Kevin's R2-E5 Site: Ankle Cylinders

I considered purchasing resin cylinders for my droid until I got a good look at the specs for it. The cylinders are 1.375" rods with a trapezoidal outcropping on each side. I decided I would give a go with this and see if I could make them myself. I started with a 1.375" PVC tube and I inserted a 1" wooden dowel into it. The dowel was cut to be about 2 inches longer than the PVC tube. It was a nice fit but the combination of the 2 did not allow me to be able to secure the dowel into the tubing without having a large amount of excess glue running out. I cut the inserted dowel piece in half and after brushing the inside of half the tube with gorilla glue I inserted one half into the tubing so that it goes in partially leaving the excess inch to hang out. Using the open end of the tube I spread more glue into the tube making sure to get it down on top of the other dowel already in the tube and then inserted the other half of the dowel. Again, about 1" of the dowel stuck out the end. This process allowed a large area the glue to adhere itself to the tube while also fastening the 2 dowel halves together.

Once the glue was dry, I used the table saw to make the grooves in the cylinders. I did practice cutting the grooves on several scratch pieces of PVC to make sure the depth looked good and I could get a nice straight groove out of it. I do realize that the grooves are slightly larger than spec but that was something I just accepted..

Next, after cutting the grooves, I needed to determine how to notch out some material on the bottom of the cylinder so that it will sit nicely on my legs ankle. The problem I could foresee is being able to keep the cylinder from turning while cutting. After some thought, I ended up gluing a piece of wood on each end of the dowels so the pvc tube would stay still. Without a pic it's hard to explain but I guess the best way to say it is it kind of looked like a TIE Fighter in the the sides were flat with the cylinder going between them. Anyway, I then used the dado blade on my table saw and slowly cut away the unnecessary material. It took a long time to get the depth correct on the blade and then twice as long to remove the 5" of material .25" at a time. It proved to be worth it and I ended up with a nice fit when putting it on the leg.

The last part that remained was trimming the ends of the dowel to look like a trapezoid. Once again I created a jig to keep the cylinder/dowel combination from moving and I used the dado blade on the saw to remove the unnecessary material. This needed to be done from both the top and bottom and the left and right. Once I got the correct length I needed, I used my band saw to make the angled cuts for the trapezoidal shape and hooray, I was done. I still need to do some sanding, fill some gaps, and paint but the hard part was done. And they turned out pretty well. I will post another set of pics when they are fully painted.