I am about to dust off R2 who has been sitting in the corner of the garage the last 2 years. I am looking to disassemble and then powder coat him and wanted to get advice on whether to have a professional do it or with training I could do it myself. Any advice or thoughts?
Also what are the dimensions of the oven at the site to determine if any of the components are too large if you feel I can do it myself?
Thanks,
Jason
Jealous!!! I want to build an R2! 
Well here is a picture of our oven. I doubt size is an issue for you.
You CAN do it yourself but you will have to be patient. We are not ideally set up for powder coating by any stretch. We don’t really have a good place to spray the powder on the piece. Even after accomplishing a good spray, the piece has to be carefully transported to the oven without bumping it possibly loosening the powder that is only being held on by a static charge. Speaking of which, our spray guns (last I saw) are hobby units that go up to 25kv whereas a professional unit can reach 80kv to 100kv. A professional powder coating business would do a much better job but probably be pricey. Still, with as impressive a piece as the one you have, it might be worth it. On the other hand, yours is a very impressive R2 exactly as it is. Painted or not it will still be a museum grade unit.
Thank you Jennifer.
Thanks Steve…very helpful advice. I may test a piece just to see how it turns out and at the same time get some quotes on professional powder coating.
So this is isn’t really a good representation.
We have a rolling cart for hanging items to spray safely outside, with an onboard compressor so you don’t need to run a hose. It allows moving parts in and out without disturbing them
We have both an eastwood hobby unit and a Redline unit, which operates ~65kv (though I know the solenoid was damaged recently and I need to fix it).
We have multiple ovens (a large oven for bulky items and batch jobs, and a small parts oven that’s easier to setup), and even provide some powders.
Some misc samples of stuff I’ve coated at the space:
EDIT:
To answer some of the original questions:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing the details and images. I am going to order my powders from Prismatic to get the colors I need. Is there anything I would need to bring to space other than the parts and powder that you would recommend?
I’d wait until we fix the redline gun for sure since the eastwood would have coverage problems on that large of a piece.
Ensure it breaks down cleanly, bring some non-coloured microfiber for surface cleaning (non-coloured because acetone and some dyes I’ve found do not play nice). Making sure parts can be prepped entirely on the vapor hone is important, or if you’d end up doing prep by hand or through a service that does blasting
If you need to do masking high temperature tape (kapton is nice because you can laser stencils out of it).
Plan for piece loading and unloading.
If you catch me in the shop I can give you an overview of everything. I should be in some evening this coming week; I need to give some one-on-ones anyway and can spot train you on the large oven.
Sounds good. Thanks Tails…I will reach out later this week and see if you are going to be at the space.
Jason
Hi Jason, I’m assuming you know Neil and Wayne etc from R2. Alyssa has a perm non skinned one so folks can see the inside. What color scheme are u doing?
Hey Doug…I think I shared a note or two with Alyssa 3-4 years ago when I first started my build. Life got in the way and R2 has been sitting in a corner untouched for a long time and I am just now getting back to carving out some time to complete the build. I don’t think I have met Neil or Wayne yet but I need to reach out to introduce myself.
As for color, I am going traditional with him and going to use Prismatic Bentley Blue and Cloud White.
Cloud White
Bentley Blue
Jason
Get the colour swatches first if you can.
We also have a number of swatches in the front cabinet drawer of the metal shop under the scale but definitely not all of them.
