TKModder421

Thank you so much for sharing! this is valuable info! That back part is definitely one of those pieces that is hard to conceive how best to cut and then attempt to print

you should document your print process on the next one!

I’ve been asked by a few people if I’d be able to create a set of cut up files for the larger pieces that could accommodate printers with print beds too small to accommodate those larger pieces. I just kind of wanted to open the discussion up to people who have had to do so manually to try and find what were the best options for cutting as well as print bed orientation to assist me in creating those cut. I was also thinking of adding additional construction assistance such as mortise and tenons and/or other methods to help with assembling the pieces back together with proper alignment and durability. I don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to tackle it right away, but wanted to start gathering info about in the meantime Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Alright, I got around to adjusting the Mimban shield, it looks exactly the same from the front and sides, I just needed to adjust the contact points to ensure there wasn't a big gap.

1. DM me and I'll get you a new download link. But, I just realized that I didn't make the proper changes to the Mimban shield, so if you're wanting that as well, it'll probably be another week before I can get to it 2. I apologize, I completely forgot about that. But considering I'm calling a permanent moratorium on further mods, I should have some time to give it a go.

One side note. I realized that after an additional tweak to the dome I forgot to make changes to the Mimban shield, so I will be working on that after the craziness of the week is over... Star Wars week stuff, and my birthday celebration this week. So I apologize for the delay but I'll get it all together here soon

Alright, I've been working on a few additional mods for the past while and in light of a few makers and others taking on the task of giving us more options (possibly more accurate) for helmets and armor, I thought I'd better put these out in the universe before they become completely irrelevant. But I'm sure there will always be those who still want to 3D print their own helmets and this can still provide a fairly close option, certainly approvable, if constructed and finished properly. The first change was to create mic tips that appeared closer to the production used mic tips. After years of collecting reference and studying some up close images of production helmets, it became obvious that they weren't the same "found-part" mic tips that were used in the OT. So I modeled these as closely as I could to the reference I had, at the same time taking into account the proportion to this helmet and the current shape of the area on the chin where they attach. They do tend to look different in real life than they do in Blender. So I made at least 20 test prints before I was happy with the version I arrived at. I also added screw on base and a hole in both the base of the mic tip and the chin for easy installation with a washer and fastener and also to make it a bit easier to install the wire mesh. (I highly recommend printing these on a resin printer if possible) Here is the comparison between the original mic tip files and my new version: ___________________________________________________________________________ The next change is to the dome piece. I always felt the dome was a bit too squared off, so I finally took the time to modify the shape of the dome and made it more round above the temples on each side, and changed the sloping from the front to the back. You can see the difference in this comparison here: front view: side view ___________________________________________________________________________ The next change I made was to the right eye (your left). I added a curve to the top inner corner, so it didn't have the 90º angle as before. I also slightly exaggerated the eye bump, just to make it more apparent, as it was a bit too subtle before: ___________________________________________________________________________ Next I made a couple changes to the chin. I pulled down the pointy edges to either side of the vocoder and I also decreased the size of the outer edges of the mic tip inset area. In addition I added an angle to the area where mic tips lay, eliminating the need for the angling shims I had in the previous mod iteration. I also adjusted the ears slightly. On the previous mods to the ears, they made the helmet appear a bit too narrow, so I adjusted the angle of the caps slightly and went back to the original ear shapes, while preserving the full circle of the cap. Here you can see all the new mods in comparison to the previous mods: __________________________________________________________________________ For reference, here is a comparison of the original helmet files with the newest mod iteration: And lastly a comparison of all 3, the original files, the previous modifications and the newest iteration:

Alright, I apologize, I've been meaning to post a few things and I keep procrastinating. I wanted to show how I went about adding the dark backing in the recesses of the tears and traps. I essentially hand-painted the bottom of the recesses a matte black, but just around the edges where it's seen. I wanted to leave the majority unpainted to avoid adding adhesive on top of paint. (Note: this print is an older version of my mods that did not yet have the added mortise and tenons (alignment hole and tabs))

Yes they are, but the mods are a whole brand new set of files and are not interchangeable with the originals. As Glen mentioned, message me with screenshots of your original purchase and I can get you a link to download the new files Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@Meiloorun Really spectacular work! I have some questions for you, can you message me?

Nice! was just talking to someone recently about scanning the hot toys armor as well. it's a great starting point for sure excited to see what you can put together Oh, and I think Glen meant to link this and not my build of the original lol

Incredible!! [emoji2956] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No, hadn’t crossed my mind. It’s a good idea though, I like it. I’ll look into it Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

After painting, I found I had a good amount of orange peel type texture and I really debated on what I wanted to do. You can really see it in this image. Eventually I decided to wet sand down the texture. Starting at 600 and moving to 800, 1000, then 2000. Unfortunately I found, I should've added a couple more coats when painting. As I got into it, I found there were some thinner areas that I started to burn through. After some debate as to whether to lay down more layers or not, I decided that I didn't have the patience to start the process over. Besides, I've been planning to weather this one relatively dirty, like a Wobani transport trooper from R1. So a few darker areas and burned through edges should match the weathering. Anyway, after wet sanding up to 2000 grit, I then applied Carfidant Scratch and Swirl Remover and buffed that in. It fills all the little 2000 grit micro scratches and swirls and brings back the nice reflective surface you expect to see on a TK. The combination of the Behr gloss white and the white scratch/swirl remover, it ended up with a decent semi-reflective satin type finish. Not too glossy, but still get the reflection in the light. Next post: I'll talk about painting the tear and trap recesses and assembly

Hey all, I apologize for leaving this thread hanging for so long. Life has really been knocking me around for the past year and a half. I've hopefully caught up with everyone who has inquired and reached out about getting the modded files. If not, please reach out again. Alright, so I wanted to post up a few more pics of my build that I never got around to posting. I'm actually still not fully done. I haven't made lenses yet. Currently I'm using placeholders printed from PLA in most of these pics, and the mic tips are printed OT tips, but I'm currently working on some to go with the modded files, so I'll probably end up using those. Anyway, coming back to the rubber brow trim. Ultimately, I liked the way it looked a little better than the printed version. In all honesty, I think the printed one actually looks pretty good. I like the way it turned out. But I've seen different references, some look like my printed trim and others look like rubber trim to me, somewhat similar to OT TKs. So I decided I was gonna make this build with rubber trim. I have a previous post entry where I show the rubber trim that I was experimenting with. I chose to experiment with the US161 rubber trim from sealsdirect.co.uk. It has the same height as the OT rubber brow trim, but it has a wider U-channel, which is necessary to ensure there isn't a gap between the trim and the forehead. Now as we've seen from reference, the positioning of the brow trim can vary from trooper to trooper even with the new Gen TKs. I happen to like the look of the trim hanging right above the top of the eyes, so to ensure that it would stay in place I designed a shim to adhere to the inside of the rubber trim that could then be adhered to the ledge of the brow/front of the dome. This will also work for the printed brow trim if you want the same positioning. I ended up using E6000 to first adhere the shim to the inside bottom edge of the rubber trim and used small spring clamps to hold it in place while it cured. And then later (and I'll make another post about assembly) I again used E6000 to adhere it to the brow. Here's a few pics of the shim in reference to the helmet and US161 rubber trim

Thank you! Yeah, cutting, filling and finishing those so they are rounded off and have lengths that are similar is a lot of work! lol But yeah, the number of teeth, the cheek tubes penetrating into the chin, the indents where the tears and traps lie, and adding alignment/attachment features were my main goals in the mod, everything else was just kind of extra as I had discussions with another R1TK obsessed costumer along the way

lots of great research and work going into this build. Really really awesome!! I just wanted to quickly show you that my modified files do actually have the 10 openings. Here is an angle that you can see that little gap after the last tooth. Here's an orthographic side-by-side of Nico's original and the modded file. You can see that the ends are shorter and don't extend all the way to the edge of the frown. each individual tooth also has an ever so slight outward angle away from the top center and angled slightly back, creating the slight distance between the top of the tooth and the top of the frown that you see in reference. Let me know if for some reason your file set is different, and I'll get you the right file!

Thank you thank you! I’m a little obsessed lol.

Thank you sir!

Alright, got it mocked up, using a TIE pilot bust as a stand, and I gotta say I'm loving it so far. The printed brow trim actually looks pretty damn good. Once I get the white parts all smoothed and shined up I'm going to add the black paint to the tear and trap recesses and adhere everything together, just gotta make the time to do that next!

Oh man! I'm sorry, crazy that time flies so fast and I can barely keep up lol! I've had my slow progress staring me in the face for many months. It wasn't mad... it was just disappointed lol So I had gotten it up to 1000 grit months ago, I just needed to paint. Problem was I just didn't make any time to prep for paint. Taping, washing, and rigging is just so time consuming. I finally kicked myself in the butt and started the process. I decided that I wanted to paint the inside of the helmet first, mostly because the weird off-day-glo-green resin it was printed from just looked so damn ugly. So I taped it up and painted the inside of the helmet, and of course managed not to take any pics. Doh! Anyway, after painting the inside and again taping up what I needed to, I finally got around to laying down the outer paint... That was the first coat. Using the Behr #52 White Gloss rattle can This is after the 3rd coat on my makeshift rigging system I fashioned some heavy duty picture hanging wire into rigs and held them in place on the helmet parts with painters tape and drilled holes into a big wooden block to hold the rigged pieces between coats and to dry/cure After a few days of letting it cure, I put the main pieces together just to see it! I didn't take pics but I painted the tears, traps, teeth and ear greebs with Testors admiral gray with a clear matte coat, and the vocoder and the printed brow trim with Rustoleum 2X black ultra matte. Oh and I painted the tube stripe backing with Model Master's French Blue that I lightened up a bit by mixing a bit of white in with it. My plan is to now lightly wet sand the white parts of the helmet with 1000 then 2000 to remove any egg shell/orange peel texture from the rattle can and then buff it up to a shine with automotive swirl and scratch remover. I'll probably mock everything up and take some pics first though... so more WIP pics to come

Yeah, that's the info I had also heard several years ago. In my opinion the color seems a bit lighter than French blue or painter's tape though. I was just wondering if there had been any additional insight on a matching color. I have recently heard from a reliable source that at least on the Kenobi production helmets, the backing was a blue molded plastic, similar to a tupperware type material. This may be what we're seeing in these shots as well, I'm not sure, but the other details of the interior here match what I've seen from the source.

Curious if anyone has any updates on the blue for the tube stripe backing? Or is everyone still sticking with the French Blue?

The comps are great! Thanks for doing that, really gives some good insight. They all look pretty good. Seems that they all are slightly shorter than the on screen pics on the rib cage area

Those are the only files currently worth mentioning, imo Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk