Date: July 9, 2007
Total hours spent today: 7

Today was a phenomenally productive day. I don't know what got into me down here at "ROCS", but I was busy all day long, running around doing R2 stuff. Really good and noteworthy progress made today. Let's get to it!!

The day started off ordinarily enough, with a quick blast of primer to some previously unattended parts. The batteries! I was thinking of reinforcing the walls of these guys with some extra aluminum strips, but then decided against it, as I want to get him finished! Sadly, I was only able to get a few squirts of white primer onto these guys before I ran out of paint. Fortunately, I have ordered a resupply of the stuff, and it should be here any day. I was hoping it would be here today, but I guess not.

I took a closer look at some of the parts that had already been primered, and decided they needed a bit of smoothing out. So I spent about a half an hour knocking down the primer and taking out some of the surface details on the ankles and shoulder hubs.

Then I was left scratching my head over what to do. A quick trip down to the garage brought the dome into my crosshairs, and I decided it needed some attention. I've been internally deliberating on what process to do next on the dome. The two tasks that are sort of "pipeline" issues are clearcoating the dome, and painting the dome ring. I sort of need to get those finished before I can attach the dome wedges. Not that those are ready to be attached, but like I said, it's a pipeline issue. My concern is what to do first. I've still got some work to do on the internals of the dome, and what I'm really afraid of is prettying up the dome, only to have it get dinged up while working on the final steps. But ultimately, I guess I decided that's a risk I'm willing to take. I'll just have to handle the dome with extra care.

I've decided to detach the dome from the ring for the clear coating. There's some paint that needs to go on the ring, and I think keeping them together will over complicate things. So I popped the dome off, and got to work on it. I attacked it with some 400 grit sand paper, and sanded off any blemishes, glue, paint, and whatever else might have gotten stuck to the dome over the past few months. It's been through a lot. I was still debating internally about what I wanted the finish to look like. Months ago, I had settled on the "brushed" aluminum look, as it sort of matched what I saw in ANH. But then, at the last minute today, I thought I would re-visit the high-polish finish. I took one stab at it, and then was painfully reminded of how hard it is to get a uniform, mirror finish. So I quickly abandoned that and got back to my original vision.

Here's the dome after about an hour of sanding. At this point, I was pretty happy with the macro features of the dome, but the finish was still not quite there.

Fortunately for me, it was at this point that I realized I had forgotten something. There's a panel on the inner dome that shows through the outer dome. Most of them just have a little sliver of aluminum around the edge, but one of them has the entire middle bit showing. The pic below will make this clear. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, I didn't sand my inner dome. Meaning it still had concentric circles texturing it. Not significant, but then, not trivial either. I realized this as I was prepping the dome, and went about fixing it. In order to avoid scratching up the pretty dome parts that I WAS happy with, I placed painters tape around the segment in question, and then went about sanding it smooth. It took much longer than I expected. I guess that's because I did the main dome with a mouse sander. And it took about eight hours! So it should not have surprised me that it was going to take so long. Ultimately, I got it to a point that I was happy with.

In the picture below, you can see the panel that is surrounded by painters tape. That's the one I just sanded. For a comparison, look at the panel next to it, with the "6" written on it. You can really see the texture there that I'm talking about.

Some more thought made me realize I need to mask off all the inner dome panels, as they will be expected to take glue that will hold the blue piece in place. So I went around the entire dome and covered everything that I don't want to get clear coated. At this point, you can still see some fingerprints and smudges on the dome.

So the last step was really getting the finish on the dome to a point where I was happy with it. This was accomplished with an extra large scotchbrite pad. Yup, the kind you get a home depot. I learned an interesting lesson today though. All scotchbrite pads are not alike! I started the project using a blue scotchbrite pad, and wasn't getting anywhere. Turns out, it's a much lower abrasion pad, and was not doing the "damage" I had hoped for. A quick trip to Home Depot yielded a few of the scotchbrite pads I wanted. I wore latex gloves the whole time I was doing it, as the oils from my fingers would cause smudges if I accidentally touched the dome. I would sand the dome with the dark green part of the scotch brite pad until I got it to the finish I wanted, then I would wipe it using the yellow side of the pad. It would pick up all the aluminum dust, and give me a nice, even surface.

It actually took a lot of time, and I cannot really properly describe the technique I used, as it's all rather organic. You've just got to keep working at it until you get it right, I guess. It's also complicated, because if you touch the dome anywhere, it ruins the finish. So you've got to be very alert and focused when prepping.

Anyhow, I'm happy with the way the dome looks, even though it's not perfect. I think it's very "A New Hope" looking, and that's just fine with me :)

The last thing I have to note here is something that I've kind of had running in the background for most of the day. I've been doing more time tests on my Hyperdine logic arrays. Trying to figure out how long they will last. They are currently hooked up to a 4.4 ah 12v battery, and they've been going strong for 5.5 hours now. That's pretty great! My goal was to find a battery that would last three hours, so this is a good catch. I may investigate a smaller battery that is less powerful, as I am concerned about weight, especially in the dome. But to keep things simple, I may just go with this battery in the end.

Plug: I highly recommend and endorse Hyperdine labs for your front and rear logics. They are amazing. Check out Jim's website, and go buy a set.