themaninthesuitcase

Nice one Dan, decent amount raised. I wanted to do one but we don't really have the space out the front here.

Welcome to the FISD and the UKG. Hope to see you at a troop once we can get out again!

Account deleted as requested.

Well done Dan. Lets hope we can catch up at the Excel next year, even it that means in October!

As far as I am aware only 2 vendors are selling suits cast from screen used, one ANH stunt and one ROTJ. The above vender is not one of them. The history of most armour available gets murky fast and there are places you can find this out if it interests you. But you don't need to. The best best is generally to have a look at the recommended list, speak to your GML and see what people you will be trooping with have. You'll probably get good recommendations for vendors that serve where you live and those recommendations would be better than me in the UK recommending anything. Just be sure to mention if you wish to got to EIB or Centurion as that can be easier with some armours than others, but for the most part most common armour will have no problems there if you build it with that in mind.

No we still have to do that, but we have costume management built into our forum too.

Darren maybe post in your WIP thread on UKG And ask what’s up. Our GML is normally pretty hot on stuff so clearly something is up. If you have applied on both UKG and the 501 sites it should be sorted by now.

I went back to work mid July so time went away again. I am working at home so I could carry on printing but I ran out of room to store parts. Once I get some time to assemble what I have I'll get back to printing more. It will also give me some time to lose the lockdown weight and check stuff I have done actually fits before making more.

Welcome to the FISD! If your a midlands lad I'll see you in Birmingham once the world reopens enough for conventions to not be a terrible idea. Would have been great to build a suit whilst shielding!

Helmet is progressing well. Before assembly I tested the new modified vocoder hole. It's a good fit but a little fiddly to get in and out due to the shape. I think the fit is good and will work great. I need to back up the hole with some sheet at some point but I'll do that later in the process. The bottom of the helmet was built up in subsections. Essentially halves, working from the front backwards. As I went I welded each seam whilst I had easy access. Before final assembly I sanded these down to remove any sharp points and roughness. Once the two halves were built, then I used the flat join to the top as a reference to tape the rear into position. I wicked in some superglue to fuse the two parts together. Due to compound error in the other seams there was a minor twist to the helmet. Fortunately I was able to force it out slowly gluing the chin section in 3 sections. The bottom first, then the top before finally wicking in some glue in the middle. Again these seams were welded with a soldering iron and some spare filament. I've refined how I do this now. With the iron set to 400ºC I run the tip down the seam. This starts to fuse the parts and also creates a small groove. I then use the iron to press the filament into that groove and smooth it. This gives a good strong seam that also doesn't stand too proud of the part. Attaching the top half was a scary job. As with the lower half, there was a small missalignement due to compound error over dozens of seams. I started by holding the parts together as well as I could and used masking tape inside and out to hold it as best as I could. I started by gluing the out side most seams, one side as a time. I had to pull the parts into place a bit but the end result was good. This done I started in the middle at the back and works outwards wicking in glue and pressing the parts together as best I could. As much as this is an important seam it's not the best one, bit too much glue gap filling rather than joining. The weld will hopefully make up for this. The welding on this seam was a real nightmare. Access was terrible and just trying to get the iron in was a striggle never mind a 2nd hand to feed in filament. I have now started on filling the seams, with P38 and acryl, and sanding the whole helmet. It's messy work as I keep over applying the filer. I have now run out of 120 paper so I need to get some more. The face plate is also printed now. This was a worrying 13 hour print. It's quite thin and I was worried it would be too weak, which fortunately does not seem to be the case. Also the STL had a lot of issues with it and so had been through a lot of repair phases. This has left lots of scaring on the surface as well. Fortunately this will all be hidden under the nose piece (which is also printed). Only about 20% of this will be visible but I want to smooth it out as best as I can. I am also toying with moulding it to make a version in impact resistant resin but I'm not sure this is needed anymore. Just to see how it looks I taped the face plate in. I want to do the finishing work before I glue it in permamently. I also tried it on, because you have to don't you. It's a shade on the large side maybe, but better than too small. I may even be able to wear my glasses. With some pads in I am sure it will look a little less bobble head when sat properly. I also got a lens for the helmet from an Esty seller. At the moment I am not overly impressed. It was €42 and the shape and edge finishing isn't what I was expecting. The optics are okay not great, there is a small amount of ripple when you look around. Size semms okay but hard to tell until things are held in place, so I've wrapped it in cling film for now to protect it and will try it again later. As I mentioned I'm out of sandpaper so I'm working on a few other things as well for now for a change of pace. Next job for the armour will be progressing with the left arm.

I'm not sure if I can share that, I'll take some more photos though when I remember.

Their comms is awful, its a bit like throwing your money down a hole and hoping that something comes up in the bucket. I've yet to hear of a no-show, but I have heard of some very long waits.

Where did you get the E6000? There's a lot of fake stuff about! Snaps I used Prym Camping 15mm. You can get them in small 10 packs or a 100 pack. I got the 100 but used around half of them. I liked having far more than needed as it means you don't start cheaping out or cut corners to save 1 snap. I got them from rebel workshop but have a shop around for them. Also get the proper Prym pliers for them, the best £8 I spent on my build.

It’s all available in the UK. Armour, snaps, single cap rivets the works. Only tricky thing is e6000 glue as it’s not legal here anymore. I believe some are using one of the gorilla glues, not sure which, or you’ll need someone in the US to source some. If your looking to troop the armour as well head over to the UK Garrison as well https://www.ukgarrison.co.uk/join-us.html

My Imperial boots are US13. I wear a UK11 normally which is a US12. If you are in the 11-12US ballpark their 13 will be fine I would expect.

Why print something twice when you can print it three times! The change to the helmet part reminded me of the TD issue I had. So I've done the same thing, and also worked out how to get a bit of a better result at the expense a really slow progress bar. The results is still not perfect, you can see where there's some artefacts caused by Meshmixer reducing the mesh after the cut, you get to watch the progress bar of it ruining your part . I wish it wouldn't but I don't know how to turn it off. Also it would seem luck is on my side, maybe, need to print the part and check first. This is some standard UK guttering down pipe. You might remember it from such uses as the Shoretrooper Pringle cans, and OTTK TDs. And its about 1mm smaller than the hole *should* be, aka perfect. Obviously I need to actually hold parts and try it first. Yesterday I printed the tube stripe sections of the helmet. I was a bit nervous of these but due to cutting the helmet up to account for them I was able to orient it so they came out super clean. I also got all premature and got out the airbrush. The fit test got me all excited so I've started prepping them for a metal paint look. First job some gloss black primer. You can still see some of the tiny DLP layer lines in a few places and some grit that only appeared when painted, after they were air dusted and brushed down before painting However no ones going to be sticking the face as close as I do to them so I doubt you'll see them. Next stage will be some Alclad High gloss black then some Alcad Chrome. I am also considering moulding and casting one of them after the high gloss stage and trying an aluminium cold cast. And by considering, I know I will I just need to buy some silicone that's not about 18 months old. Maybe the stuff I have will work, I might get lucky but twice in a week seems like pushing it.

For TLJ looks like they went to black: (from this post by @gmrhodes13)

I had an idea to resolve my vocoder issue whilst making lunch. So I went back to my meshmixer file, because you always keep your working files, and duplicated both the vocoder and the helmet part (#8 if you care). Always work with a copy of objects as this app uses destructive edits, like photoshop, so you will end up with helmet-final-final-no-really-final2.mix if you create copies of the files. By keeping copies of the objects as you work it's only 1 file but it can get a bit tricky to manage in meshmixer. First job, enlarge the vocoder. Painting will take up space so I need to account for this ahead of time. Measuring the vocoder my now traditional 5% gives me 1mm to play with, factor in the resin shrinks a bit so after paint I should be okay. Next I subtract the new larger Vocoder from the helmet section. What this means is: anywhere the 2 parts overlap, remove it from the helmet. If this looks awful I can also try the reverse, and cut the vocoder down to fit the space in the helmet. This would not be a bad idea as it would then key in, but I prefer the first method. You can see the result here, sorry about the weird colours I don't know how to turn those off. I now have a slightly oversized channel in the part that the vocoder *should* fit into. I'll be printing the new part tomorrow. There's a few odd artefacts from the operation due to how meshmixer does this, other apps might do it better but I know how to do it here. However they are pretty small and I can probably sand/scrape them out later if needed.

It probably sounds far fancier than the reality!

The black and white can be any gloss, you may find acrylics may be easier to use and source. For the #5 grey and #14 blue you probably are best going for the umbral enamels but I find them more of a pain to use.

Thanks guys, not sure I would call it epic. Still too much room for a disaster! Traditionally my printer sits on my desk in the lounge, and I only print when I am home to be able to keep an eye on things. With lockdown I moved the printer into the conservatory as it meant we could use the lounge for home schooling the girls, but meant I could print every day. We did order a new table to move it again into the spare room but this was requisitioned for homeschool. At the moment I'm not sure when this move will happen as I either need a new table or the girls to no longer need it. This means the printer is in the conservatory, which hit 45-50ºC for a couple of days this week! In order to make sure I didn't damage the printer I stopped printing and hid the printer under the table for a few days. It's cooled down again today so I was able to start printing again. I lost some time as I needed to recalibrate the printer due to having to move it. I have been working through the helmet at the moment. A few things are making me nervous but if I at least get a helmet out of it I got somewhere. Today I printed a bit I've been excited for but like a lot of this 'kit' will prove to be a pain. Essentially the vocoder doesn't fit. Some of this model is designed to be printed at once as the parts overlap, and apparently this is one of them. I am hoping that I'll be able to file the back edge of the vocoder to shape and it will fit in. I just need to look at some reference to get the orientation correct before I start marking the bit that needs to be removed. Once I can make it fit I'll be able to mount it and figure out a way to mount it.

If you have some I'd also back up behind them with some circles of scrap. Will help reinforce what will be weaker area after drilling it.

Took an around hour to glue some of the parts together this afternoon. The butt plate is fully built now. Bit worried about this for the same reason as my abdomen, I have hips. Hopefully it will be okay. Cod is done too. This isn't the one from CG Traders but a more accurate TLJ style one my friend provided. Think I'm okay sizing wise but may need a tweak closer once I can get more suited up. Made a start building up the chest plate. Minor miss-alignment on the part I fixed. I may have miss shaped it a tiny bit when I was making the changes. Nothing that can't be filled though. Also started on the helmet dome. Again 1 small miss alignment, right most part is a shade high in the centre of dome. I've filed off some of this to even the levels but I daren't take any more off. The rest will be handled with filler. I just need to take care to align the rest of the dome with a shade more care. This is the big problem with using super glue, you get a few seconds to see any errors before it's forever. None of this has been welded on the back yet. I will do this before I start on the filler work to help with strength. I may also fibreglass some parts, certainly the broken abdomen plate, but maybe others. I'm not overly worried about the filler work, none of it is any worse than what I have seen a Jimiroqui kit need.

My armourer in the UKG thinks the bicep looks okay but the forearm is a bit small at the wrist, which I agree with. Going to try a larger forearm and go from there.

Just did a quick mock up of the left are using some small rings roughly printed. The idea as before is purely to get size quickly and using as little filament as possible. The size seems, I would like a bit more at the wrist so I am probably going to upscale to the same size as I did for the body. This will give me about 15mm (5/8ths ish) all around at the gasket joints. This seems a reasonable gap to allow for the gaskets and still have room to move in. Any guidance from more experienced builders would be appreciated here.