Make This Mini Star Wars BB-8 Ball Droid with a Hacked Sphero

• Once I split it apart, I needed to attach the internal magnet.
• The internal chassis of the Sphero has a post that pushes against the top of the sphere and acts as somewhat of a shock absorber. It's to this post that I attached the 3/4" neodymium magnet ring.
• I then cleaned up the edges of the sphere with a utility knife and used hot glue to reattach the two halves with the newly magnetized structure inside.

• I then began work on the head. I built it in Rhino over a screenshot from the trailer to make sure I had the proportions right. An STL file of my design can be downloaded from Thingiverse.
• I milled out my design on a CNC using polyurethane foam.
• I then used wood spackle to finish the surface of the foam.

• To get the paint job right, I laser cut the designs out of tape to mask off the different colors. I used gray plastidip for the base coat. I chose plastidip because it is more opaque than regular spray paint and wanted to block out the flashing LEDs (a glowing green droid just wouldn't work for me).
• After the base coat was dry, I coated it with orange spray paint.

After masking out the orange I hit it with a coat of white, added the sharpie details and finally finished it with a clear coat enamel. The top coat was particularly important to get just right, to reduce as much friction as possible between the head and body.

• After the paint was completely dry, I embedded a 3/8" neodymium magnet disc in the head and I added a small adhesive felt pad so that it can slide easily across the surface of the body.
• I used a drill press to sink the magnet in just deep enough to be flush with the surface and glued it in place before attaching the felt pad over it.
• The droid is controlled by bluetooth through the Sphero app, but also has a mind of its own. Because it's now more top-heavy and tends to lean, the gyroscope will try to correct the lean, and it will keep on rolling in whatever direction it's pushed.