Bith's Droid

On the matter of installing all these electronics into the dome I had to do quite a bit of thinkin'.  Scott had advised not to have the circuit boards actually touching the aluminum -- yeah, I didn't know that! :-) I'd also not drilled holes in the inner dome as Victor's blog had wisely suggested; I planned to do that later, but in preparation for CVI last year I'd made that possibility much more difficult by installing the HPs and surrounds. I really didn't relish the idea of actually undoing all that work...

So I had two problems: create a barrier for the boards against the metal, and make a mounting system for them that was solid yet practical (in that I could easily remove the system if maintenance was needed).

I believe I've come up with a design for installation that will solve both problems: I'm going to screw the boards to thin sheets of styrene, which will then be welded to small styrene blocks glued into the dome. The "welding" is achieved easily enough using Weld-On, but the gluing of the blocks into the dome will require some trial and error. E-6000 comes highly recommend as long as it's allowed to cure properly so I'll be trying that first.

In preparation for all of this I needed to place the electronics into the dome and get all the wires under control. Here I'm using cocktail napkins to cushion them. We never drink cocktails at home so I have no idea why these were even around!

The other mounting issue involved placing the boards with the LEDs against their corresponding surrounds. I decided to use a technique similar to how I mounted the Radar eye: cut off the heads of bolts, glue them into holes drilled into the resin, and secure with nuts. I needed a fresh supply of all that stuff so I took several hours off to hunt for a decent hardware store in my new town. Aaaaand I had luck! I decided to go with nylons nuts, bolts and washers, just to be safe around the electronics. Here I'm test-fitting:

As usual, all things droid take at least 3 times longer than anticipated...but, slow progress is better than no progress!