TKModder421

Alright, so I've gotten through the initial sanding of the raw print and laid down the first round of filler primer. I started sanding the dome and decided I wanted to experiment with some of the rubber trim I ordered from sealsdirect.co.uk, to see if it would work as brow trim. I specifically looked for rubber extruded square U channel trim that was close to 15mm in height for the walls, and chose their US161 that had a 6mm panel (the gap between the two walls) and also US56 that had 16mm walls and a 13.5mm panel. After I received them I found that the US56, though it had a thicker panel to give me leeway in the trimming I would have to do, was too thick and the panel would buckle and fold as I tried to curve it around the brow. So I grabbed the US161 and it almost looked perfect. So I cut off an appropriate length and trimmed off one of the walls, turning it into an L essentially. Here's what it looks like up against the helmet Seems to be a pretty good match! Now unfortunately it's panel is a little less than 1mm short and so it doesn't quite touch the forehead, but honestly you almost can't even tell. If you zoom in close you can see the gap, but from a distance and at a normal angle you don’t notice. Now the brow trim from the files that I modified is the fit that I was going for. As you can see below, the "panel" area tapers down as it gets closer to the ends. So I ended up taping the rubber trim panel-to-panel with the printed brow trim and used that as a guide on how to taper the rubber trim. Unfortunately I forgot to take pics of that. But after I got it tapered down properly, I decided to attach it with some Fun-tak and take a quick pic. This is the basic idea of what it will look like if I decide to go with the rubber trim I'll get some better pics as I get further into the build. But let me know what your first impressions are.

Well thank you!! I'm slowly chugging along

Yeah, I may try and ask someone who has info about the screen used helmets in Kenobi about that backing. If you're interested in updated files, I've actually modified Nico's files to try and get them a bit more accurate, and I'm working on a new build now Here's my new build post:

Interesting. I've heard a few conflicting views on the backing of the vents. And it's possible the build process may have changed over the past 7 years since Rogue One. As far as Nico updating his files, do you know if he modified any of the other files?

I believe the file is called Ventback.stl. Back when I got the files (over 3 years ago), Nico had scaled the part incorrectly. And from a recent conversation I had with someone else building this helmet, it hasn't been fixed. When you go to print it, scale it to 200% and duplicate and mirror the file to give you both pieces

Oh nice! That's when I got the files as well. This is actually my second build of this helmet, but this time I made a bunch of modifications to the files though, so now it's different than Nico's original files. This time around I chose to have someone print them for me, so that's always an option for you

Haha, ok, I swapped out the thumbnail size for the original size images in my post. They're still not great - bad lighting and I was taking them from a distance to reduce perspective lens distortion from my phone camera. But I'll try and get some better quality pics here soon, "for the people"

Finally got my prints back from Corellia Creations and they look amazing! The brow came back a bit warped, but once it's affixed to the rest of the helmet you'll never know. But I'm going to experiment with some rubber trim first and decide which looks best as I get into it. The alignment keys worked fantastic and it virtually holds itself together. I did use some tape between parts so I could handle it (except for the brow trim, that's held on with fun-tak). I temporarily attached some test pieces I had made previously, but I intend to reprint them. Here's some preliminary shots of the raw print.

Ok, so I built Nico's helmet shortly after he released his files around 4 years ago, and I have a build thread that I started back then, and that I only recently updated to show how it ended up turning out. Here's a couple pics of that build. I love that helmet and the sculpt that Nico created. But over the years and with so much new reference material from Solo to Andor and everything in between, I've been wanting to modify a few things to make the helmet a bit closer to what I've been seeing on the screen as well as make it easier to assemble along the way. I started about 6 months ago with wanting to try my hand at modifying the files and make the cheek tubes penetrate into the chin area. That was the beginning of a long journey, ha! I didn't really have any experience with 3D software, other than tinkering with minor modifications on files before. I've been working on a mod in my spare time, with some insight and plenty of reference from Ryder Kinion I've finally got it to where I'm ready to start a build. I ended up lightly to moderately modifying every part, as well as utilizing and slightly modifying David Os's ear and temple trap pieces. The list is pretty extensive, I won't go into every little detail I modified but here's an overview of some of the main changes I made: 1. I slightly narrowed the overall sculpt side to side as well as slightly reduced the height of the dome. 2. Added alignment pegs and holes between almost every piece that attaches together. 3. Like I mentioned, I made the cheek tubes penetrate into the chin and added attachment plates between the end of the tubes and inside the chin piece. 4. Modified the teeth to add the last tooth and added attachment plates to secure them better to the inside of the helmet. 5. Added a slight recess to the regions where the tears, temple traps and back traps sit. As well as cut out a hole behind the tears and back traps for ventilation. I plan on adding a black, breathable fabric backing similar to what has been reported by those familiar with the screen used helmets. 6. Modified the brow trim to look similar to the rubber trim used on screen-used helmets. I may end up trying to use actual rubber trim. We'll see what works best. At this angle you can really see not only the brow trim difference, but also the reduction in height of the dome, the angle of the vocoder and the modification of the point where the cheek tubes penetrate into the chin. 7. Modified vocoder angle and length of some tubes and added additional alignment and attachment points. 8. And for all the fans of the Mimban trooper, I modified the Mimban shield and pins to be more narrow and sit closer to the width of the helmet and increased the height of the brow trim feature on the shield I made a couple miniature test prints along the way which helped me see if my mods were working the way they were supposed to. They also helped me see other modifications that needed to be made. These are the first two I made. They were printed at 35% scale, the one on the left was the my first test print to see if the alignment pegs and keyholes worked properly as well as seeing how the tubes to chin connection looked and worked in real life. Then after comparing to reference and talking to Ryder we both agreed it needed to be narrower side-to-side which made the dome too tall and square. So I slimmed the whole thing down by 3% and reduced the height of the dome. But then after seeing it in real life we felt it was a bit too narrow. So I decided to try it closer to 2% narrower from the original and it finally looked right. So after a few more tweaks to a few details (and after getting a larger resin printer, that I picked up at a great deal), I decided to give it another go at a test print. This time at 50% scale. I finally feel that this is the one! And now I think I'm ready to start my build. I think I'm going to avoid all the heavy post processing work this time around and get the big pieces resin printed with a strong resin, probably from Corellia Creations and resin print all the smaller pieces myself. As I've found from doing miniatures, resin is so much easier to get to paint ready than an FDM print. This may be slow go on my part, as I try to work on it in my spare time when I've got the motivation and energy, ha! But I'm hoping my excitement to see the finished piece will provide me with enough. Wish me luck, I'll post updates as it's coming along!

@Nairy, @Sly11, @revlimiter, @gmrhodes13, Thank you all!!

Thank you!!

Thank you! Good luck on your build. Let me know if you have any questions

I decided that I wanted to get rid of the eggshell texture, so I did some research and ended up buying some white Carfidant Ultimate Scratch & Swirl Remover. I wet sanded with 1000 then 2000 grit, being careful not to burn through the paint. Then used the scratch remover to bring it to a smooth polish. Once that was done, I attached the ears, tears and traps, brow trim and teeth. I attached the lenses I had purchased from Paul Prentice. I decided to drill holes in the chin to attach the mic tips (don't remember where I purchased them from) and the vocoder with fasteners and nuts. And lastly ended up using US52 rubber U trim (OT TK brow trim) for the neck trim. I have to say in the end I was pretty happy with the result. Finally I had my beautiful, factory new R1TK helmet!! This build was waaaaaayy more work than I anticipated, but I'm pretty proud of the finished product! It has become my flagship piece in my collection. I hope you enjoyed the journey along with me. Please feel free to comment and let me know if you have any questions

After hours and hours of wet sanding, I was finally able to get the texture and sagging paint removed and got it back to paint-ready. I applied some of the lessons I learned and watched some YouTube videos and gave it another go. It turned out pretty well in comparison to the first go round and aside from some minimal eggshell texture I was happy with it. So I decided to mock it up to see what it looked like with all the pieces attached at this point. (aside from the lenses) Also thought I'd do a side-by-side with the Nico helmet on the left and a black series helmet on the right for comparison. Keep in mind, the black series does have a modified brow trim.

Yeah, I definitely learned some good lessons back then. I did end up wet sanding this down and learned to be aware of temperature and humidity. I like the idea of using automotive acrylic paint, but I don't have the equipment for that unfortunately. I have gotten better at my rattle can technique but I agree with the unevenness and inconsistent coverage, especially when dealing with round objects like helmets and overspray. I actually finished this build over a year ago, and was so busy with life that I forgot to finish this build post, so I'm finally getting around to it in my spare time for completeness

So after painting the interior and endless amounts of sanding, I finally felt ready to give paint a try... Well... a few lessons were learned. Granted this was really my first attempt at trying to paint anything like this, it definitely turned out to be a good learning experience. First problem was that when I attempted to paint it was far too hot, it was around 95º F in the middle of summer and I was painting in my garage. This caused the paint to dry too quickly, leaving a slightly dusty look, which then caused me to over compensate on the thickness of layers that I was laying down. So after 3 coats I had lots of textured spots as well as sagging paint where I layed it on too heavy. So this round of painting was a no go. Back to endless sanding lol

I decided to paint the inside of the bucket before I moved on to attempt the outside to prevent any possible bleed ruining my outer paint work. Note: unfortunately that proved to have been fruitless anyway as you'll see in the next few posts. I didn't document the black painting, but I got a few shots of it masked up and the primer

Next I painted the ears because they were small and easy to get to a high enough grit (2000).

I ended up getting all the traps, tears and ear greeblies all filled and sanded, up to about 600 grit I believe, and painted them with the Testors Dark Admiral Gray Gloss, which is the same color used for OT TKs. After this pic I hit them with a matte clear coat. Edit: the ear greeblies are the modded files by David Os. They can be found here along with a few other accuracy mods that he's done for this helmet. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4227844

Here are some of the back traps. I printed them all using FDM printers, so it took some sanding and filler primer and more sanding to get rid of the layer lines. I was working on these at the same time I was working on the full helmet. At this point I had the chin, face, back and dome all attached and had filled all the gaps and was working on smoothing it all out

So I apologize for abandoning this thread. I did end up finishing my build and I've got some documentation on it, so I plan to finish documenting my build that I ended up finishing back in October of 2020. I'll be catching it up in chronological order. Please feel free to ask questions and such

Thanks man! Oh sweet, I also grabbed the file on his initial offering, and I also have his Shoretrooper files! lol I just barely started printing those! I currently have Anovos ANH TK armor and would love to get a set of RO armor but it’s gonna have to wait until I can afford it unfortunately

Any suggestions for lenses?

Ok cool I printed it face up with supports and a brim Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’ve got it pretty free of any texture I can see. Actually went up to 2000. Just wondering if I’m going to have paint adhesion problems on the spots I’ve wet sanded down to the plastic, or if it needs to be free of those color differences before I paint? I had the same problem my first go round, one of my supports failed under the left mic tip depression and it left a gap in the bottom. So I increased the supports under those areas and added a brim (for the supports to hold on to better) and the second one worked great