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Been hacking away at various armor pieces, keeping my eyelids propped open with toothpicks after work this week. When my Honorary Dad is out of town I sorta run the store and boy does that tire a body out. But I have progressed progressively, and in that progressive progress I have come to realize that... A. I should have trusted myself more on my initial cuts. I chickened out of scoring on my pencil trim lines for the fronts of my shins and scored a couple mm out and of course they ended up being those few mm too wide and there wasn't enough scrap left to snap then so I had to use Lexan scissors and then the seam was a total mess and blah blah blah. I should've just trusted my first, well measured cut lines. This is the better of the two. B. I should have trusted myself less on my initial cuts. When I slid the brow trim on my bucket, I discovered (or whatever the sickeningly awful counterpart to the generally cheerful "discover" is) that I had overtrimmed Smudge's brow. Like Move-Along level, except more. And wonky. I failed to keep the brow line straight across with the bottoms of the traps. Fortunately it won't be visible, so I stuck an ABS scrap on with some ABS paste. Reshaping to follow. My thighs are in one piece (...two pieces?) and looking absolutely fab. Trimming the rear cover strip ridges off resized them plenty. I'll make the outer rear cover strips vertical which will mean they're NOT centered over the seam due to whatever silliness happened in trimming, but I have faith in the wide inner rear cover strips (which ARE centered over the seam, somewhat obviously). You can see below approximately where the outer cover strips will lie compared to the seam. This thing is done: I seldom take photos of my pieces when they're all clamped up - seems indecent - but my shins looked so festive I had to snap a shot. I was unsure how sizing those would go, what with the all-or-nothing business that is trying to resize with the ubiquitous ATA rear cover strip ridges getting in the way of mid-level trims, but curving them in a little with these front inside cover strips on, it looks like slimming them down will work fine. The rear ridges aren't THAT pronounced. I'll be sure to do the sizing with my boots on, yes. Soeaking of resizing, this is how much my forearms will have to come in. I feel like even if I keep the halves symmetrical, the detailed bit on the right is going to be so far off center in its half it'll look bad. But we shall see. Today I'll be prepping parts for my magnetic shin closures, and - maybe - reshaping the ab yet again. Here goes!

Single capped rivets were used to attach the ammo belt to the canvas belt but pop rivets with backing washer were used to attach the holster.

Hey all, I just wanted to post a little build-thread here so that maybe some people might learn from my mistakes. I was looking at a few of the different voice effects units out there for a TK build. I really wanted the static burst at the end of communication and I didn't really like the idea of having a dedicated phone running under my armor. That kind of narrowed it down to two solutions: the iComm and TK-Talkie. I like the idea of the iComm because it is so well used, but with current technology, it seems kind of LARGE. Plus I saw a few complaints about internal batteries dying after a year. I'm sure it's also a great solution but I ended up trying TK-Talkie. It's a bit smaller, a bit cheaper and pretty much "state of the art'. :-) TK-Talkie runs on an ARM processor based USB board called a Teensy 3.2. It really IS teensy. You add a sound board and a bluetooth module for configuring and you've got yourself a TK voice modulator. There's an app for your phone which connects via bluetooth and allows you to change settings. Those settings are then saved to an SD card on the Teensy so you only need the phone to make changes. I think my parts came in at about $50 US. The guy (who is on this forum as lerxstrulz) has everything on his web site. Parts Lists, tutorials, source code (firmware), sound files and even the case and lid as 3D printable objects. He sells completed units but I chose to build my own. It's fairly easy to assemble providing you have basic soldering skills, that you are somewhat computer literate and you can follow the tutorials on their web site. The first two came reasonably easy for me, the last "not so much." I made a few mistakes during assembly which caused me to take apart (un-solder) the entire unit and re-assemble it correctly to get things working. I figured I'd post my experiences here so that others don't follow in my original footsteps. :-) I'm not going to post a full tutorial. They have that on their website. www.tktalkie.com This is just going to hit a few highlights in the idea of a basic description and a few "what not to do" examples. So here we go.... This is the Teensy 3.2 along with the header pins (legs) in the lower-left. The first thing you are supposed to do is chop up the headers and only solder on the legs that are actually required. I think there are 28 pins but only 15 (or so) are actually used. I thought, "Why chop them up? I'll solder them all. It will just take a minute." While I can't say for certain that this caused any issues, when I completed all the steps, I had very low volume and the bluetooth wouldn't connect. So play it safe and chop up the headers like they say and only solder the required legs. It's the safe thing to do. Next up here is the audio board along with a mono 3.5mm audio jack I purchased. This one DEFINITELY caused me issues. My problem with almost no volume was because the mono jack wasn't sending the signal correctly. I can only imagine the mono jack did not connect left and right together but only sent audio down the right.....which was not what either the TK-Talkie or the Aker amp was expecting. Once I rewired using stereo jacks all my audio problems went away. So again, play it safe and just use stereo jacks to begin with. You solder the Teensy board onto the sound module, then add the leads for the bluetooth module. I started with a nice connector to connect the bluetooth module (shown below) then later removed the nice connector because it was too big and wouldn't fit in the case. And be SUPER careful of the bluetooth wiring. I messed this up as well. All I can say is READ THE TUTORIAL CAREFULLY and look at the photos when wiring the bluetooth module. Watch where the wires go. There's only 4 of them. Transmit on the Teensy goes to Receive on the bluetooth. Similarly Receive on the Teensy goes to transmit on the bluetooth. Make sure you get these right. Sometimes the tutorial shows the bottom of the board and sometimes the top. Pay attention. I shrink wrapped the mic and line-out connectors. This is probably a good time to test everything and make sure it works. You need a Micro-SD memory card to write the basic setup and audio files to. I used my computer for this. Then you plug the memory card into the Teensy Audio module. The Teensy itself uses a micro-usb connector for power and/or programming. You plug the Teensy into a computer via USB and install some Teensy software. It's like a programming kit. Then you download and write the firmware (from the tk-talkie web site) to the Teensy. May as well go for version 4 of the firmware, it's the latest. At this point it should be working with default settings. You can disconnect it from your computer and now just power it off the same USB connector via a USB battery pack. Once my USB wiring problems were fixed I was able to connect to the app on my phone. Here I had to boost the mic level and adjust the sensitivity. Fairly easy but it seemed to be time dependent. I had to make changes and save quickly. If I waited too long it seemed to disconnect and I would have to connect again. Lastly, a fellow TK-Wannabe, Mr_Fahrenheit, was gracious enough to print out the box and lid for me on his 3D printer. Here's the raw box before any cleanup... I cleaned up the sides and holes. Did minimal sanding and painted it black. It's going inside my helmet so it won't be seen. I jammed everything into the box only to find the bluetooth module was a little too big. As mentioned, I removed the connector I was using and cut the legs off the bluetooth module, soldering the wires directly to the bluetooth board. Then I even dremmel'ed away at the lid slightly to give me a millimeter or so of additional room on the inside. Then everything fit. :-) The blue and white thing in the side is the memory card. And here's a quick sample of the audio... I hope this helps. Learn from me, people. :-) Mark

Thaniks man, yes, filling all the gaps and holes with green stuff is a very long and boring work! But you are right, at the end the look will be great. The bar graph i will put here: The power indicator bar will be put in the counter bar. Today i was able to finish the scope and the electrics. Now, the LED is bright enough to be seen from a different angle than just the front. Video on how the Scope works;

In preparation of the troop tomorrow I managed to finish the TK's new home (just in time). I'm quite happy with how it turned out so I might as well share an image of the box with you guys

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Great thank you. I am definitely glad I dont have to use those little bottles.

Whilst it may seem excessive they aren't expensive and have proven to be handy to have on a few occasions. If you're not using it all the time a cheap one from HF or ebay will be more than fine.

I think the original suits used cap rivets anyway, but yes you don’t have to use pop rivets.

Definitely ok. I recommend it instead of pop rivets, because then you can swap the belt easier.

Thanks, Luc! I really didn't want to have to do any trimming - I think that's unavoidable for the thigh pieces (pics of those coming after this weekend). I'll get a pot of water on shortly and bend those tabs down!

Congratulations.

Thanks guys. Glad to hear! Still working on the left shin, but good to know I'm on the right track anyways (even if it looks good in the pic).

The 501st costume references library. You can check all the requirements here: FISD CRL

Congrats and I’m with you in the AM armor, love mine Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nice work, was worth the fighting

They look good in these photos. Sent from my VK815 using Tapatalk

That is the highest resolution logo we have available for personal use at the moment.

Chris is correct. Also, no worries about your English - it reads just fine. Everyone has a typo now and then. As noted, you can use these on items for personal use, and are usually used for things like forum signatures. If you do make an item for yourself such as a coffee mug, shirt, etc. those are usually OK as long as you don't make them for others or offer them for sale. If you want to make a batch of an item, then the best way is to fill out a merchandise request form for approval. Bespoke items like coffee mugs and shirts are usually produced cheaper locally than by doing runs.

"This will be a great addition to your costume and can be submitted for approval by the 501st Legion. Each regions GML will make the final decision." Well... at least he doesn't say it's "approvable" or "approved" by the 501st. While correct, his caveat of each GML making the final decision sounds like a great cop-out- hey I told you it was up to the GML! when this junky piece doesn't get approved. I personally think it's pretty shady for an actual 501st member to even hint that this thing would be good for a 501st costume, v. cosplay or just a costume. However I don't see anything technically wrong or Legion rule-breaking in the listing, just in a pretty shady gray area. I also think the markup is pretty high considering it's likely a rubies painted and lightly weathered- I find Rubies routinely for about $20/each. But that's my two cents and they're not worth much in the grand scheme of things.