themaninthesuitcase

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.

As I mentioned I was given an older copy of the chest which had holes. However I didn't really like the thickness of the plate as it was uneven and I generally preferred the newer version. Seeing as even the old file needed a fix I went back to the file I started with, and printed the whole thing. To update this to lvl3 I started with the template piece I showed before but made the tubes taller and their walls thicker. I printed a couple of these as they didn't take long. By keeping the base plate thin they are able to flex and conform to the shape of the chest plate. To do the fix the first step was to remove the big lump behind the pills. This was a messy job using a dremel and a sanding drum. The PLA+ doesn't really sand well and sort of melts off rather than sand, but I got there in the end. This was then filled with P38 (same thing as Bondo), took a couple of passes rough sanding with the dremel each time then finishing off with some 120 by hand. I next marked out the dimensions of the hole I needed to fit the replacement. This initial hole ended up being too narrow as I forgot to account for the curve splaying the repair. I drilled a 6mm hole through from the front, roughly cental but exact placement doesn't matter. I then cut close to the line with a coping saw and then used files to get the hole to final size. As I mentioned this actually needed to be a shade wider. I broke the 1st piece trying to get it in, but I had 2 so it wasn't a problem. You may notice I've changed the angle slightly as the hole angled up slightly. I checked reference and it should be horizontal. With a few measurements I verified the angle was wrong and then measured to correct. The part was superglued in from the back, then sealed around the edge with a bit more glue and accelerator. The gaps now needed filling. I did think about using P38 but this seemed like a lot of effort to not fill the pill holes. So I opted to pour in some resin. I chose Smooth-On Smoothcast 66D as; first I had some from a complete project and no longer had a need for, it had a slightly longer pot life and being semi rigid was less likely to crack later. This turned out to be a terrible idea. The resin had gone bad and foamed up when curing. Not a huge issue as such, but there was air bubbles that needed filling. What was more of an issue was the fact it's semi rigid. This made it harder to sand as it would flex a bit and so resists the abrasion. I should have used the 325 which I picked up at first but decided against. 300 would have been better still but I don't have any at the moment. As you can see I wasn't the tidiest! The Smooth-On semi-rigid range has a slow cure profile. Basically this means rather than curing suddenly like most resins, it transitions slowly through a gel like state. I used this stage to drip in a bit more resin to try and fill above the surface slightly to reduce the need to fill. This was when it started to foam a little and so just ended up making a bit of a mess. To clean this mess up I resorted to files. Initially a small 6" file but swapped to the big boys to speed stuff up. I started with a saw-rasp, think 10 saw blades joined together, on it's fine side then moved to a fine cut metal file. The saw-rasp is brilliant and removes a lot of material fast but in a controlled manner. Once this was more or less down to the surface I swapped to some 120 wrapped round a sanding sponge. The foaming left some air bubbles in the surface. These were filled with some 3M acryl filler and sanded back again. This isn't perfect but the rest I'll do when I assemble the chest as that will need a lot of filling. I also have fixed the oval hole in the OII of the back plate. I started by making a plug the size I wanted the final hole to be. This was a simple 3D part with an M4 hole on the back so I could add a screw as a handle. Before use this was waxed so that it would pull free from the filler once it cured. I used some Smooth-On mould wax I had lying about but something like vaseline would work just the same. Ideally the plug would be centred as that would be correctly fixing the skew. However it's easier to just pick one side to redice the amount of fixing needed, and act as a guide for the edge profile. Before filling I drilled a few 3mm holes to give the filler something to grip to. With the plug clamped in place some P38 was pressed in to fill the remaining gap. Once the P38 was cured I used the M4 screw to pull the plug out. The wax stops it sticking and it comes out pretty easily. There was some filler under the plug but this can be sanded out later. I've done a quick smoothing pass to remove the excess, I've not yet corrected what should be a round over. This will be done later once I've made a template to guide me. I am sure that will also need some more filling. Finally the TD uses a TFA style end piece. My initial plan to modle a full replacement core was a bust due to how the model is designed so I had to print it as is initially. I used a hack saw to carefully remove the sticking out section. This went pretty well and didn't require as much filling as I expected. That lip was also carfully removed with the saw and some careful pulling at the layers. This was then filled with a couple passes of P38. Still not perfect but I can address this next time I am using the filler. The TLJ end cap will need to be 3D modelled and glued on. The new part needs to be about 30mm tall, but a paint can cap is about the right diameter so I used one to mock up the look. At some point I may go back and try create a "lose" core style one like seen in the Premier photos but this will do for now. I'll just make sure that the TD can be removed in future and replaced should I chose to. Print progress wise I have completed: The abdomen (still broken but I will repair this, using suggestions from above and some fibreglass) The back plate for the TD The TD Chest plate Back and yoke Posterior Cod All of the Ab boxes Made a start on some of the helmet I have also printed out some rings from the left forearm and biecp to test for fit and sizing. I need to add some card to space these to size. Once that's done I'll grab an undersuit and get some photos for size checks, I have a feeling I'll need to go up a little the same as the armour. On order is a bubble visor for the helmet. I already did a size test for this and used the eye section deliberately so I could measure for the lense. I'll share the supplier and my review of quality once it comes. Current printing focus will be the helmet until I confirm the arm sizing and I will swap to those. I also need to make a start on assembely soon to try age start getting a better idea of the core fit and comfort.

Thanks @Cricket I'll give that a go. I have a lot of scrap () I can try it on first.

Theres a reasonable number of HWT EIB. 12 at my last count but that was about 100 approvals ago so there may be a few more now. EIB numbers are issued 1 per person, so you get a number for your first EIB but not your second if you follow. So you may be 2-10 EIB approved costumes but only 1 EIB#.

Updated

Thats more or less how I've been joining the parts, then going back and "welding" them with a soldering iron and filament filler. Sadly this went at a weak spot. It was a very early print and I've changed a lot of how I print since, so I plan to reprint. That said I will repair this too so who knows, I need to fibre glass some bits anyway and maybe that will save this part?

So one step forwards, two back. Basically, I dropped it. This was the 1st part I printed and the temperature wasn't hot enough, and I am pretty sure under extruded. So it broke. As infuriating as this was last night it was always going to break, just a case of when. At least I've not done much assembly and finishing on it. I double checked some things this morning, like extrusion width and also destructively tested some of the chest parts I won't be using. I am pretty happy that with current settings the replacement will be up to snuff. That said, that right angle is a bit of a stress raiser so will reinforce it either by welding it or fibreglass. Also I'll try not to drop it again, especially as the price of filament has gone way up due to demand. Butt plate is almost done. The main sections are pretty large and more or less maxed the Z axis. Size seems good just hope it all fits once assembled! I'll be doing some of this before I get too ahead with the chest plate incase I need to make any changes. I also managed to get hold of an older copy of the chest plate file, which has holes! They are still the wrong shape so I have knocked up a "fixer" in fusion 360 that I will use to correct them. Once the part is printed I can measure the holes and update the parameters in the fusion file and print that. Once that's done I can carefully file the chest plate until the fixer fits and then fill all the remaining gaps and smooth it all.

Progress report! I have figured out the quality issue. Short story long: it was the 0.6 nozzle. After a fleet of benchy's and other test/calibration prints I just went and swapped back to the 0.4. And lo, the quality was back. So in the interest of saving hard work at post processing, I am going to take longer with the prints. Sort of how if I was able to print all night I'd print all this at 0.1mm layers instead of 0.2. This keeps the surface quality up and means I can keep infill and thus weight low. Just means a 20-30% ish longer print time. I'll cope. I was looking at the CRL again. Specifically the chest section, and discovered I am an idiot. Whilst I know my pills are a weird shape, I was going to fill them and reshape with drill bits as a mould, I missed that they punch all the way through. Had I done so I would have asked for a file mod, now I am half way through a reprint of the chest and don't really fancy a 3rd. Power tools it is. Rough plan is to Dremel off the back lump, plate over with some 1.5mm HIPS I have, and then drill, shape and fill as needed for the new holes. It's going to be a mess, and a pain but I have at least 1, possibly 2, spare copies of this part. Also at 5% infill there's not a lot of it in the way to drag drills off line etc. Fun times ahead.

Sent over a few $. If each of us sends even a small amount it can add up really quickly.