R2D2 was developed and built in the UK by professional engineers

In 1976, Peteric Engineering was an engineering company that was leasing space at London's Shepperton Studios. The company was headed by Dr. David Watling, a chartered mechanical engineer and a doctor of physics. Although located in Shepperton Studios, Peteric were doing fabrication for customers outside of the studio including the aircraft industry and specialty automotive commissions and eventually moving into the pharmaceutical industry.

"We had some quite good welders at the time. We had some really skillful people. One of the things we used to do at that time is we used to make bits and pieces for the aircraft industry. We used to weld boxes out of 10 thou thick new metal. Now that is really ... quite difficult." - Dr. David Watling

"The Strippit machine which we used was mechanical. It was a 30 ton [punch] press. We would work out exactly where all the holes had to come and what shape the holes would be. We would make a metal template which had a hole punched in the center of where that hole ought to be. That template would be put on a table. Everytime you would put your stlyus in the hole in the tempale it would punch a hole in the metal that you were wanting to work on.So you went around the pantograph, did all the holes on one side, changed the punch, and then did all the ones... So those panels would all have been within a few thousands of an inch ... absolutely identical " - Dr. David Watling

"We had 60 ton folding machines with very accurate setting bars at the back where you could push you metal through and it would always fold to the same place. So there were all sort of very accurate folding devices. So you could generate all sort of shapes ... very accurately" - Dr. David Watling

The seven aluminum R2-D2 props made for the first Star Wars film by Peteric Engineering really do stand apart from the majority of film props as examples of precision engineering fabrication. Lucasfilm special production and mechanical effects supervisor John Stears passed the responisibly for these seven aluminum props to aerospace and automotive engineers for final development and fabrication.