Center Ankle/Foot

Not a lot of posts this week but I have been busy working on the center leg/ankle and the center foot for my R2. First the center foot. I decided that the center foot would be made out of styrene so following a design of a fellow builder I printed out the plans and went to work. After 3 or 4 nights of cutting I have a blisters on my hands and all but 1 or 2 small parts for the center foot done.

Center Foot Styrene Parts

I started gluing some parts together and that proved to be a little troublesome finding a glue that would work. Using some scrap pieces of styrene, I tried several different glues to see which would hold the best. I started with Loctite Superglue and Testors model glue and neither would hold at all. After that I moved to a hot glue gun and that held but the glue was too thick and even after clamping it seemed to show a gap in the pieces. Next, I tried plumbers PVC cement and that seemed to work but was a little messy to work with. Finally, I found some JB Weld epoxy and that seemed to do the job well.

Center Foot Channel

I started gluing some parts together and was able to build the channel which will eventually connect the foot to the ankle. The pencil in the picture was to ensure that the holes lined up while gluing. And this is where the foot work ended this week.

I also started work on the main part of center leg and ankle. The leg itself will consist of 2 pieces of .5" plywood sandwiched between 2 pieces of .75" plywood. There isn't really much to show you for that particular piece because all I did was cut the wood to length and make some measurements. However I do have pictures of the work I've done for the ankle. I read some blogs and posts at the astromech.net forum and found that one member used a PVC pipe to make his own ankles and decided that I could do the same. After all, you get much more satisfaction out of a part you've built yourself rather than one you've bought (although the parts you can buy do look great). Anyway, after much searching and a very helpful Lowes employee I was able to find the PVC pipe that he had used. It was a 2 ft long drainage pipe that had a diameter slightly larger than what the prints called for (6.2" d vs 6" d) but decided it was close enough for what I was doing. Once I got it home, I needed to figure out how to cut it. The part itself only calls for a small arc from the pipe so I would need to make 2 cuts the length of the pipe to get the arc that I needed. In order to make the cuts as straight as possible I screwed a piece of wood to the side of the pipe to run along the fence of my table saw.

PVC Arc Jig

I measured, cut and after much trial and error, I was finally able to get the arc piece to the correct size.

Ankle Arc

Once I was satisfied it was correct, I cut the arc to the 4" length.

Ankle Arcs cut to 4" lengths

Only 2 are needed for a single center ankle on a droid so I have 2 more for the next droid :-)
The next step will be interesting in that I need to cut an angle into the arcs but that is a task for another day. Hopefully, I can find some time to work on both the foot and ankle this week. It would be nice to be able to scratch another part off the list.