New Hope style R5-D4 Eyes with space for NeoPixel Jewel

For decades now, Star Wars fans have thought R5-D4's eyes were a series of stacked cylinders.  I have a 1:6 scale toy from 1996 with this design, and it can be seen on the Arfive prop in “The Mandalorian.”  But a few people have maintained this was wrong - and with the release of ultra high-definition versions of the original Star Wars movie, those people have been proven correct.

For a more in-depth discussion, I refer the reader to this excellent website:

https://sites.google.com/site/theageofplastic3d/all-about-r5-d4?authuser=0

Upon discovering this, I set out to create something that matched what I saw in those screencaps.  Included in this archive are four possibilities.

While it's clear from the screencaps that the eye is some sort of cone sitting atop some sort of cylinder, the exact proportions of this weren't obvious to me.  I couldn't tell if the images showed a curved cone, like a cup, or a cone with a compound angle.  Others argued that it was a single-angle cone.  So I worked up versions of all three.

In the end, I decided the compound curve looks best, but I still wasn't fully happy.  There's a clear colour change at the base of the cone, and while some felt this was simply the result of knurling, I thought it looked like some sort of disc or washer.  With the most likely source of the cones being yet more Mitchell turntable parts, something would be needed to keep the lenses in place, and a washer or disc cut from pipe seemed very reasonable to me.  So I made one more version.

To my eye, the simple cone version with the longer cylinder really resembles the high-res screencaps of the “R5" type droid in “The Phantom Menance,” so I've included it for those who prefer it.  It's worth remembering that the original R5 dome had been sold to Disneyland long before TPM entered production, so what you see in that movie is a brand new prop and it has a number of small detail differences.

These eyes were created for use on Mr. Baddeley's R5 dome, but I wanted to be able to dismount them if needed, so there are holes for M2 screws.  I just drilled holes in the dome and ran some very long screws all the way through. To aid in drilling through your dome, the screw hole marker part has a peg that will fit the hole the Baddeley eyes are glued into.  If you'd rather just glue your eyes on, attaching this part to the eye part will simplify that.

There are also multiple versions of the lenses.  At first I just did simple hemispheric lenses but decided those were boring and created a version with a sort of “retaining ring” molded into it.  Then I split those into two parts so I could print the actual lens from translucent plastic and the retaining ring from opaque.  Then I made a version with a small cutout so I could get my thumbnail under the lens and pop it off when I need to access the screws.  All these versions are provided.

The lenses are held in as a friction fit.  Depending on your printer's accuracy, you may need to scale them down slightly to fit in the eyes.

Finally, all of the eyes have enough room to fit a NeoPixel Jewel from AdaFruit, including its pins, if you want the eyes to light up.