Shielded Droideka

Instructions: Rebrickable

 

Scaling down the droideka to accurate minifig-scale opened up the possibility of using the 8x8 Windscreen Domes, which are the largest windscreen domes, as the iconic force-fields of the droideka. With the droideka standing at 6 studs, 8x8 is the perfect size sphere to envelope the droid correctly. Embedding it into the ground proved to be quite the tricky challenge actually, as I wanted the ground internally to match the external ground level, and also have a tight fit around the shield, which much to my surprise is 1 plate not spherical as the domes aren't actually perfect semi-spheres. This lead to a ring and inner ring that doesn't have a top or bottom, as the studs on it face up in 4 different directions like the blades of a windmill, and an interesting and fun internal build to match up all the turns and offsets.

 

The floor was also a tricky component of the build, as the curvature of the domes at the low point is pretty high so even a 2 plate thick design would have pushed the ground up too high.

 

Happy with the end result as gaps are almost exclusively the thickness of the shield itself and it works well from any angle.

Done