The Skirt has to date been, by far, the most difficult part for TWD.  TWD has spent over 3 months and countless dollars on getting it right.  In the next week the skirt should be ready for construction.  TWD is driven to make all the pieces on the skirt fit perfect and is nearly satisfied.  The skirt is broken into 4 pieces.  The bottom, the sides, lofted curves and the fins.  all parts are precision waterjet cut .  The inside of the bottom piece is then machined to ensure a proper fitup to the sides.  The sides are then TIG welded in a jig, the welded assembly is then fixtured in the CNC mill and all but the inside are precision cut.  We chose to do that so that the fins mate up properly. The fins are fully CNC cut and tapped to bolt up to skirt body.

 

-==UPDATE==-

OCT. 2008 - The first skirts are shipping now, the production method has been one heck of a battle, and tweaking on the sheet parts has proven itself a major undertaking, we have found ourselves having to hand fit  the fins on all for corners to place them without gaps...there is still some tweaking to do, mostly cosmetic,(on the inside where you cant see it anyway) but we are hoping to break free from the "tooling-improvement continuum" soon, We appreciate your patience and we thank you for allowing us to be a part of your droid... I can't wait to finish mine...