themaninthesuitcase

The build isn't as hard as it looks once you get going. Even if you do make a mistake most of it can be fixed with an epoxy putty like green stuff. Good luck trooper.

Sheperton is, quite frankly, pony. You can do better.

I'd say the 2 most accurate kits on the market are RS and TM. RS is cast from (most of) a screen used suit, TM is an excellent sculpt. They both command a premium over most other kits. Which you choose would be personal preference, but I suspect that's the best start point for your request. Personally I'd always go for ABS, uncapped, as that's what the originals used. I find capped ABS too white.

As far as I am aware the DOs don't discriminate against you for your height so long as certain criteria are still met. You're best bet would be to speak to Tony and Andrew, they do the approvals and will be able to guide you best.

I believe it would be based on the shipment total, the duty would be less than the cost of 2 shipping costs though.

Not quite. Anything over £15 get charged 20% VAT Anything over £135 gets charged 2.5% duty and then another 20% on the resulting total VAT. Both calculated agains the cost of goods and shipping.

Not all packages will be stopped at customs and have VAT and Duty levied. Though these days this is getting rare from the US as everything is done digitally and so it’s done automatically. Last time I got a package from the USA Royal Mail held the package until I went and paid the VAT and duty. The time before that was a bigger package and FedEx just invoiced me 2 weeks after the delivery. Stuff from other countries, say China, often isn’t picked up for charging.

Approximately its this: All goods that arrive from a NON EU country are liable for VAT if they are worth more than £15, and duty if they are over £135. The value of the goods is the value of the goods inclusive of shipping and duty. The value is also converted into £ sterling using what ever the rate that they are using, I don't know how they calculate this, before the VAT and Duty are calculated. Some stuff will be missed, assume it won't be from the US. Also best not to falsify the customs declaration. VAT is currently a flat 20%*. Duty is a scale, but I believe once you cross a threshold the rate applies the whole whole value. There will often then be a handling fee by the delivery company, usually £10 but I've seen as much as £20. Worked example using made up numbers: Goods = $200 Shipping to the UK = $30 Total = $230 At customs this will be converted to £ Value = £169.88 ($230 based on todays rate on xe.com) Duty = £4.25 (2.5% of the total in £, if the value was under £135 it would be 0%) VAT = £34.83 (value + duty @ 20%) Handling Fee = £10 Total = £218.96 The government page on this is: https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad Hope this is helpful, I'm not super experienced in this but I've ordered enough stuff to have a reasonable grasp of the law here. * There are other rates but they won't apply here.

Depends on what you want printed but either 3D hubs or shapeways are good options. The latter is more money but also has a ton of material options that aren’t available elsewhere. 3DHubs is basically FDM or SLA printing for the most part, but is usually cheaper. Knowing what you need printed for what will help.

Looking good so far, quite jealous of what sounds like a Foredom. Would love one but they aren't cheap or available here. As Joseph has said add all the bits. Well most of them at least, I didn't add all of them but it doesn't take much time to add them.

If we need to up our budget I'll throw in a few $.

You're going to struggle to find 38.1 (1.5") PVC in the UK, there might be some on eBay or you can go for aluminium, again on ebay. The actual sterlings were 1.5", 40mm is just the closest metric option. I'd assume the DD parts are for 1.5" as they are just a subset of their full kit. That said it wouldn't be overly hard to adjust, just hold some 100 grit paper on the pipe and rub the part until it fits the new radius. I started a pipe build with some 40mm PVC from B&Q but once cut some holes I found the tube collapsed due to the internal tension of the material. If you want to go that way try get a thicker wall, the stuff I had was about 1.5mm thick walls and I think was just drainage pipe, you want something more like 3-4mm.

Guessing you don’t have anything holding the thighs yet? They seem to be moving about a lot? Shoulders don’t need any Velcro, just glue at the front and some 5mm flat white elastic loops at the rear. Should hold them in place just fine. Shoulder bells are probably as good as your going to get them.

The secure torx arrived today. I got 10 M3x16 and 10 M4x25, the idea is I’ll be able to use the M3 as is and I’ll need to shorten down some of the M4 with a saw. I did it this way as they come with the torx bit so ordering multiple lengths adds to the cost significantly. I’ll confirm once I’ve had time to check this and what lengths I ended up with.

Whilst I've seen pep helmets it's highly unlikely that you'd be able to build a FOTK with pep to a standard even close to 501st standard.

I saw a post on a social media from KB saying he was a bit swamped with messages so might be he missed yours? MIMIC looks nice but I don’t think he’s shipped anything yet. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on this one my self. Though it’s also fibreglass so guess that’s out. I was advised that anovos is currently one of the better choices but they have changed it a lot for the new, upcoming, release so no one really knows what they’re getting yet.

Having read the whole thread now I can offer some possible assistance to future attempts at this. Arduinos have a resistor that you can optionally enable on each pin using INPUT_PULLUP mode. This has the side effect of reversing the reading the pins but means you don’t need an external pull up/down resistor which can save a lot of space in small space builds like this. The only note is you don’t want much draw in the line or it will blow the resister in the CPU module. The feature is documented here : https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/DigitalPins

I am sure I have that audio module and amp board in my stash as I never got them to work. Might have to use these posts and revisit them.

Sheartech or Imperial Warfighters? I've been thinking of getting a rubber one, so would be interested in your thoughts.

I ended up slightly larger than the suggested as I needed more room for my hand to fit through. So make sure you check that too.

Congratulations Dan! All that hard work has paid off!

Looking good but you might want to trim down the cover strips on those thighs, that bit that sticks up will dig in good and proper. If you have a look at the reference images you'll see that other than the odd one that the cover strips are approximately flush.

All I'll say is you don't need to spend as much as that on a good quality, vetted seller kit. You can, and there's some excellent reasons to do so, but you don't have to.

Finished off the initial filling and sanding this evening. There's a couple of small bits that aren't perfect but these should be more or less hidden once assembled so I'm not going to spend hours fixing them for little gain. Initial filling Complete Next step is a coat of filler primer but given it's not got above 3ºC for a couple of weeks I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that. Once it's in filler primer I'll rub it back with 180 and with any luck that should leave me ready for final prime and paint.

Have a look at what people are building in the build threads, and then approach the makers for costs. I am sure they are used to people enquiring so don't worry about it. The recommended sellers list is a pretty decent starting point. Most people aren't going to give you a "get x" as there's a number of variables that will do into that decision, and cost is only one of them.