Another hobby I’m involved in is making replica droids from Star Wars. I do this as part of the UK R2 Builders Club, which is part of a larger Droidbuilders UK club. We don’t just build them, but we also take them out to events to show them off, entertain people, and raise money for charity. My personal droid has done many events over the last 5 years from local comic cons, big national conventions, weddings, local school fairs, and even a couple of big music festivals. Its a fantastic club to be part of and if you have the urge, I encourage you to check the links above. It actually got me an invite to walk the red carpet for the last Star Wars film’s premier!
The club is designed to help builders, you don’t really need any skills except the willingness to learn. One of the ways we help is to do what we call ‘Part Runs’. Getting a single item made such as a CNC’d greeblie (greeblie = A small piece of detailing added to break up the surface of an object and add visual interest) is very expensive due to set up costs. However, if you get dozens or hundreds made then the cost per unit is a lot lower. So with a part run, one user will put up the cost for getting a larger number of parts made, and then distribute them out to the members at a much lower price than they could do on their own.
So why am I writing about this? Well, recently I’ve been doing a part run for the club. Over the last decade or so there have been a couple of ‘standard’ lighting systems for R2, along with a few add ons. However, both these options were quite expensive so I thought I’d have a go at designing my own system.
Not only that, I decided to take the plunge on trying out getting not only the boards made by a fabrication company, but also have the boards populated and soldered by the company. I must admit, it was actually quite a painless process due to using EasyEDA which is an electronic design application closely coupled with one of these fabrication companies called JLCPCB.
So far I’ve sold about 40 sets of lights, and have another 50 on their way to me! I’m keeping the price as low as possible so no profits are made for me, but I am able to give a portion of each sale to the club charity. So far I’ve managed to donate £500!
Its been a really rewarding process, and I’ve got some great feedback. Expect to see more electronics projects! I’m definitely interested in making more craft related items with some embedded lighting or similar.