Mock-Up

Couldn't help doing another mock-up with the frame, the inner skin and the dome.  It's noticeable that the dome is in the middle of being sanded at this stage.  Also, the front vents and the octagon port are my resin ones just hanging in there to fill the spaces.

Inner skins mounted

After fitting my mounting brackets, I ordered some more stainless nuts and bolts to continue.  I fitted the skin snaps to the brackets then the inner skins to the skin snaps.  Here's how it turned out...

On the next picture you can see how the skins can be removed for maintenance...

Then clipped back in when the tinkering is done...

These incredble skin snaps are made from nylon by Daren Murrer of the R2 Builders group.

Dome sanding and skin mounts

I've been doing a lot of dome prep work.  I marked and removed all of the panels from the outer dome and de burred the edges.  I then set to work sanding the spin lines out of the outer dome.  It's hard work.  To take a break tonight, I thought I'd attach the skin mounting brackets that I made from aluminium angle.

First I traced the shape of the frame ring against the aluminium then cut and filed them to shape.  This gave me two of these...

I then mocked up the inner skins around the frame which allowed me to see what height I was going to mount the brackets.

Once I Drilled through the side plates and attached the brackets, I offered the skin snaps up and I found that there were two moulded pieces on the back that prevented them from sitting flush.  I took my current favourite file and filed off the offending pieces.  Before and after pic here...

So they fit a lot better now.

So now I've ordered some more stainless steel hardware to continue the skin mounting part of the build and I'll continue with the dome sanding.  More to come soon.

Slow work

There's been a lot of unseen work going on with R2.  I've also had a 300mm dome kit delivered.  This is excellent but will take a lot of prep work to get finished.  Here it is sitting on top of the frame...

For the casual fan, the main part of the dome will remain bare aluminium while most of the panels will be painted blue.  I test fitted one of the painted resin holoprojectors in the from just to see what it was like and I was very pleased with the result.  Here's a closer picture...