CoolHandLAZ

Copy that will do! That is a great reference. Thanks! I'm very happy with it. I'm glad I went with your fans and hovi tip mics. They are awesome. Thanks again! Okay great I'll definitely clean all that up! Good to know!

Long post coming I felt inspired to work on my helmet so I shifted to that for a little bit. I'm thrilled with how it's come out so far! Anovos had the hard hat liner which I didn't like too much so I took that out. Actually I gutted the whole helmet. I was going to paint the interior black but felt nervous about taking the helmet apart and putting it back together. So I left it as is. I then moved onto some of the centurion mods since I felt that would be easier to do at the beginning. I first replaced the bottom ear screws with screws from @justjoseph63 and painted them white. After that I moved onto the frown. Researching on the forums, I found a few different ways to clean up the frown. Since rubbing alcohol was at a premium because of the pandemic, I couldn't go exactly that route but I did find alcohol prep pads. These worked wonderfully because I didn't have to worry about excess rubbing alcohol getting everywhere and I was able to really dig in there and clean those teeth up. I still have to do the tops correct? (I realized this after the fact) but I think I got the bottoms to where they need to be. This one was taken after I put the lenses in. After that was done, I went ahead and extended the frown on both sides using enamel paint. I still need to do a bit of cleanup on that but I'll do that when I get around to cleaning the whole helmet. I replaced the Anovos supplied lens with one from Trooperbay. I decided to cut out the eyes to give me more space in the helmet. I'm glad I did because once I filled up the helmet, it got crowded. I traced along the holes from the outside with paper and used that as a pattern to cut out the lenses. I left the protective film on to avoid scratches. Using sugru I acquired from @justjoseph63 and following his tutorial, I formed the attaching points around the eye holes. I had to trim down my lenses a bit because I aired on the side of safety from the start and made them big. Once I got the correct size, I pressed the lenses onto the sugru, and after letting them bond for a day, they were very securely attached. They are not coming off. Had to do a bit of clean up on the outside of the lenses from the sugru seeping through but it was fairly easy to remove. I also removed the mesh frown cause it was falling off and I needed to put more glue on it. I saw in another tutorial on here, someone used craft foam to outline the frown. I liked how it looked clean and how it prevented anything from catching on the mesh. I just measured the foam around the mesh and cut it out. Then I used E600 to attach both to the helmet. I used magnets to keep everything down while drying. For padding, I bought some military tactical pads on amazon. It took me a little bit to get the sizing right. I used painters tape to move things around before I got it exactly how I wanted it. Then, with industrial strength velcro, I attached everything. (I took this picture before doing the frown). After the pads were in and secure, I decided to move on to the fans. I bought @ukswrath's fan kit and cooling bracket and am very happy with those. They work wonderfully! I ended up going with an external battery pack for convenience. I got an anker one on amazon. The battery pack got velcro'd to the inside right of my helmet. I then installed the fans and the bracket. The fans attached to the bracket and I ran the cables underneath. I was able to configure them so that they would be able to plug into the battery pack. This was a little tough because the helmet is asymmetrical but I got it to work. For the speaker system, I went with @ukswrath's internal speaker system/Hovi tips. Man was this a great choice. Everything is self contained. I love it! I started off by removing the Anovos Hovi tips. This was very easy since they were just screwed in. I had to drill out the holes a bit in order to fit the cabling through. I ran the cables through the holes and screwed the new Hovi tips in. This was also very easy. I velcro'd the amplifier onto the left side of the helmet, exactly opposite of the battery for the fans. I then ran the cabling under the cooling bracket so that it could plug into the amp. The last thing I did was plug in the mic and position it so that it was right by my mouth when I put the helmet on. I taped it down so it wouldn't move. And voila! It fits great and sounds awesome! It also feels balanced because I have the electronics evened out on both sides. I don't have an Icomm but I may in the future. We'll see. But yeah that's where I'm at! Just a few cleaning things I still need to do. Let me know if there are any suggestions to improve. Thanks!

A little late posting this update, but I did get that sniper knee plate glued on Then, glued the hooks onto the back of each shin, drilled holes so that the hooks could connect, and did the final fittings (all per Ukswrath's thread). Moving right along!

Those T-Tracks look great!

@gmrhodes13 and @Firedog cool I'll go ahead and get rid of it. Cheers!

Thanks! So my other question is concerning the cod area. Should this edge be removed? I didn't see this on the return edge thread. Thanks thanks.

Been making some good progress so time to post an update I finally got that sniper knee fiasco under control and got it to stick. It's amazing how pliable ABS is. One of the the things that solved my problems was that the inner leg side of the sniper knee was too long so I trimmed that a bit and that made it work. A bunch of glue, tape, and clamps later and bam: While that was drying, I skipped around to the abs and kidney section for a bit. I drilled holes for the Anovos supplied split rivets and made sure they fit nicely. Next up on that front will be painting the rivets white. And next up for the shins/calves will be installing the hook system to hold them together.

Happy to help! Good luck with the build! That's some serious firepower

Hi! So these are the exact magnets I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MYQV446/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Those magnets in your post look like they would work fine but I prefer more of a disc magnet so there's less of a chance of them coming off if you bump them. I'd recommend getting a bunch of them. I use a lot of them when securing pieces. Clamps as well. And the blue tape is painter's tape. Definitely use painter's tape as opposed to other types of tape. It comes off nice when you're trying to size and glue things down. Hope this helps!

Right on!

So I'm back to working on the shins/calves. I glued the cover strip (half) onto the back piece. The issue I'm having is that when I line up the bottom by the feet, the top part is misaligned, and vice-versa. After looking at the CRL and other photos, I've seen it different ways. Which side should I be lining up? Should I trim the bottom and line up the top? The top after the bottom is aligned The bottom after the top is aligned (excuse the mess lol) Thanks!

Cool thanks for the pictures. Yeah I've been using Joseph's return edge thread but I didn't see a post specifically about the ab piece so I figured I'd ask just to be sure.

Hi all, Back at it. I'll have an update with the shin progress later but while that stuff dries, I was going to start getting things together to work on the abs/cod. My question is...should any return edges be removed for this? I'm assuming not since most of the threads I've seen keep the edge, but I figured I'd ask. Thanks!

Right on. I'll give that a go!

Ohhhhh okay gotcha that makes sense. I don't have an extra plastic piece there yet (just the cover strip) but I'll go ahead and give that a shot next time I get the chance to work on armor. Thanks!