Friday, November 16, 2012

Aluminum half moons and dome panels ready!

Today the aluminum half moons arrived, which are the large details pieces that fit on the feet.

In an effort to reduce weight, I was going to use resin ones but had some concerns how well they would hold up in the center foot.  In there, the half moons are how the caster mounting plate stays attached.  Drilling and tapping resin pieces isn't nearly as solid as aluminum.

As it turns out, one of the R2 Builders had just done a part rum of the aluminum half moons and had extras available.  Even better, these are the "diet" version, where additional material has been cut away to lighten the part.

Note the back of the piece has had a lot of excess material removed to reduce weight
The temperature in my part of Maine was 29F so the days of painting outside are long gone.  So, I turned on the heater and then set up some proper ventilation to prime and paint them...






Once the paint fumes had been vented outside, I was able to jump back to work on the dome panels which all needed some polishing.

Despite taking a LOT of pictures, the shininess made for a lot of out of focus pics! 

Tomorrow I'll work on testing out the new airbrush and if that goes well, prep and work on getting the panels that get blue paint done!