Droid Replica
My first major project was making a functioning replica of BB-8, the droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. From the second he came on screen, I needed to know how to make him. As part of a team of two students, I played a significant role in every step of the design and fabrication of the droid.
Once complete, we showed off the finished droid at an engineering expo at a couple nearby schools. Mostly this project was a series of learning experiences. Every step of the construction process was carefully documented on the school’s wiki page—until it was deleted a few years later, teaching me my first important lesson: always back up your documentation. Along the way, I gained an introduction to design as well as learned how to 3D print, solder, and even operate a waterjet.
Client
Self
Year
2016
Sector
Objects
Background Context
When my friend and I saw the seventh Star Wars movie, we became intensely curious about the droid BB-8. How did he work? Could we make one? Being high school students at the time, our engineering knowledge and resources were fairly limited. Fortunately, what we lacked in other areas, we made up for in the amount of time we were willing to dedicate to the project.
Ideation
At first, we tried to design the droid from scratch. The biggest challenges were sourcing the sphere and the engineering the internal mechanism. We eventually came across an online forum of BB-8 builders, and with their help found two designs that together met our requirements: cheap, visually accurate, and fully functioning. We ended up combining these two designs and began our three year journey of building it.
Part sourcing
When we were making the body, we ran out of money around halfway through printing. I set up a fundraiser on gofundme, and over the course of a few months, we had just over 1000 dollars. Originally, we had tried to laser cut the frame out of acrylic, but found that it wasn’t quite strong enough. Even with our new funds, we couldn’t afford to order them custom cut from aluminum for us. I did some asking around, and found a company in town that 3D printed shoes. They had a waterjet and agreed to cut the frame ribs if I helped get it set up.
Prototyping & Experimentation
1. The aluminum frame and inner parts assembled
2. The finished head before weathering
3. Assembling the head
4. Cutting the small ribs with a CNC
5. The long ribs cut with a water jet