the sphere randomly to see if I could locate the seam by feel. Each time I thought I had it it turned out to be just a minor scratch at some higher latitude - I never could locate it by feel. And it looks to have held up nicely when painted - nice and smooth!

I cut the holes for the rims by hand, effectively. I drilled pilot holes at the marked centers just large enough to fit my Dremel cylindrical grinder bits into (I didn't want to run the risk of messing up the holes with bigger drill bits that I found tend to 'grab' at times and make rough, almost cracked holes). I then Dremel ground to within about a half millimeter of the measured and marked circles that matched the truck rim. For the final fit I just hand-sanded the holes to final fit, checking along the way with test fits of one of the truck rims until they slid in just right. The final holes were very smooth and perfectly round - it's amazing what you can do by hand.

When it came to the final gluing in place of the truck rims I found that I had to sand the rims themselves a bit to fit exactly perfectly with the glue applied. I had one scare with one of the rims where it locked up about half way into the hole with the glue on it - I had to pry it back out with pliers and reset everything. Thankfully, I was able to rescue it and get it to fit in just fine, but it was a stressful close call.

Another pointer is that the styrene sheet for the annuli around the rims is rather smooth and I found that I got a better surface for gluing the tank wheels and u-brackets by slightly roughening the surface in those spots with very fine grit sandpaper.

Dan
 
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