Emerald City Comicon 2014

L3-G0, a life size Lego R2-D2 attended ECCC (Emerald City Comicon) in 2014.  It took me a bit to get the video and stuff organized, I've been busy, so the post's been delayed.

In case you're new here, as far as I know this is the first time a complete full sized Lego R2-D2 has been displayed in public.  L3-G0's been "out" a couple times (at Microsoft, Lowe's and a Sealug meeting), but not with all his bits.

By completed I mean that as in "just completed."  The last bit got complicated and he didn't show up until nearly the last minute before the doors opened.

We had tons of fun with L3-G0 at Comic Con, here's the aforementioned video:

The video has several short segments I thought showed pretty much the experience, skip ahead if you don't like a piece, the parts get better.

• L3-G0 with some of the fans taking pictures, even Unikitty!
• The astromech parade with other Pacific NW R2 Builders Club R2-D2s and other droids.
• The crowd and going back to "Brick Nation" where the Lego exhibits were.
• A short encounter with a taller pirate.
• Darth Lily, one of L3-G0's more enthusiastic fans.
• L3-G0's shopping spree, it is a con after all, you've gotta buy something!
• Keeping all those pesky Daleks away from Brick Nation.

People don't seem to be getting past the first bits so I might post individual videos later, however if you want to share only one bit with your friends, YouTube lets you share starting at a certain time.  Or just ask them to skip to 3:57 or whatever.

I forgot to include a bit on packing him up :(  Too bad you can't edit YouTube videos.

Some photos as well:

Darth Lily comforting R2-D2 after she scared him so badly.  She was cute enough she has her own post

Darth Lily comforting R2-D2 after she scared him so badly.

L3-G0's on the right with the other club droids.  It's kinda cool to see him next to the other droids.
The ankle details on his right ankle are backwards, fortunately it's hiding in this photo.  I was so mortified when I noticed that a couple weeks after the con.

Pacific NW R2 Builder's Club droids all lined up

I liked this nook while waiting for the droid parade.  Reminds me of Jabba's Palace for whatever reason.  (Not saying anyone else would make that jump, but I did).


L3-G0, Lego R2-D2 in a nook

What's a Lego exhibition without a Unikitty?  Unikitty came to see L3-G0.

Unikitty posing with L3-G0

Eventually it all ended :(


L3-G0 packed up and ready to go home

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed the ECCC 2014 report.

Fixing your Lego R2-D2's angle for Star Wars 10225- Ultimate Collector's Series (UCS) model

Before I built L3-G0 I built the 10225 Lego UCS R2-D2 ("Ultimate Collector's Series", I guess they haven't thought of L3-G0, is he ultimater?")  Even before I joined the R2-D2 Builders Club, I realized that my new "ultimate" R2 didn't stand right in 3-legged mode.  It drove me nuts, so I fixed it.  Here's what I mean:

R2-D2 is supposed to have an angle between the legs and vertical of about 18 degrees for a total of 36 degrees.  However Lego's instructions for the UCS R2-D2 don't provide the right angle.  I didn't know the exact amount when I build the 10225 Lego kit, but I could tell that it looked wrong. He looks like he's about to fall on his face. 

I drew a red line sort of along the middle of the bad angle Lego kit and a green line in L3-G0's centerline.  As you can see they're pretty far off.  Notice that the back legs aren't too bad, it's just the angle of the body.

To fix it, all we have to do is make the middle leg a little longer.  To do that I moved the stop up one stud to the top of the leg support - and all of the teeth too.

Unfortunately, that means that it hits the stop plate in the center support.  That's the 4x4 plate with a 2x2 hole in the middle.  When it hits the plate, the foot won't retract all the way.

 

The fix is to remove the offending plate, which apparently isn't really needed, so you can use the cool hollow 4x4 plate somewhere else.  Here's a picture showing the removed plate circled and the stop in the space the plate had occupied.

Here's the result of our repaired droid.  A nicely inclined astromech at the same angle of the full size one.

Lego R2-D2's, both L3-G0 and the UCS 10225 Lego Kit

Anyway, I hope this post helps save the world from Lego R2-D2s that look like they're about to fall on their faces!

 

I'll leave you with an annotated copy of on of the R2-D2 Builders Club diagrams showing the correct dimensions of an Astromech Unit.  I've added the 36 & 18 degree angles in blue triangles.

Now I know I'm truly way too much of an R2 geek!

 

 



Transporting L3-G0, the full size Lego R2-D2

People have asked several times how we transport L3-G0.  It's actually really, really easy.

Many MOCs (My Own Creations) are fairly fragile.  I was terrified of figuring out how to move L3-G0 and that was in fact one of my first experiments.  I had tons of bungees and other stuff ready to move, plans for a plywood base and all sorts of stuff.  Moving the Lego Space Needle is pretty challenging.  I feel happy that it only takes 1/2 hour (usually) to get it back together now.  That's only 4500 bricks.  L3-G0 is closer to 16,000 bricks!  So I figured it'd be harder.

He's only 60-65 pounds or so (almost 30kg), so unlike many other R2-D2 builds he's not too hard to lift.

The first part is to take off his head (remembering to unplug the wire helps) and stick it on the car seat, careful of the holoprojectors.  I put the seat back up as far as possible, but don't really worry about strapping it in or anything.

 

Then we pick up L3-G0's body and put it in back.  The front foot shell comes off and the casters get shoved in around the rear seat's mounting point.  Hooking the bungee around the top of the foot is about the only hard part since the hooks don't have much room on the mounting point.

 

 

And then last is to merely hook the back seat belts around the central foot guide post, pulling them to ratchet tight (like you would a child seat).  Again, watch the wire on the top.

The sad thing is that getting the bungee is sometimes tricky, and the last step, the seatbelts, is so simple, that I've forgotten about the seatbelts about three times already.  Fortunately the last two times I caught myself, but on the way to Hosik's science fair we were late & rushing, so I drove down the driveway with them off.  I was reminded to fix it when L3-G0 fell over on his face.  Fortunately it didn't do much damage.

Anyway, once he's secured, the model's ridiculously stable.  It barely moves and I don't need to be nearly as careful driving as with the other models.  (The Space Needle wants the sections I divide it into to fall apart, and the Lego Disney Wonder's nice wooden platform has slippery velvet on it, so it wants to slide around.  The worst part for L3-G0 is putting the front shell back together.

Little Darth Vader (Darth Lily?) Loves R2-D2

One of the fans attending ECCC, Lily, was dressed up as Darth Vader when she came to visit L3-G0.  Her dad asked her to go put on her Vader mask and pose with R2-D2.  As she came up, "R2" saw "Vader", made his sad sound and backed up.  She came closer and he did it again.  And again.

Lily didn't like R2 being sad, so she took it off and showed him it was just a mask.  Then she gave R2 a hug to comfort him.  She talked to him a lot saying how she saw his movie and he was her favorite robot and other stuff again. 

Everyone wanted to put the mask back on again to take pictures, but she didn't want to scare R2 again.  They "talked" a bit, and her dad translated his beeping as really wanting to be scared again.  She asked if he was sure and I managed to hit a button that did a somewhat positive sounding beep.  Reluctantly she put the mask on again, and when he shuddered again, she quickly ripped it off and gave him a hug.

Normally L3-G0's a "don't touch", but Lily was so short and concerned and gentle I wasn't worried.  It's the kids patting him on the head that cave in the dome, or people tripping over his feet (I've learned R2 has big feet). 

Thanks to Lily and her parents for letting us share her picture and video.  I start this clip just before Lily so you can see just why he's so scared of her costume.


Yes, Lily, L3-G0/R2-D2 hasn't forgotten your name :)

Group photo at ECCC

Photo of L3-G0 with other R2 Builders Club astromechs here at ECCC.

It was great finally meeting other club members up here.

Made it to Emerald City Comicon (finally)

I'll try to post more later, but here's a tiny bit about the first day at ECCC.  Everyone loved the full size Lego R2-D2.  Asking wonderful things like "do you know about the R2-D2 Builder's Club? (yes)  And then L3-G0 would beep and they'd go "oh, he makes sound too!"  When they started to turn away I'd drive him out and run around the show floor and they'd say "No way, he moves?!?!?!"

L3-G0 was supposed to get set up yesterday, but the skirt took too long to get behaving.  I blogged about what he looked like yesterday morning.  That required 3D printing some bricks and stuff, but I still had time.  Unfortunately the skirt's on the bottom, so he had to be upside down with the legs & feet off to work on the skirt. 

 

When I flipped him back over and stuck on the remaining parts I found little things like the dome wouldn't fit: 

• Above the shoulders, I'd fixed a gap that was missing last time, he hadn't had that before, so I didn't know it'd cause clearance issues. Because of the tightness I'd left out a plate of thickness, about 1/8" and forgot it'd make the sides 1/8" too narrow.
• The left battery box hadn't been Kragle'd and tried to disassemble itself when sticking it on.
• Worst, somehow I'd messed up the center caster.  I knew the standards 3" caster didn't fit in my Lego shell, but my custom casters failed miserably.  But in the trials I found a 3" caster that seemed to work well.  I was so fixated on the fore-aft clearance I forgot about sideways, so he couldn't go backwards without the caster jamming or slamming the box to pieces.  So I gave up on Thursday.  Show didn't open 'til Friday @ 10 so I had time.  I used an early prototype and finally got his feet behaving around midnight.

Getting to the convention center was tricky.  His tie-down is actually really trivial in the minivan.  Jam the front casters into the hold-down for the far back seat (after taking out the seat) and throwing a bungee around it.  Then, with the dome off (sitting on the rear seat), stick the way-back seatbelts around the center post and let them click into being tight.  I'm used to Lego MOCs being fragile and insecure, but L3-G0 travels unbelievably well.

 

Of course that's before putting the fragile shell on it.  I thought I could lift it up, but it turned out there wasn't enough room for the bungee, so the shell came off.  That wasn't too hard, but I outsmarted myself and it was harder to put back on than I'd expected once I got to the convention center.

Once there, the fans loved him.  One seems to have found the droid they were looking for!

 



L3-G0 worked really well.  On the previous trials parts fell off and there were other small problems, like when the shoulder broke.  But he was really reliable.  Unfortunately the battery died before lunch, and I let it get really low, so it wouldn't fast-charge.  Fortunately I found a motorcycle shop that had another.  Alternating two seemed to work fine later in the day (though it's annoying to swap), but we'll see tomorrow. 

 

The worst part was the prodding of the fans.  They liked to poke.  And many wanted pictures with their hand resting on the top of his head.  Which is the most fragile part, so his head was dented a few times.  And he had an accident with his front foot, but for the most part L3-G0 was strong and ran well.

 

At the end of the day the sprockets on the bolts I'm using for axles started slipping :(  The best I can do is probably tighten the set screws in the morning and cross my fingers, but I think it'll be OK.  And maybe slow down the acceleration curve a bit.  It looks like the rest of the stuff I did to tighten up the wheels worked OK though, so it should be solvable.

 

Gotta get over to the R2-D2 Builder's Club folks sometime, which should be tricky as they're in the other building, and worse, on the other side of the trade floor.  The alternate route crosses the street and L3-G0 hates pavement (way, way, way too bumpy).

 

Need sleep, two nights up way too late.

Umm, when is ECCC?

Emerald City Comicon's tonight.  L3-G0's gonna be working, flashing lights, sound and everything, right?!!?!?!?

He's decapitated, and the body's upside down!  And doesn't that 3D printer look like its on and running to you?  Hope it's nothing critical.

 

The table's covered with a pile of parts, tools everywhere.

And his legs are off and the insides of his feet are showing.



I'm supposed to be at Emerald City Comicon when!!?  Maybe I should show him as R2-D2 in the droid factory.

Latest Video

Still needs legs and a few other details, but lights and sound are working now!  He went on another test run at work (Microsoft Building 50).  Afterward we took a spin through the café where he got quite a few pictures taken.

Latest video:

Oops

Well, this is a bummer :( 

 

We had a little mishap at the science fair.  This is what happens when centripetal force gets to L3-G0's head and he spins too fast.

Sealug Meeting

L3-G0's not done yet, but he's getting there!  We went on a test run to the Sealug meeting, which was held at ECCC's headquarters.  The kids loved chasing around a life size R2-D2 and were willing to look past his partially completed state.

He's obviously missing his legs/shoulders, skirt, front foot skin and a few other details, but I wanted to test transporting him and see what problems I might encounter, and where he might fall to pieces.  I don't want to be spending all of Emerald City Comicon fixing him!  Sounds are also still on a random loop, and he has no dome LEDs at the moment (which means he can spin his head a ton).

I have some video of his outing, the meeting starts about 40 seconds into the clip.  I took a week off work to make a big push to get him from frame to nearly complete:


I didn't think I was going to get the dome reattached before the meeting, but Lara prodded me and it was mostly reconnected just in time (I was a few minutes late).

The test outing was a great success, we learned tons that we'll need to know for ECCC later in the month:

• He does great with his new shoulders in the car.  Tying down's going to be tricky when the front foot cover gets on, but otherwise much more stable than when I took the frame to work.
• The new shoulders (laminated plywood) seem to be doing OK.  Since he has 4 wheels in each foot, there's a lot of stress when he turns because some of the wheels have to slip.  That pretty much destroyed the old thinner shoulder hub.  I'd expected to need aluminum, but the plywood's doing OK.
• On a related note, when turning hard, the feet can chatter a lot, enough to knock off the battery box (at 60 seconds in the clip one of them is missing).  The outer foot panels chatter too.
• He can spin his head fast enough to throw off a holoprojector, which happens at about 1:20 in the video.
• With the throttle limit off on the motors he has pretty much a perfect amount of power, much faster than walking, but not so quick as to be uncontrollable or unrealistic.  (My previous outing was limiting the motor controllers and he was just under walking speed).
• He looks funny without shoulders :)
• The vibration from pavement or even a sidewalk is a bit scary, he knocked a couple dome panels loose that way.
• The body held up really well.
• L3-G0 knew to expect rain in Seattle, but it started to snow at the end!

We still have a ton to do before ECCC, crossing my fingers that we can get it all done!  L3-G0 will be in "Brick Nation" at ECCC, the biggest Lego display yet at Emerald City Comicon.  Ground floor of The Conference Center building.

Starting to get back together

Update for my L3-G0 build, the full size Lego R2-D2.

It's like cleaning where things get worse before they get better.  Finally he's starting to get back together WITH his frame!

He was upside down a bit while I tried to figure out the skirt (built back on "Day 3", but haven't had anything to attach it to until now.... and now it's not right :(

 

And unfortunately the shim that the dome's bearing is on didn't fit once the body was bolted together.  The original shim was hand cut, but now the body is in a laser cut 12-sided shape.  Apparently without a frame it had more play.

 

Even worse, the (@*&#()*%& bearing didn't come with properly spaced holes, so I had to get at the bearing to transfer the bolt holes correctly.  And the bearing was on the bottom of the dome.  I almost got away with having the dome upside down, but it didn't survive :(



I'm hoping to get the dome back together for the Sealug meeting tomorrow, but it might not happen.  He obviously isn't complete, but I'm hoping to see how well he transports.  I'd rather mess up tomorrow with weeks to fix it than mess up on the way to Emerald City Comicon and have a few hours to fix it!.

L3-G0's Frame Test Run!

Warning:  Reader Discretion Advised.  This post contains discussion, photos and video of the naked interior of a Lego model as filmed by my wife.  (People who searched for some of those keywords may be disappointed by this post.)

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This part has been a bit tricky, so it's been a while since I posted.  But it's starting to get there.

For Brickcon we pretty much had L3-G0's entire body built and ready, head moving, computers making noise, etc.  All that is pretty cool, but he was just sitting on a table, and we want him to move, run around the room, scare the cats, and all that.

To do that, we need some sort of "frame" to hold all the Lego together.  Something that won't shake apart on a rough sidewalk.  We investigated using Lego, like Technic bricks, but L3-G0 is pretty big and heavy.  The original model had a single Technic pin connecting the ankles, which clearly wouldn't work.  So we settled on wood and aluminum.



This is from a test run of the frame.  He's jury-rigged to move so that I can test how sound the design of the frame is.  Hopefully I'll shake out any structural issues before he gets his skin on.

He's RC controlled, like a model airplane, with 2 channels being mixed using the radio's v-tail mode to control the left & right motors.  So he ends up driving like a tank, though the control is with a single stick.

The motors are like what you'd use in a kid's electric scooter, and he's 8 wheel drive!!! (which actually isn't great).  The RC receiver outputs for 2 & 4 go to the motor controllers, which can be configured by computer.  There's a tiny acceleration/deceleration delay so that he doesn't slam the chains, which seems about right.  The motor controllers are also throttled at about 1/2 power because I didn't want to have a short or something and have the frame got out of control.  That'll have to be increased for real.  The speed's about right on smooth floor, but on carpet it's a bit slow, and it'll be even slower with another 30 pounds of Lego bricks on it!

Gory Details

The frame is mostly aluminum t-slot, with some brackets and stuff to help out.  I want him to eventually do "2-3-2", which is going from two legged mode to three legged mode and back.  Because of that his shoulders have a round bearing.  The insides are connected to a huge t-slot beam, and the outside edges have a smaller bar connecting them (to keep them in sync - theoretically).

Along with that theme, the center leg would need to retract, so the center foot is on a single t-slot rail, hooked up to a linear bearing (above the middle plate, behind the battery in the video).  At that point there are two fixed rails that go up (the ones sticking out the top).  The center foot bearing can slide all the way to the top.

However, I've put a stop on the center leg for now, and the bottom ankle hinge is fixed.  The outside legs are hinged in the middle, but they've got lots of wheels, unlike the front foot.  With the current single wheel, the front foot would fall over if the ankle wasn't rigid.

The single foot was really loud when I hooked it directly up to the battery, but the noise on the frame isn't bad at all with both motors regulated and running more slowly.

The ankles are currently 3 layers of plywood glued together.  Originally the front ankle was a single layer, but that snapped pretty quickly and I rebuilt it.  There's a brass collar through the wood where the ankle pivots on the foot.

With the flexible ankles I figured I needed front & rear wheels, and for various reasons I chose 3" roller blade wheels. Of course, it's more stable if the foot has 4 wheels, so I did that too. And then I powered both axles. The chain runs under the foot, so I probably don't want to get on very rough or dirty surfaces.

What I realized a bit belatedly is that with 4 wheels in the corner of the foot, it's kind of "hard" to make him turn like a tank. Quite a few wheels have to slip sideways for a tank turn to work. It seems "good enough" for now though, and isn't too bad if I make wide turns. OTOH, if I rapidly switch directions, he wiggles like when Kenny Baker throws R2 around.

Test Results

I took it to work twice to see where the problems were.  Astromechs have a terrible problem with the front foot and bumps.  He did OK at first, but the impact seemed to weaken the joints, so he started folding up the legs.  If the front wheel stops, the power of the side legs is pretty impressive, they try to keep pushing. 

The first day, I'd zip-tied the beam connecting the outer hubs together to the top, so that he'd be stuck in three legged position.  However the beam is actually 3 parts because it has to avoid the center mount for the center foot.  Those joints proved weak on repeated banging into sidewalk cracks, and eventually the legs started folding up. 

In the car I'd tied him down with bungies to a tie point in the middle, which worked going to work, but on the way back I basically (gently) turned a corner and the bungies pulled all the feet together, his legs folded up and he fell over.

That also knocked the battery loose and trying to get him back upright I bumped one of the wires into the other terminal.  Fortunately it was only a momentary contact (melting the wire helped), but I probably want to do something about capping the terminals.  I'll have a better mount when I do it "for real", but better safe than sorry (it's an 18 Ah 12V lithium iron phosphate battery, like Tesla uses, but tinier).

2nd Test

I drilled a hole in the shoulder hubs and bolted them together to keep the feet from rotating.  Because the hubs are currently wood, it didn't work too well, but it helped my zip-tie thing.

The rear feet frames are also laser cut, and seem OK that way. The Lego brick shell fits nicely over the frames, almost perfect on the first try (close enough I'm not going to fix it). The wood's a tiny bit flexible, but way lighter than aluminum.  I put one of the Lego foot shells on for the second test to make sure that the Lego didn't vibrate apart.

I zipped by the company store to our makerspace to show off the parts I'd made on the laser cutter.  Even when he's just a bare frame people stop and gawk, and most recognize what he'll eventually be when he gets his skin on!

The second test seemed to go way better, but I noticed that the legs "wander" in and out a little (toward and away from the body). 

I'm not quite sure what happened, but on the way back to the car, one of the outer shoulder hubs cracked and he started doing the splits.  That was sort of expected, we've planned to replace the plywood with aluminum there, but it wasn't great timing, he was in the driveway, and a delivery truck chose that instant to start "beep beep beep" backing up.

I didn't really want the frame run over, so I picked him up to carry to the sidewalk, and the other leg fell off!  The four bolts near the hub had worked themselves loose a tad apparently.  That's not really a problem, but I'm clearly going to have to find a better way to secure it.  I'd noticed that several other bolts seem to have vibrated themselves a tad looser.

At home I took a closer look, and the brass inserts in the ankles are also working their way loose in the wood.  I'd already thought about making the ankles out of aluminum, but that seems more likely. 

I don't quite get chills watching the naked frame run around, but my wife thinks he's already getting a personality.

I can't wait to get the bricks on and get him back together. I sure hope I can make ECCC in March.

Wait, I have an extra month?

Here, I've been thinking that ECCC (Emerald City Comicon) was at the beginning of March  (last year it was), it's at the end of March.  We've got an extra (almost) month.  Phew, L3-G0 *might* actually make it.

So you there!

It's been a bit

The last post might be more interesting if you're new to this blog.

(Reader discretion advised.  This post is the kind of discussion that causes some Lego fans to become apoplectic.)

I've sort of run into some structural challenges that make it tricky to get L3-G0 onto his feet. Similar to the way Legoland sticks steel framework in their models, L3-G0's going to need some internal structure. I've been working on some of those challenges, and part of that's been learning about 3D printing and laser cutting.

Here's the kind of thing I'm working on, aluminum T-Slot "bones" and 3D printed "bricks" to attach the Lego "skin" to the "bones."

 

I'll have more to post in a bit, but it's still in progress.  If you want a preview of some of the parts I'm working on for his skin, I've posted several to My Thingiverse Things. 

Brickcon 2013 L3-G0 Setup

L3-G0 Made it to Brickcon!!!

Whew, that was way more complicated that I expected.  Especially since the new! lights blew up at 1:30 AM. 

But he made it, here's a quick clip of L3-G0 doing his thing and some of the other MOCs at Brickcon 2013 (Oct 6/7).

 

Robotics

Right now L3-G0 is using FOUR computers:

 

• Perhaps counterintuitively, a Lego EV3 Mindstorms to make his head spin
• An Arduino for the blinking lights.
• A Microsoft Surface for the sound effects (looping audio track)
• And a Surface Pro that programmed the Arduino and the EV3, at the moment needed to trigger the EV3 (start button's buried), and was using it to tune the dome program for the conference today and tomorrow.

L3-G0 is Ready for Brickcon!

Yippee!  All ready for Brickcon 2013 (October 5-6 at the Seattle Center)  He's not going to have feet at Brickcon because that's going to be another very huge undertaking.

 

I didn't have a ton of time to post, so a lot happened.  The dome sits on a bearing, so that had to be mounted and bolted on.  The dome also basically fell apart and had to be rebuilt... better... stronger... faster... (yes faster, and it didn't even cost me Six Million Dollars).

 

Nikita helped test the dome:



 

The bearing and dome base rest on a support that is made from the hinges that hold the panels together.  There are two motors for the Lego EV3 Mindstorms (this is the largest Mindstorms robot I've built by far).  Two because they push a lot better than they pull.  The wheels will rest on the inside of the bearing, attached to the dome of L3-G0.  On the right, near L3-G0's blue front you can see a color/light sensor.  The light sensor is used so the EV3 knows when he's facing forward.

 



And here it is with the dome base on.  You can see that the plates on the base of the dome ring are bolted to the aluminum bearing.  The bearing has a plastic support ring on top of it, also to keep it from dragging the dome bottom on the static side of the bearing.

 

The bottom of the bearing is mounted to 1/4" plywood, seen here from inside the body, before the dome ring was installed on top. 

 

 The dome itself has been strengthened, and stays together much better now.

 

Also finally got the shoulders finished.  Lots of bits weren't perfectly aligned in the Lego Digital Designer (LDD), and LDD also doesn't show you how to attach 12 pieces from different directions at the same time!  Getting everything to snap together right was a bit challenging.



I like the detail on the shoulders, and also I like the "Under Shoulder Detail" (R2 Builders Club Lingo):

 

Timelapse Video on YouTube

 

I show his dome spinning at the end.  I'll have a better video of that later, but here's what I have so far:

Building the 2nd Dome Panel Row

Hosik, a Korean foreign exchange student helped out this time, thanks Hosik!



Hosik and Darius also helped make sure the cat (devil cat?) got some cameos.

It's sort-of days 11-12. Sort of because sometimes I only get an hour or two, so I try to get those into a "day" unit, whatever that is. This part of the dome's being really hard because of the multiple curves. At least the plan is mostly working, however the incomplete sections are fairly fragile. I also took time to build up some plates where the dome will rest on the Lazy Suzan bearing. Since the dome was already partially built, I did that from the bottom.

Also got the eye done!  The eye was challenging because the shapes don't align very well to actual brick sizes and shapes.

 

The logic display also looks particularly nice with a flashlight behind it.  This was fairly challenging to get all of the panels to fit next to each other and provide enough structure for the panels above and below.  It was rebuilt several times.

 

Its starting to get there.  I'm so focused on the detail that I miss the big picture sometimes.  A few times L3-G0's gotten my skin crawling when I walk into the room after stepping away.  Then it's like "who put that R2-D2 in my kitchen?"



Time Lapse Video for the Middle Dome Layer

 

First row of dome panels

Day "10", some of the first layer of dome panels. 

The dome is roughly 12-sided, but the 1st layer of dome panels has extra segments between each of the 12 sides (so it's an irregular 24-sided curvy thing).  At the top we eventually end up with 6 sides, but everything's based on the original 12 sides.

Somehow I'm missing the big round piece that I'd intended for the back, I'm sure it's around somewhere.  Otherwise the trickiest parts were the "logic displays".  I did the front ones, but the longer one is just a hole at the moment.

This section gave me a chance to attach two of the Holoprojectors!  The first parts built are finally attached.

Another Time Lapse Video

Front Vents and Dome Ring

The last few days were complicated.

Saturday I took the body to the SEALUG meeting (Seattle Lego Users Group), and it fell apart in the car when I braked for a stop sign. Internally there's some hidden hinges that didn't really have a ton of surface area.  We cleaned up some to make the body sturdier. Now the hinges connect to the body panels with nearly 3 times the surface area. It might still need some glue to be motorized, but it should at least not fall apart.

The front vents weren't done earlier because the hole in the front panel needed to move a little from the original plans. Additionally, LDD let us have some error in the brick attachments that didn't work in the real world.  It took quite a bit of effort to get the panels securely attached. At one point there was a quarter-plate difference in height between the vents and the hole to attach them. I have no clue how to move something 1/4 plate, and it was too loose as it was. I fixed it by making the middle blue stripe slightly wider, it was a single stud (2.5 plates), now it's 3 plates. I also noticed a few missing outline tiles.

 

We also started on the dome ring, which was tricky because the original design had some pretty big flaws. (Lego Digital Designer doesn't really tell you if stuff is structural or not).  The ring portion is complicated because the middle bricks of each section are offset by 1/2 stud to help the illusion of being round.  Complicating matters are a couple slits that go the circumference of the dome, which we did by recessing the plates there by another 1/2 stud.  It took a little work to get everything secure

Time Lapse Youtube Video

The horses get to go on a carousel ride.

Barrels of L3-G0 Fun!

I skipped posting for "day 5" because it was sort of short due to my birthday activities, and because what was built (parts of the body) looked a lot like what you've already seen.  So days 5 & 6 are combined.

The back is done, but, as mentioned, it's pretty much like what you saw before, but a little bigger.

 

However, the front is also mostly done (except for the front vents).  The utility arms are probably the least detailed part on L3-G0, "the plan" is to improve L3-G0 over time.  Adding arms seemed like it'd take a while to figure out, without adding much.  Eventually we'll probably have doors and other stuff, and maybe even utility arms, but the first goal is just to get him built!  It's Lego, so we can update him later as needed. 

The kittens have a different plan for L3-G0.  They think he makes a nifty cat house or cat toy.  Cats love boxes and I guess they decided his body is a box.  The missing vent is apparently a perfect kitten door.  (I confess to using the streamer to get him to pose for the camera, but the kittens were the ones that started climbing into, and over, the body.  The also think the loose Lego bricks are great toys.)

 

The day 5/6 time lapse video