JimmyZ's R2 Build: Center Foot Time

Center feet - cheap labor

Awesome sauce!
Received the center foot pieces via mail from Frank Pirz

Was going to wait on this till next weekend but had some little visitors for the past 2 weeks that asked and asked to help with R2.

I said sure why not and they proceeded to help:

Sanding/Filing - Josh Phipps
Cutting and trimming pieces - Zachary Phipps

These two pushed me to get the pieces tied together and assembled

Here is Zach working on trimming... he looks excited!

SO we started to assemble the frame of the center foot, this is key to holding the weight of R2 when he is moving forward etc... so we are going to use weld-on 16 which takes longer to dry and is more like glue in texture. Weld-on 4 is like water which is what most of the work was done last time with.

We seperated all the parts out, checked off each part... ran into some issues with mismatched parts, looks like Frank has changed his design and didnt update the documentation as yet. we will work through it when we get to those parts.

First we dry fitted everything together and made sure we understood the assembly of the frame.

Looks good.

Next we simply glue each piece together of the frame, connecting it all to the bottom plate with has a 4" radius hole at the bottom to handle the caster.

Next we dry fitted the center ankle to the foot to ensure that the width of the channel was correct.

Looks good.

Frame is complete... now to move onto the outer shell.

Taping the shells together at the bevel allows me to stand it up in place and pour the glue into the seams to better the connection to each plate.

Ok now to glue it...

ok looks dry - again weld-on 16 dries very slowly... so I will come back to the shell in a hour or so.

We will use the green putty (

While I was at it... I filled in the old shell too, oh boy green everywhere.

Now they are ready to assemble

I placed the outer shell over the frame and glued it into place... verified that all the surfaces were touching.

I then added the magnets to slots on the sides (these will be used to join the outer shell doors without having to glue and allow easy removal in the future to get to the inner parts.

NOTE: I used supermagnets from homedepot... they work great!

I flipped over the center foot and added green putty (bondo) around the edges between the shell and the bottom plate. This allowed me to have a good surface to glue the bottom skirt to.

The putty is called Squadron Green putty... model airplane builders generally use this stuff to fill in the edges on planes etc. This stuff is expensive as its only a 5ounce tube and it took almost the entire tube for just the bottom of the foot.

You can find this stuff on ebay or at any local hobby shops...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/331456389101?lpid=82&chn=ps

I then sanded and filed the surface of it down so it was even and flat all around.

Adding the front and rear slits and top channel skin and presto... we are ready to add the skirt.

This part took some time, I had to use weld-on 16 again and let it sit then moved the pieces together tight as the glue gets more sticky the longer it sits.