Building my R2-D2 is one of the coolest projects I've ever worked on. I've been at it 9 months and learned so much along the way! He's about 50% done right now.
My father was a machinist, failed math....became a machinist, go figure. And he spoke about things just like you. He found a perfect angle ao satisfying. Made my mothers wedding ring on a lathe at 19 years old. He was so proud of it
I can only imagine how satusfying it must be to be able to enjoy the company of a faithul, life size R2-D2 that one has built themselves. Excited to see R2 again in the future!
I finished my R2 in 2016. Since then I've taken him to a ton of events in the Fresno area. He was starting to show some wear and tear on his foot shells (they're made from styrene) so I've been working on them all week trying to get them finished before the weather gets hot. The horse shoe buttons Adam was talking about change position from one move to the next. In ESB they're in the back, since that's my favorite movie my buttons are on the back.
When it went back together, I swear I got dropped back into hyperspace to 1977 when I was 4 and fell in love with this droid. Thank you for that nostalgia. I really want one of these, I need to build one with my kids.
Love watching you work on R2. My R2 build took 18 month on and off. Gotta get around to re-4x4ing him. He jumped a drive chain so he is only 2wd at the moment. That extra drive really helps over rougher terrain. Looking forward to seeing more.
A tip for aligning drills on centre punch marks, make yourself long tapered steel centre on the lathe, the longer the taper the better. That will give you a sharp pinpoint tip (like an elongated pencil point) that will be easier to line up with a punch mark than the tip of the drill.
Better yet, skip the center punch entirely as that is likely the source of the errors. Line up a wiggler on the scribe lines, or better still, use an edge finder on the vise jaws or part edge and the DRO to drive right to the spot. No layout required and the parts will be near perfect.
Awesome video as always! I've started my own life-size astromech project and this is really inspiring - even though mine will be 3D printed it's still incredible to see what's possible.
Awesome to see someone work on one of these again. Personally, I'm always moreinclined to design and build a droid for the Old Republic era instead. Certainly one of those bucket list items.
Currently in the design stage of my own astromech. An R5-D4 model, but he may get a re-colour along the way. So this is perfect timing and is absolutely remotivating me to keep up with it.
“Absolutely the same level, ok a bit off but that’s fine…” self tolerance is the key to not get angry and skip stressing…so to last longer. Always epic, Mr Savage.
Around the 40:35 mark, from this angle......are MSE (mouse) droids just astromech feet? Have I gone this long and never noticed that? Or is its just a camera/optical illusion?
Excited for more R2 content. If you don't think you have the skill, money or space for a full size R2 you can build scale Astromechs. I have 5 finished at 1:6 scale and a couple more in mid-build at various scales.
Hello Mr. SAVAGE....I am 60 and Love your new smaller milling machine...I am of the thought that all Schools should have and make MANDATORY is SHOP CLASSES,,.Wood, and Metal....
Been watching your R2D2 videos a bunch lately as I'm currently working on a project for my portfolio where I'm putting together my own surveillance droid from completely found, recycled, and thrifted items bearing in mind I know nothing about what I'm doing especially electronics but think it'll be fun to finally put together. Also I'm considering making castings or making digital models of greeblies to put into the RPF forum.
R2D2 isn't always dirty. And I can't stand the complaints I get from fellow model makers when I make the "award ceremony version" instead of their preferred versions.
Eh, it's less about gatekeeping that R2 has to be dirty, more about not gatekeeping that as a model you must make him pristine. Pristine is a much higher bar than weathered, dirty, and damaged, especially when canonically he is often a bit banged up.
@@NuclearRobotHamster I wish that were true. But when I show off my built from scratch model, everyone says that I'm "too lazy to weather it," rather than acknowledging my point of making a clean version *as seen in the film.*
This channel has been great for watching while working on my own projects. Lately I'm wanting to do this stuff as a job. Adam will inspire me to go to college for a third time
3:50 i missed the "half of a cm" part originally and thought he was saying there was 5 mm in a cm, so thank you for helping correct my brain from its error
Also i wonder if we could with current technology make a fully functional(minus the intelligence) R2 and if it would be possible with the where they put the pistons and stuff on the original designs.
It's so easy, you just have to be able to count to ten and move the decimal to the matching prefix. It's strange that people find this to hard to understand and chooses to hang on to an antiquated system.
I bought an old Wells dental drill setup a while back, and while giving it a "welcome home" deep clean I found a perfect and complete porcelain crown inside the foot pedal. Some poor tech must have dropped it during the final polish, and it managed to drop or bounce into a tiny slot in the housing. I can only imagine how they tore the lab apart looking for it and never found it. Must have been a rough day!
I love your videos, they are very entertaining and educational. I like your explanations and of course your humor. Also have to add that I also like MythBusters…Mr. Savage you guys are absolutely incredible. Can't tear myself away from your videos. Keep it up…
Those pistons look awesome! Fyi Manley developed steel pistons for high performance diesel engines. Supposedly they weigh same as aluminum and have better thermal stability.
I've heard people say, "Anything can be a hammer." But a spatula? It probably can be a hammer, and since it is in Adam's hammer storage, yes absolutely. It is a hammer!
Beautiful, beautiful work. Would adore a full-size Artoo of my own, but seeing as I really wouldn't have room for him, my little Sphero droid buddy will happily suffice.
I really like the band saw table and I'm assuming you built it? I need to figure out how you did that. I have been looking at getting a metal cutting band saw for some time and that looks like the best solution without breaking the bank. I would love to see closer images or a diagram on how you did that. Perhaps I'll just keep me eye out as your UA-cam videos are my favorite to watch and I'm always learning from them. Thank you Adam for another wonderful video.
mixing my measurememnts if fun. more than once i have asked for timber to be cut 6'6 long and 300mm wide. if it is a youngsteron the saw you watch their heads explode but the bawhair as a recognised unit of measurement is it metric or imperial?
The cables for the battery box go to the front, and the buttons/piston seem to chop and change, while the battery box often changes. So that leg you were first working on came off the RHS of your R2D2. So you apparently had a left leg on the right side with the right foot.
The long part of the part looks like the aluminium window struts that we have at my office in London. What’s the bet the original was made for parts like that
I want Tested to hire an editor who's sole job is to make annotations of whatever quote Adam makes. The man is like a bingo machine of media quotes and just want to know where they're all from.
Can you not enter the cutting depths on the end-mills through the keypad on the display - rather than fiddling with the hand wheel to get 'close-enough'?
Adam's R2-D2 is gorgeous. I love it and would like one of my own. But since I am not able to build one or buy one, the Lego minifig R2-D2 do just fine for me.
since R2's "head" could swivel around and pretty much move forward regardless of facing, is it possible that some pictures just show him with this head facing one way as forward and another picture with his head the other way with forward? I don't think I really explained that well...
Adam: "Artoo is dirty..." 😂 Have any R2D2 builders made a Medal of Bravery Ceremony R2? I don't think we ever see him that clean again for 8 more movies!
I just ordered a very large CNC router. I know that it is capable of cutting aluminum. IM mostly going to be cutting wood but I'm hoping to do a little aesthetic machining in aluminum and brass.
I had to laugh around 8:00... "these need to be roughly... 3/4 of an inch" (take out calipers accurate to some STUPID level of accuracy). Yup... that's roughly all right!😄
If you review a photo of the assembly of several R2s for The Empire Strikes Back, you can see that these metallic details on his legs are in one way or another in each droid. They have not been very rigorous with that.
Half the images show the 2 buttons on the front, the other show them on the back. Either is correct. The original model kit has them on the back but the Bandai has them on the front.
"... it's going to be years before I need to worry about power R2, so I'm not going to." It's allways hard for me to see a man give up one of his years old dreams.😥
This has something that has bothered me so much since i started maching. I'll have coworkers come up to me and use "100 thou" like b*tch just say a tenth.
Building my R2-D2 is one of the coolest projects I've ever worked on. I've been at it 9 months and learned so much along the way! He's about 50% done right now.
My father was a machinist, failed math....became a machinist, go figure. And he spoke about things just like you. He found a perfect angle ao satisfying. Made my mothers wedding ring on a lathe at 19 years old. He was so proud of it
”I should have plenty of time!” Famous last words!
you beat me to it, Jonas! Yup, that's the death knell phrase in my home shop.
Oh, if you only knew!
Father Time says, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
😂😂😂😂😂
I can only imagine how satusfying it must be to be able to enjoy the company of a faithul, life size R2-D2 that one has built themselves. Excited to see R2 again in the future!
He should install Alexa in it and have it beep and rotate and such when he asks Alexa a question.
I finished my R2 in 2016. Since then I've taken him to a ton of events in the Fresno area. He was starting to show some wear and tear on his foot shells (they're made from styrene) so I've been working on them all week trying to get them finished before the weather gets hot. The horse shoe buttons Adam was talking about change position from one move to the next. In ESB they're in the back, since that's my favorite movie my buttons are on the back.
When it went back together, I swear I got dropped back into hyperspace to 1977 when I was 4 and fell in love with this droid. Thank you for that nostalgia. I really want one of these, I need to build one with my kids.
Love watching you work on R2. My R2 build took 18 month on and off. Gotta get around to re-4x4ing him. He jumped a drive chain so he is only 2wd at the moment. That extra drive really helps over rougher terrain.
Looking forward to seeing more.
2:40 No hammer collection is complete without a plastic spatula, for those times you got tappy tap-tap *real* gentle-like lol
A tip for aligning drills on centre punch marks, make yourself long tapered steel centre on the lathe, the longer the taper the better. That will give you a sharp pinpoint tip (like an elongated pencil point) that will be easier to line up with a punch mark than the tip of the drill.
Better yet, skip the center punch entirely as that is likely the source of the errors. Line up a wiggler on the scribe lines, or better still, use an edge finder on the vise jaws or part edge and the DRO to drive right to the spot. No layout required and the parts will be near perfect.
I love these videos. The joy for life Adam feels is contagious.
"A lot of meat there" (Drilling Sound) "Ooopps" ..... "It's not bad... it's not good" ...."Yeah"
Awesome video as always!
I've started my own life-size astromech project and this is really inspiring - even though mine will be 3D printed it's still incredible to see what's possible.
Adam you are a special kind of person and your humor and wit is something I am here for lol! This channel has been great as I work my way through!
When Adam said I'm machining this part out of aluminum, I immediately thought, oh nice. Watching Adam Savage machining is my therapy.
Awesome to see someone work on one of these again.
Personally, I'm always moreinclined to design and build a droid for the Old Republic era instead. Certainly one of those bucket list items.
Currently in the design stage of my own astromech. An R5-D4 model, but he may get a re-colour along the way. So this is perfect timing and is absolutely remotivating me to keep up with it.
You know those R5 models have bad motivators right ;)
@@streetjutter I can relate.
“Absolutely the same level, ok a bit off but that’s fine…” self tolerance is the key to not get angry and skip stressing…so to last longer. Always epic, Mr Savage.
53:04 every experience I’ve had drilling something
Also…huuuge fan of the use of ‘Frak’. It’s my go to word
I'm astounded. I dint think that most people realize what they are seeing when they watch this. Adam is a skilled machinist.
I have great respect and admiration of Adam's knowledge and skill.
9:14 thick n lush my bro. I'm not residing at the front but at the back. I think I'd prefer yo tight back hair to my friar tuck hairdo...
At 9:00 that was a very cleverly hidden cut. Nice work editors!
I 3D printed mine. It took me four years to finish it. Totally worth it, the 12 year old kid in me smiles every time I see it.
Thank u ! Printing those was tough!
Around the 40:35 mark, from this angle......are MSE (mouse) droids just astromech feet? Have I gone this long and never noticed that? Or is its just a camera/optical illusion?
No MSE are not astromech feet.
Excited for more R2 content.
If you don't think you have the skill, money or space for a full size R2 you can build scale Astromechs. I have 5 finished at 1:6 scale and a couple more in mid-build at various scales.
Glad to see you back. Loved the Japan puzzle box video too!!!
As someone with both Irish and Scottish heritage I am here for the accents! Even the Geographically vague ones are fun 😅
Watching the machining of these pieces was great. Satisfying! Thanks for sharing your projects.
39:24 For a "Leg Man" surely you should be able to tell the left from the right!! LOL!
Hearing Adam go, "Augh!" is the highlight of perfection in a build. 😂
The R2 blueprints and early R2 construction photos show the two 'dots' on the legs oriented toward the front as well
Hello Mr. SAVAGE....I am 60 and Love your new smaller milling machine...I am of the thought that all Schools should have and make MANDATORY is SHOP CLASSES,,.Wood, and Metal....
I really admire your enthusiasm and passion for exactitùde, Adam. It's a real pleasure to watch.
I would love to know about "R2 Blue" and any other specific colors from ILM. Having heard about some of the different paints in the racing world.
Been watching your R2D2 videos a bunch lately as I'm currently working on a project for my portfolio where I'm putting together my own surveillance droid from completely found, recycled, and thrifted items bearing in mind I know nothing about what I'm doing especially electronics but think it'll be fun to finally put together.
Also I'm considering making castings or making digital models of greeblies to put into the RPF forum.
i cant stop watching your videos reguardless of hat it is is. Your enthusiasm for the projects keeps me dialed in!
Adam you can 100% call yourself a machinist , Great Job!
Aah this landed at the perfect time. Coffee, feet up. Bliss!
R2D2 isn't always dirty. And I can't stand the complaints I get from fellow model makers when I make the "award ceremony version" instead of their preferred versions.
Eh, it's less about gatekeeping that R2 has to be dirty, more about not gatekeeping that as a model you must make him pristine.
Pristine is a much higher bar than weathered, dirty, and damaged, especially when canonically he is often a bit banged up.
@@NuclearRobotHamster I wish that were true. But when I show off my built from scratch model, everyone says that I'm "too lazy to weather it," rather than acknowledging my point of making a clean version *as seen in the film.*
37:35 The way you said "I'm a leg man" sounded like Cosmo Kramer. 😂
This channel has been great for watching while working on my own projects. Lately I'm wanting to do this stuff as a job. Adam will inspire me to go to college for a third time
Wife: I bet he is thinking about other women
Adam: 1mm is a 1/5 of a half of a centimeter, lol
3:50 i missed the "half of a cm" part originally and thought he was saying there was 5 mm in a cm, so thank you for helping correct my brain from its error
Also i wonder if we could with current technology make a fully functional(minus the intelligence) R2 and if it would be possible with the where they put the pistons and stuff on the original designs.
This video is the perfect backdrop for me to put together the new UCS X-Wing
Thanks for the last part.
Still thinking about Huey, Dewy or Loui droid in Silent Running as a project. Nice work on the resto.. cheers.
I am soo glad that its not just me who mixes up R2's legs when they are sat apart from the body!
"...because R2-D2 is on my bench, and that is always awesome."
Yes Adam, it absolutely is.
Absolutely in love with that awesome Thumbnail 😘❤
Fractions of ten is perfectly acceptable in metric! That’s the beauty of metric!
It's so easy, you just have to be able to count to ten and move the decimal to the matching prefix. It's strange that people find this to hard to understand and chooses to hang on to an antiquated system.
I bought an old Wells dental drill setup a while back, and while giving it a "welcome home" deep clean I found a perfect and complete porcelain crown inside the foot pedal.
Some poor tech must have dropped it during the final polish, and it managed to drop or bounce into a tiny slot in the housing.
I can only imagine how they tore the lab apart looking for it and never found it. Must have been a rough day!
Any day a full size R2 is in the house is a great day. Even parts!
"Drat. That's OK, I can fix that." @9:54
Suddenly flashbacks to mistakes made by Peter Brown.
seeing all the parts i printed for my 3d printed astromech in aluminum makes me want to make an aluminum one.
I'm glad someone else feels that way! I've thoroughly enjoyed printing mine, but definitely can see why folks make aluminum.
This is the way.
@@briandodds this is the way
Forgetting to turn the camera back on just means you're focused on the task at hand. Don't ever stop doing that! Focus equals safety. 😊
What an excellent video to watch as I get ready for Disney’s Hollywood Studios!
I love that the new mill is also in R2 colours! Poetry!
I love your videos, they are very entertaining and educational. I like your explanations and of course your humor.
Also have to add that I also like MythBusters…Mr. Savage you guys are absolutely incredible. Can't tear myself away from your videos. Keep it up…
All hail the Precision Matthews Hypnotoad. 5:08
Thank you for being my childhood I wouldn't choose any other man I truly wish you the best
The legs can be either right or left. What determines the side is which foot you put on. (the shoulders are usually interchangeable too.)
Hi Adam thanks for sharing your video building r 2 d2
Those pistons look awesome! Fyi Manley developed steel pistons for high performance diesel engines. Supposedly they weigh same as aluminum and have better thermal stability.
My dad always siad you could tell the milling machine operators in the pub.... They would ask for 4 pints and hold up 3 fingers and 1 stumpy one!
I've heard people say, "Anything can be a hammer." But a spatula? It probably can be a hammer, and since it is in Adam's hammer storage, yes absolutely. It is a hammer!
Beautiful, beautiful work. Would adore a full-size Artoo of my own, but seeing as I really wouldn't have room for him, my little Sphero droid buddy will happily suffice.
Buttons front
Later when they used fiberglass legs they where in front on 1 side and back on the other, because they only molded 1 leg.
I am very intrigued as to why there is a spatula pretending to be a hammer at 2:46
I really like the band saw table and I'm assuming you built it? I need to figure out how you did that. I have been looking at getting a metal cutting band saw for some time and that looks like the best solution without breaking the bank. I would love to see closer images or a diagram on how you did that. Perhaps I'll just keep me eye out as your UA-cam videos are my favorite to watch and I'm always learning from them. Thank you Adam for another wonderful video.
21:31 its like tiny aluminum star trek shuttles!
mixing my measurememnts if fun. more than once i have asked for timber to be cut 6'6 long and 300mm wide. if it is a youngsteron the saw you watch their heads explode
but the bawhair as a recognised unit of measurement is it metric or imperial?
I love that Grant Imahara managed to finish his R2 in time
The cables for the battery box go to the front, and the buttons/piston seem to chop and change, while the battery box often changes. So that leg you were first working on came off the RHS of your R2D2. So you apparently had a left leg on the right side with the right foot.
Inconsistencies with that seem to have made it into the films.
The long part of the part looks like the aluminium window struts that we have at my office in London. What’s the bet the original was made for parts like that
I want Tested to hire an editor who's sole job is to make annotations of whatever quote Adam makes.
The man is like a bingo machine of media quotes and just want to know where they're all from.
Machinist Curse: at 10AM I say, " I should have plenty of time". As you look up after finishing you see the sun rising on a brand new day.
It's an odd and sad sensation when you feel you are improving, then look in admiration at what you use to be able to do.
Can you not enter the cutting depths on the end-mills through the keypad on the display - rather than fiddling with the hand wheel to get 'close-enough'?
I'm pretty sure the DRO is just read-only. It's not a CNC mill...you have to adjust the actual positions by hand.
Adam's R2-D2 is gorgeous. I love it and would like one of my own. But since I am not able to build one or buy one, the Lego minifig R2-D2 do just fine for me.
since R2's "head" could swivel around and pretty much move forward regardless of facing, is it possible that some pictures just show him with this head facing one way as forward and another picture with his head the other way with forward? I don't think I really explained that well...
As an English ,guy when he said aluminium properly..... 😍😍😍
Originally read this as 'Astromech Fleet' and hoped for an army of Astromechs.
Still not dissapointed.
Adam: "Artoo is dirty..." 😂 Have any R2D2 builders made a Medal of Bravery Ceremony R2? I don't think we ever see him that clean again for 8 more movies!
Yes, many builders have.
@@briandodds very cool. Any recommends?
Thank you
Hey buddy. How much more would it have taken to mill the main part out of one solid piece of aluminum
I suppose the right leg- left leg question comes down to viewpoint, as seen from R2's viewpoint, or as seen looking at R2 from in front?
Love your videos! Very enjoyable to watch.
I just ordered a very large CNC router. I know that it is capable of cutting aluminum. IM mostly going to be cutting wood but I'm hoping to do a little aesthetic machining in aluminum and brass.
Thanks for the videos.
I'm sure you have UV cure resin I'm very surprised you didn't use it to set and pot your fibre optics, hats off to you on such a beautiful r2 👌😊
I loved the Monty python "holy hand grenade"quote from holy grail..... "And 5 is right out!" 🤣🤣
I had to laugh around 8:00... "these need to be roughly... 3/4 of an inch" (take out calipers accurate to some STUPID level of accuracy). Yup... that's roughly all right!😄
If you review a photo of the assembly of several R2s for The Empire Strikes Back, you can see that these metallic details on his legs are in one way or another in each droid. They have not been very rigorous with that.
Half the images show the 2 buttons on the front, the other show them on the back. Either is correct. The original model kit has them on the back but the Bandai has them on the front.
The legs seem to vary in which direction they go. I just found a photo of Kenny in an R2 with dots facing the back.
Look how precise that mill is. That's not a cheap piece of equipment.
Buttons forward FTW!! Always buttons forward!
Of course R2 is dirty and filthy... they had to bleep every single line of his dialog! >:D
"... it's going to be years before I need to worry about power R2, so I'm not going to." It's allways hard for me to see a man give up one of his years old dreams.😥
How much time and energy do you think is being saved by cutting off the second syllable of thousand
This has something that has bothered me so much since i started maching. I'll have coworkers come up to me and use "100 thou" like b*tch just say a tenth.