hey it's norm from tested and I'm here joined by Mike Sena builder of robots
astromechs wall ladies and now hopefully a bb-8 so in the previous video we were
down here with Mike and we took apart a sphero bb-8 I kind of try to figure out
how the mechanics of a small scale BB it could work and does that inform a larger
scale BPA when you've had some time to work on your bb-8 your full-size one now
so where you at at this point um I am at driving it right now it drives fine the
heads on there the head moves with it I'm Mike I guess my it rolls real well
it rolls that's an accomplishment in itself but let's talk about the the
fabrication because BBA unlike our tubes the simpler design they're fewer
physical elements but it's still complex shape yeah so you have the head what was
your first attempt of the head like so I was going to build one out of a sphere
and so this was what I was going to start with as the foundation I was going
to put a little bit of a lip on here to give it that proper shape mm-hmm but as
I was doing this and putting everything together and testing the mechanical
parts of it a bb-8 builder's club yeah the merge that's right
tiny Panganiban right and Michael Irwin really started this club tiny was
working on these 3d files for 3d printers now the guy is so detailed that
I looked at his stuff and I said no I can't do better anything more than this
this is why duplicate that work especially when they've opened up the
files now for anyone yeah so Mike Irwin helped him out a bunch because tiny
didn't have a 3d printer so simplify was to Michael Irwin he printed it out made
sure they were fine said about actually other people so that they can test on
different machines of course and put out these files to the public so got an
Ultimaker to for this project to build it up we've tested the ultimate ultimate
or two before the printbed is big but not big enough
to print a full-size bb-8 head so obviously it's gonna come in pieces how
many pieces did is this bill correct yeah correct so the top of this dome you
see this part is a third of the dome so then the dog comes in a third the top
gray piece here comes in two pieces and then there's the you just sort of that
piece is also the bottom and look at the detail they put in there is that
something speculated by tiny and Mike in terms of the relief and design or does
that drive sometimes this thing pretty well and surprisingly I as an
afterthought I went back to look at the detail for painting and things like that
and the detail is pretty dang pretty good I mean the model that they brought
up has been a few places celebration d23 people thing and said we only get close
to that moving model and take a look exactly what those details are but this
is blows my mind because this is a 3d printed piece but it doesn't look like
it from up close what was your finishing technique light
instead of going and sanding all the plastic down I went ahead and shot it
with three coats of primer and then sanded it down and that really the
primary just goes into the little crevices and smoothes it out really nice
three coats that saves you the need to do bondo you know to putty it all over
and it's smooth this is fantastic so you have the head it's it's looks
great three pieces to make the shell top piece and a bottom piece these detail
pieces and it all comes together even the antenna mmm and this antenna here
the middle piece here is a piece of metal and you can print out the top on
the bottom piece is nice and smooth them out but then of course addition to the
head there's also the body the big sphere now yes what was your approach to
that this is a blow molded polycarbonate sphere the blow molded one shrank just a
little bit and what I found out was a vacuum form 20 inch hemisphere would go
right over this and fit snugly so from the same company cut out these
pieces from two hemispheres and they fit perfectly on top so it's a just your
final one going to have both the structural stability of that Polycarp
and in addition an outer skin yeah the vacuform that you can then finish and
texture it and put all your details in correct yeah so those panels will
probably just be glued on or silicone okay okay
that gets you detail that gives you structural stability the head obvious
skills on top is gonna be a similar mass system that we saw on the bb-8 Sphero to
keep the head up with magnets that what you're thinking well yeah the mass has
to be on the bottom with any of the drive systems that we've seen because
it's a ball the difficulty is is using gravity
mainly to move this thing so what you want is the sphere to be as smooth as
possible even with the tiles you don't want even a sixteenth of an inch
difference because it'll get caught up on it right and then once you get the
momentum going you your ball is going to shoot out yeah so that's important the
other important thing is have a very very light head and the magnetic force
between the two has to be strong enough to keep the head on light enough not to
create friction that's right are the mechanics in the head to spin it
it's a rotator or that Alma mess I in my build I don't have any mechanics in my
head at all okay now the bb-8 Sphero we talked about if using electronic
gyroscope you know an IMU data from accelerometers non-fiscal gyro maybe
that wasn't going to be good enough responsive enough for a big full-size
bb-8 so you wanted to use a mechanical gyro
yeah so I'm in the process of right now taking the wiggle or the wobble out of
my my bb-8 because you're going around a corner of something in it kind of the
head tilts just a little and then when it comes back around it starts to wobble
we've them and the wobble is crazy so what I'm going to try to do and I
haven't done it yet is I've got this mechanical gyro and it came with a motor
which I'm not sure if I'm going to use but the motor will attach on and it has
little screw holes for it mmm Hachette it works off with six volts so
when I turn it on this thing starts spinning up now I did put some
mechanical gyros in there that I made out of hard drives but my problem was
I'm not used to working on cameras so I really fixed it into the frame so when I
tried to move it the gyro didn't perform any stability right and I found out just
when I got these that I need to make the gyro kind of pre moving so spitting up
and when it spins up that thing is rigid in space like it's difficult to move it
yeah right so if I'm doing a motion now it's rocking it this way mm-hmm it's it
is lifting up and going down again but it's also it's really resisting my my
motion of tilting the swing that way now if I held this still and then moved it
it's pretty easy to move that's how my drivers are in there right now not the
way I'm supposed to do you want old but just by that one access and let that the
rotational motion for ya just provide all the energy yeah so my idea was to
I'll have a motor so it'll help it by gravity hold the thing so it's pointing
in the direction that is supposed to once it stops wobbling I will see
there's a lot of testing to be done a lot experimenting like I said even
though the shape of bb-8 is looks simple the mechanics are way more complicated
than what you'd find in the previous astromechs that you Michael McMaster and
other Arzu builders have done before bb-8 builder's club is that website
we're going to come back in a few months there's still a little bit of time
before the movie comes out and check in on your full-size deviate project thanks
so much Mike we'll see you guys in a second
and we are back I'm back here with Mike Sanne and Amy sent oh we're out of you
guys kitchen in your home and at Comikaze we're a short month after we
visited our to LA bb-8 is complete yeah what you guys came over there was just
that white ball sitting in the kitchen that's right and now we have it fully
weather fully painted up and ready version ones been running around for a
little while and way ahead of the release of the movie you made it yeah
well we trying it was a struggle let me tell you and you guys work both work
hard on this and getting it ready for this show um now let's talk about the
aesthetic appear carts of it first because it looks beautiful like you said
we saw that white ball it was a 3d printed head right
I can't tell it's pretty printed and tell her about like the weathering
process of the painting process now this is the 3d printed head again from tiny
pig Anna Matt and Mike Irwin so if you look at it it's finished now I don't
necessarily want to use this as a finished piece because it's a printed
with a 3d printed thing and usually we'll have it molded so I think I'm
ain't going to be in the process of molding this but right now the seams
were it's cut into three sections and the seams I think there was one here is
now pretty nicely hidden so this particular head has popped off of this
guy maybe about 15 times Wow and has it been damaged no damn is
it that is visible you know any bumps and scratches are just part of the story
the colors here you have a silver an orange and a little bit of a chrome
color are they special colors specialty colors well not really this is like
bright aluminum metallic from rust-oleum product it's like from Home Depot this
is like a real orange it's called forest Oleum also the the greys here on the
eyes I had to make them a little darker than what I could get so it's you know a
thing I had to mix up personally so Mike how about this band here is that just
painted a chrome metal that band is trickery well what what we have here is
actually aluminum tape so we can get this duct taping from anywhere right any
home improvement store so what I do is I take the thick strip probably this thick
right I put it on a piece of wax paper and I lay that down on a board so now I
can peel the wax paper off right so I I then take a piece of sandpaper and I
score the whole thing I go past it like maybe five to ten times now that gives
it the brush yuck so then I take a straight edge and put it there and cut
it with a razor knife and so now I have a custom piece of tape that looks like
brushed aluminum and I just tape it around the detail Wow so my wife Amy
created these graphics for me for my dimensions and we printed them out on
the printer and applied the decal so even these details ease these vents are
decals now on the ball there are panels it's
not just one sphere there's actually some depth and relief and texture to it
talk about that painting process and getting the panels on the aesthetics on
the outside are always like so difficult to get because you want it
to look exactly like the model so there's there several tools I used I got
this this cutting tool and this is actually two tools this is a handle for
this one so I basically took the two pointy pieces off of this thing and it's
supposed to turn around like this in a circle okay and it's supposed to cut out
with this little razor blade cut out circles in in patterns and different
diameters clock right and then you can adjust it so I took the point off of one
of them and if I turn it in this manner and put that back on now what I have is
is something I can put on the middle of the panel and adjust it out and etch my
lines in the panel and when I scratch it an etch it then I come back in with a
thumbtack and make the line thicker and then I go further with these jewelers
files and I kind of a H amount a little lighter got it and then so that's the
process it's kind of lengthy yeah to measure and etch each one of these
things out and then I have an extra piece of this panel that that's straight
that I put over this to do the straight lines so it's itching all the way around
your patterning around there your masking it and painting it those similar
colors quite orange so now you use this a shelf paper it's just a clear shelf
paper and it's tacky enough that it's not permanent
and once it's etched and not painted then I put this on peel the back and you
put it on now I can see through and I take a razor blade and just cut along
the edge lines remove the pieces I want to remove and spray it not it and then
whether a fun part just getting it dirty and then webbing off
yeah so I put it on put the put the paints on a paper plate yeah
spray a little water on there and take some napkins and kind of DAB it do it
first a light wash yeah yeah and then you come by with a more heavier washing
and heavier pieces and then in between the cracks here you need to kind of make
the paint a little thicker and use a paintbrush and kind of DAB it in there
you know to get all these little deeper lines
yeah the oil and grime and it's beautiful aesthetically and anywhere I
went out there with the 3d printer with the files joining the bb-8 Facebook
group can make their own but to get it moving that requires a little bit of
engineering we talked a little bit about that the first half you had those the
gyros you're going to experiment with without diving too much because I know
you can't show all the process what worked and what didn't um right now I
think my dry motors are pretty much underpowered so I've got it do that I've
got to put it in the drive system I believe I can make the hit movement a
little better where I'm going to have a counterweight inside so when the head
moves forward the whole body doesn't tip over you have kind of issues with again
the Weeble wobbling and some weight up high on the the model also I'm going to
try to when we get this molded to use lighter materials like foam and see if
we can get that that head lighter those gyros ended up not working for you yeah
we bought some gyros that were kind of smallish and we try to put them in there
I guess they're about this big about two of them I'm sick could have even
stacking them on top of each other but they kind of didn't make that much of a
difference so I think I'm going to go a little bit different route with with all
that now in your exploration of the Yule making a bb-8 and work and chatting with
other bb-8 builders everyone's using in funding everyone's using a different
method your own way what are the things that stand out mechanically I think the
the ones they're using the ones where the the whole Drive system is actually
riding inside of the ball and rolling with the wheels with that you've got
several issues with making sure that the inside of the ball is smooth you've got
to worry about the wheel mechanics and there's there's certain things that it
can't do now there's another model I saw we all saw on the internet there's a
video of a little ball maybe a ball type of ball rolling around and it had a lot
of weights on the bottom that would spin and when it spins it gives it the
ability to turn while it's driving and that system is kind of in here in a
different way but I'm going to probably go in that direction and experiment with
that to see how it works I'm kind of gun shy to show anything inside because it's
if it's not working properly I don't like it I don't want this this system
day so you know get out there and out there
exactly exactly it's still a work in progress but aesthetically it looks
beautiful and you have it up and running there's so much personality here and
congratulations on finishing it for Comikaze and ahead of the movie's
release we'll definitely be checking in with both you guys in the future I'll
BBH doing and see what persons who might look like awesome thank you so much
thanks it's great to see Amy thank you