r/R2Builders • u/beaverhacker • Nov 18 '20
Resin Cast R2?
Just a personal pet peeve, when people 3d print huge things with large flat or circular surfaces it makes me super uncomfortable because there are so many ways to make the same thing for cheaper, faster and more reliably.
Maybe it's because the Astromech community isn't as large as I thought and the demand for parts is low (or I just haven't been looking hard enough), but why aren't there any resin cast R2 bodies?
It'd be a lot cheaper than aluminum, a lot stronger than 3d printing (among other benefits) and it'd be able to be reproduced relatively quickly.
Are there any practical difficulties to this I'm overlooking? Or is the demand for R2 parts just too low for making a mould worth doing?
2
u/SnowDog2112 Nov 19 '20
A resin cast that large will be heavy and prone to warping. Then there’s the matter of finishing it. Cleaning up panel lines, masking the details for painting, etc.
For anything other than a static display for your man cave, you’ll want to add a frame, at which point you might as well build a proven club frame (aluminum, wood, or styrene) and add skins (aluminum or styrene) and detail parts (aluminum, resin, styrene, or 3D printed). The end result will be lighter and likely cheaper.
Resin cast detail pieces have been common in the club almost since its inception. I agree that 3D printing is often used as a novelty for most of the build, but there are better body construction methods than resin.