May 6, 2007

300mm Dome - Part One


The day I have been waiting for is here: the dome has arrived. There is one small catch though, since the dome isn't mine. This one is for a special project that Jerry Chevalier is doing, but I will use it make a tutorial in conjunction with Daren Murrer. This is the first step to creating a masterpiece.

When you open the box, notice that it was well packaged. I will be saving all of this back in order to ship it to CIV in a few weeks where this dome will be on display and possibly used as part of the R2 Builders Panel. There are three main parts to the dome: the laser cut outer dome, the inner dome with plastic inner ring, and aluminum bottom ring.

In order to prep your dome, we first look at the inner dome. On the inside, there looks to be some grease or something leftover from spinning. Just use a rag and wipe this out. Cleaning now will keep a lot of nasty aluminum grease off of your hands.

The next step is to remove the leftover pieces of the laser cutting process. Flip the outer dome upside down on a soft surface and find a dull chisel or punch. I used my small chisel to apply steady pressure on these thin pieces and pushed from the inside out. Push on the corners of the strip first, and then apply light pressure to the middle. This should make all of the scraps come right out.