Bandai big 1/2 BB-8 build

A

Automaton

Well-Known Member
All other projects are on hold! A giant box containing this beauty arrived this afternoon. The quality looks excellent. Some tabs on the sprue attach to the sides rather than the rear on the 'T' panels, so they'll require some careful sanding on the curves, but this is a sturdy and heavy kit.

I intend to light the body panels. Apart from on one orange disc which lacks any openings, I think there are enough hollows and openings to run LED wires to the clear plastic parts, all of which seem open at the back. I'll need to drill through the head mount to run wires up there and again through the stand mount so I can run it off a single power supply. I will appreciate all your support in the wiring on this! I'm intending to run it off a 12v mains adaptor and use LEDs in parallel that are pre-wired with transistors for 12v DC and will be asking a LOT of questions as I've never lit a model before. Something this scale looks a good place to start though. :) I'm going to keep all the wiring inside except for the DC connector.

The white and orange plastic look great. I thing I'll just be clear-coating those. I'll be using chrome paint and then a metalizing powder on the metal parts. I'll also replace the tall aerial with a brass rod.

The first thing I'll do is some test assembly of the inner frame to plan the wiring. Exciting!!!

FullSizeRender.jpg
 
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Re: Bandai big bouncing 1/2 BB-8 build

Approx measurements for those wondering:

It'll be somewhere around 17"/43cm high from the bottom of the base to the tip of the aerial. about 10"/25cm across the body. 33.5cm/just over 13" from the bottom of the body to the top of the head.

Big kit! I don't think I'll get away with keeping this one downstairs! :D
 
Re: Bandai big bouncing 1/2 BB-8 build

Quick test fit of some of the big parts. As you can hopefully see, there's plenty of room to thread wires through the core. You can see the light shining through the top right and how far the support structure insets on the bottom right. I could fit a small speaker and probably a mini Raspberry Pi in there if I wanted to!

The inset details on the orange disks have concave rears, which should help the wiring. However, even though the disks are designed so the same part fits in different configurations, I think I'll need to drill a hole in each orange disk as it's looking like all the holes are used to attach parts.
 
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I've decided to paint him, as there's some filling I want to do on the head seams. There are very few seams to fill... I count two so far. It's typically well designed.

The other thing is I've noticed the orange is a little anaemic compared to how BB-8 appears on screen. I think something like Volkswagen L20B Brilliant Orange would give more of a feeling of what we see on screen. I can get that as car paint from Halfords... That's acrylic lacquer and designed to work on rigid plastic panels, but I know the Bandai plastic doesn't always play nice with solvents so I wonder if it's safer to mix something similar from Tamiya X-6 Orange and XF-9 Hull Red then airbrush it? There's less orange on show than you might think.

Now I could use gallons of white! Any tips for a good cheap white spray would be appreciated.
 
astroboy said:
If you go for the black basing method, you will use far less paint with your airbrush

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Good point, thanks! The weathering on the screen prop does give it that kind of look, anyway. Plus a black undercoat will help block light from the LEDs I guess.
 
First of the stupid wiring questions... Of which there will be many. I've only ever wired passive circuits in guitars so this is a new world.

- BB-8 essentially needs 7 clusters of LEDs: The head and 6 body panels
- I think I'll be buying LEDs with pre-wired resistors to save some hassle for me
- Would the best approach be to make each those seven clusters a series, then run each series in parallel? Would there be any issues running different colours in the same series with pre-wired LEDs?
- There's nothing to stop me wiring a female DC jack to the main leads on each cluster then using a daisy chain adaptor to connect everything to the power supply, is there? That would make assembly and disassembly easy and there's loads of space to accommodate that.
- Am I right in thinking 12v DC using a functioning power supply carries little risk of shock but shorts can cause fire?

Cheers in advance. As I said... a new world for me :D
 
After researching LEDs, I decided to buy resistors separate and wire them myself. You save so much money you can afford to destroy a few! I have a ton of wire, DC jacks, LEDs and the like on their way.

I'm going to create 7 separate modules and run them in parallel.

In the meantime, I'm planning how much material I need to remove to run the wires. This is what's needed to run the cable to the base. Blue is where the wire runs, red is stuff to remove/drill. In the second pic, the white 'T' panel is lifted off the big square peg it sits on, which is hollow and has an open side. Not a lot of work. The interesting thing is there are some extra T panels so you could construct a body that has neither the base peg nor the head mounting peg and is perfectly round.

The first thing I'm going to do is paint the inserts of the round panels and metallize the silver parts. If we have the weather, I might get to do the orange parts as well this weekend. Then those parts are ready for wiring.
 
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Oh yeah... I've decided I'll do sound too. I got a dead cheap 2W MP3 player board just like the one below and some other gubbins to add effects and, most importantly, get his "mouth" flashing in time :D

 
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It's been a productive day! white done on the panels and the metal is finished on two thirds of them, with two waiting to be metallized. I'm going to use Painter's Touch Real Orange, I've decided. My airbrushing technique isn't up to anything so big just yet.

There are, however, a couple of flaws with this kit. In line with other Bandai kits, it's built like a giant action figure rather than a model, and therefore it has a lot of bracing and pegs so it slots together. That means, a bit like a large toy, there are some dents and indentations on the outside of the plastic where you have structural detail on the inside. You can't see them on the solid colours. However, once I've dusted on some silver and clear, then buffed it up with some metallizer powder, the structures on the other side become quite obvious in places when you tilt it to the light.

And here on one that hasn't been buffed up. You can see an indentation that reflects the interior detail on the door. I expected a little unevenness because of the slightly worn, dull look I was going for, but this is a bit more problematic. I can weather some of this in, but it would be much easier to get a good finish had the panels been in more pieces and glued in, and the front and backs of the doors been separate pieces. Not sure how I'd have got round this, but a flat aluminium sort of paint would probably look best on this.

IMG_0028.JPG

In other news, one half of the orange detail on the head is a hair too tall. I'll need to sand that down for it to sit flush.

Plus, I've been doing some surgery here and there. The square light on this piece didn't attach in a way that would look great when lit, so I cut it out and will use PVA to glue it all together.
 
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I looked over some clips from TFA and I realised my metal wasn't actually dull enough! It had more of a brushed effect with some flat spots. I got the wire wool out and tried to emulate the weathered metal feel, and it's improved the overall look loads. With the rest of the weathering this should look pretty good and the flaws in the plastic shouldn't draw the eye.
 
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I put a very light dusting of silver over the metal work and that's evened everything out. Today, I've mainly primed and done the panel lines on the orange panels. It's really starting to come to life.

I also went and bought some orange paint. After comparing various pictures online, I went for the Rust-Oleum Painter's Touch 'Real Orange' (EDIT — Beware! Antsnest found this particular paint has solvents that can react with Bandai plastic. See his post on page 3. Mine likely worked because I went heavy with the Tamiya primer and perhaps on this test because it dried quick in the sun) It's pretty much exactly what I wanted: a very similar colour but with a bit slightly darker and a little more saturated/red.
IMG_0044.JPG

Next week, a million jiffy bags full of electronics components should arrive! :D
 
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Making great progress there! I got mine on Friday but been away for the weekend so have only tinkered with it a bit.

Wondering if a few coats of filler primer will be enough to level out those sinkmarks....?
 
A quick simulation of the lighting using some LED string lights.

My strategy for blocking the back is to cover up the LEDs. I've backed some tin foil with duct tape, which makes a really sturdy but flexible backing. I'll fix it in place with small pieces of duct tape as I find it adheres well over time and plug any small gaps with wall tack. I may yet spray the centers of the discs black, but my experiments so far are promising.
 
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Planning the wiring is going pretty well. I'm using DC jacks and a splitter inside the body to power the different lighting modules. The head splits from its base to accommodate the Bandaids lighting units. I'm going to fasten the sound boards to the base and the LEDs to the top of the head. I'd like to connect the mouth LED (which is part of the sound circuit) and the other LEDs using some form of quick connectors for easy assemble and maintenance, rather than have tons of excess wire. Are 2-pin JSTs my best bet?
 
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