Kresty working on Fusion Power Generator

[kresty]

Just realized I forgot to put the coils on last night. Oops. Managed to break some of the lower hose fittings moving it - more careful in the future! (Coils are inside for carrying them to the Science Center, forgot to take them out.)

Fusion Reactor (missing coils)

Doing the heat thing to the rest of the hoses I found that it worked a little better to go with the natural curve for the top, and then to reverse the entire round part of the ? - seems counterintuitive, but I had a hard time getting the top bit to get straight enough, far enough when I tried to use the original coil of the hose for the bottom and then bend the top backwards.

Fusion Reactor and Droids

[savagecreature]

very nice work!

[kresty]

Thanks! We'll try to get coils on it tomorrow

[savagecreature]

in your photos it looks every bit as convincing as the original. I personally like it better with the bottom the way it is on yours vs. the way it was originally. It just looks more solid, to me.

[kresty]

Nobody'll ever know about the bottom (well, 'cept us).  

Went to hear Colin Cantwell talk at the MoPop this morning and showed off the droids at the Pacific Science Center in the afternoon.  Seems like Paul Allen bought everything cool for his museum (That's where Kirk's chair and the nav console are.)

Anyway, we remembered to put on the (temporary) coils today.

Kresty's Fusion Generator

We're having trouble keeping the posts and bottom hoses on (they stick out and like to bang on things).  And the coils are temporary, we have bigger ones (hopefully similar color) on order.  It all looks a little reddish in the photos because of the packages around them.

ONE PERSON (out of hundreds) actually knew what it was (or at least commented on it).  Kid knew 'everything' about Artoo.

[kresty]

Aha, I do have a picture of winding the coils.

They are 4' (1.2m) of wire wrapped around a 3/8" (1cm) dowel.  The top is 20 gauge craft wire, the bottom 1.5mm (15 gauge).  The bottom is a much more accurate size.  The original seems to be a bright copper wire color, but I'd like more bronze (the bottom is a bit too red, I have more wire on order).  I counted something like 30 coils (I forget exactly) on the prop photos, and this seems to get pretty close.

Playing with Fusion Generator Coils

I wound the first several by hand, but doing 11 of these is pretty tough on the fingers, even with the thinner wire.  So we drilled a hole in the end and screwed in a screw to grab the wire end.  Then we stuck a drill on the other end of the dowel.  Much faster - though it did take a bit of work to get the technique down.  (We ran the drill in reverse to match the direction we hand-wrapped the coils).

[kresty]

And... you probably thought I was done!  But I wanted to make some of the tougher parts easier.  I'll be posting v3.0 laser-cut files soon.  Mostly those files have minor tweaks, however the "window" area gave me trouble and the "grooves" were tough to etch in with the laser.  So I've converted those to tab-and-slot parts on my V3 plans.  They fit pretty well.

This photo is "upside down" - the M ring at the base of the top is on the bottom in this photo.  The outer holes for the T hose fittings are also new (and my new T's have posts to go in them).

Fusion Generator "windows" with tabs & slots

Fusion Generator "windows" with tabs & slots

[Murasaki]

impressive .. I love it!

[kresty]

I seem to only have about 1/2 my "topics" done, but I started a build guide explicitly for this style in the wiki: http://www.rebeldroids.net/wiki/index.ph...tyle_Build

[Lichtbringer]

I don´t say it very often, but i love this build and the work you have done.