Treadwell WED-15-77 build : JamesF

[Jaffa007]

Blog update: Part 24

https://r5-d4astromechdroid.blogspot.com...4.html?m=1


It’s been a busy month!
At the beginning of it, I finished machining the last two axles (front).

The second motor arrived but the brackets still haven’t, should of been here by the 12th February at the latest..... Got a refund, so had a go at printing my own version in some PETG material.


3D Printing:
• more wheel spacers in polypropylene.
• Drew up a mast base support plate. This was an idea I had to help support the bottom of the mast and add rigidity….. on re-test fitting the mast afterwards, the lower structure was already strong, but this does help.
• battery location brackets I drew up and 3D printed last month.
• Drew up a new receiver unit to secure it to the board, see control board picture below.
• Motor brackets
• covers for the wire holes, to make things look neat.
• Drew up some control panel supports & printed.

Mast base support:

Can be seen fitted here to the PVC pipe.

Electrical:
Once I’d decided on the battery location, it was going to go in the rear, but decided the front might be better, plus more space for the control panel and for the motors. I still need to make some brackets to secure the panel, see below. Bought some 14 swg cable, as the 12 swg looked a bit overkill compared to the motor wire.

Servo wires:
Whilst re-installing the head cables into the mast, the arm servo lead got caught and unplugged. This wasn’t the end of the world, I simply unscrewed the arm box cover and pulled out the cable. I had thought this might be a future problem, just hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. So now it’s secured with some clear heat shrink. ‘A’ for arm servo.


Control Panel:
I used one of the left over boards from the Head Box build, as a panel to mount the speed controller, fuses, switches, receiver, and sound system boards.


The two toggle switches (top right, above the Sabertooth speed controller) are off an old transmitter. One is for power and the other is for turning off the sound board.

UPDATE: A new power switch is to be relocated to outside of the body for quick access.


Detail's:
Another detail I need to continue, was on the front panel. It needed to have pop rivets added to give the illusion of them being metal plate.
panel detail - pop rivets added


I need to add more to other areas of the body.

_ _ _ _ _
\°00000°/
- - - - -
Tracks:
I was going to wait till I’d tested out the temporary display set I had. Unfortunately one of them broke when re-fitting onto the wheels.

Before the temp track broke, I had a go at 3D printing the guide teeth in Polypropylene. These were too stiff, so a redesign was required, but as the temp track broke, I decided to focus on other parts of the project instead.
The idea was to have a thin strip of 3D material linking the teeth, hopefully, helping with retaining them on the track.

The supplier I bought the rubber mould material from, supply in 2Kg , so I’ll be ordering this next along with colour pigment.

I redesigned the 3D track moulds to allow for location pop rivets and/or to help bond the guide parts of the tread.

Photo opportunity:
Co working was leaving (end of February) & wanted to see the assembled droid.
Took this first picture of it about to start working on repairing some machines.


Feels like the end of building is near……


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk