Projects and builds

Ever since I was a youngling, I wanted my own droid. This is my first attempt at a full size droid. I bought the files from a creator on Etsy.  I used 2 3D printers. A Creality CR 10 and an Ender 5 plus. Running both printers everyday in my spare time, the parts took about 2-3 months to print. I was still pretty new to printing so some of that time was trial and error. Overall super happy with how it turned out! 

When the kids grew out of our basement playroom, I got the green light from the boss to make it my playroom. I was set on making it a “Deathstar” theme. Measured out the walls for custom light panels, starting drawing ideas and making a retail list. Then we visited Galaxy’s Edge and Olga’s Cantina. With new inspiration I torn up the Deathstar plans and started gathering ideas for the Cantina. I knew I wanted the curved bar as a focal point, but I also wanted it functional for guests to enjoy and display my collectibles.  I started with the walls. In order to get the textured look I took drywall mud, added different colors and literally hand painted the entire basement by grabbing the mud and smearing it on the walls.  For the bar I payed out construction paper on the floor and drew a picture of the bar top. After getting the size I wanted I started drilling 2x4s together. little by little it started to come together. About a month to build and still a work in progress as I’m always adding things. 

For Katsucon 2023, we decided we were going to get into our first attempt at mechanical, moving parts.  My daughter Grace, who is a “go big or go home” type girl, decided she wanted to go as Grian. I have no idea who that is but I am always down to build cool stuff.  When she explained her vision, we put our heads together and started working on the wings.  We started with some construction paper and drew out roughly how long the inside poles needed to be and started cutting PVC.  Our first attempt was 1/2 pvc mounted together with hinges and powered with 1 actuators  and 8AA batteries.  By the time we were done, we moved on to Aluminum parts powered with 2 actuators and an 18 volt battery.  There was a lot of trial and err but in the end it looked great.