ATA ear advice

[spoudastis]

Hi all,

 

I am in the process of building my first TK lid, an ATA. So far it is going ok and looking pretty good but now I am at the ears and after a first go on the left side I had less than fantastic results. I am ending up with a sizable gap between the circular part of the ear which is flat and the curved helmet. Also do I need to notch the ear to account for the step where the two helmet halves come together.

 

If anyone has some incredible super secret tips about how to make this easier I would be forever grateful. I have gone through many different build threads and panda troopers tutorial but I feel like there may be other useful tips floating out there somewhere.

 

Thanks!

 

Chris

[maxsteele[TK]]

Could you get some pics up of the ear held up to the helmet?  We can get a better idea of what you're working with and give suggestions based on what it looks like.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

I notched my ears to help them sit better

[The5thHorseman[TK]]

I notched it too:

[Darth Voorhees[501st]]

I usually notch the ears as well..it helps them sit more flush.

 

Also check out this thread...its for a NE helmet, but the process is the same for the ears:

http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26301-ne-helmet-build/

[pandatrooper[TK]]

I usually trim the round part flat first, then scoop out the cheek tube area. Do a rough trim and leave more plastic then you need and trim a little at a time. The front of the ear usually has a little more plastic left on it than the back. If you "scoop out" the same amount front and back, you'll have a gap.

 

I use a pencil to make marks of where to trim and just take off small bits at a time. After I get a rough fit, I drill the holes in the ears and the bucket and use them as alignment guides for test fitting so that they are sitting in the same place each time.

 

Then its final trimming and sanding to get the fit perfect. Tightening the screws also closes up small gaps.

[spoudastis]

Thank you all for your help and taking the time to take pictures too. I'll take some pictures of my messed up ear to show you the trouble spots, I'll have to make sure the next one is perfect.

 

Cheers

[elleerre]

Hi Chris, I've followed Terry/pandatrooper's tutorial an worked fine for me. It was my first ear attempt and although not perfect I'm satisfied with the result.

[Darth Voorhees[501st]]

if you need a new ear LMK..i have a ton of ATA ears from when i build ATA helmets for folks and dont mess up the ears

[zoekoner[TK]]

Lol voorhees i might take you up on this

[Darth Voorhees[501st]]

haha just LMK, i have ALOT lol

[spoudastis]

Haha thanks voorhees, I still have one to go and I hope that is enough.

 

Cheers

[russellr2d2[TK]]

I am currently working on my first TK build with an ATA helmet. After freaking out over the face-to-cap fit and supposed gaps on the sides I think I have it evened out. But I am going to cut the ears roughly first to make sure I get things lines up right. This thread was a BIG help.  I will be visiting it often for reference. In other words I'll let you be the first over the cliff and then I'll get my parachute and follow!

 

Thank to all who responded to this post it is helping a lot.  This TK building makes me nervous as heck, not like building an R2 which is all measurements and perfect fits. This is a all wonky building and crooked everything!   HA!  Its a lot of fun though!

 

Russell

Edited March 27, 2014 by russellr2d2

[spoudastis]

So here are a few images of the lid so far. There may be some elements that might drive the hardcore screen accurate folks nuts. I started out wanting to do a completely screen accurate helmet but as usual for me I started to drift and build what I think looks good.

 

 

As you can see the frown is not not painted all the way to the corner, I really love how the hero frown looks so for my stunt version I make the frown just a bit narrower.

 

 

 

On the left side I didn't leave enough meat to attach the front and back halves with the screw so I had to epoxy them together. The blue bit is the remnants of a shop towel that was protecting my clamp from epoxy seepage.

 

 

 

Roughed out ear. The gap was way too big obviously, next attempt will be better. This has been a fun build and much more challenging that I thought it would be.

 

Sorry for the sideways images, I don't know how to fix that.

[The5thHorseman[TK]]

Once tightened the ear shouldn't be that bad i think.

[pandatrooper[TK]]

One of the issues is because the brow is so low its making the ears more difficult to trim. personally I would raise it to the top of the eye holes and redo the ears but that's just my opinion.

[russellr2d2[TK]]

Hey! I think I did that too, timing off too much on the left side and I am not 100% sure I have enough to get a rivet into the bottom.  I think if that happens I can use a tiny bolt & nut like 3/32" or something.  I have several little brass nuts and bolts that are really-really small.  I would worry that that epoxy will let go of the plastic someday.  Go see what the hardware store has in teeny-tiney bolts.  Look in the brass section they seem to go down to smaller diameters / lengths.

 

I think your helmet looks great!  Keep on going!  Hoping to get mine together this weekend and start painting the details. Got my Trooperbay paint set.

Edited March 27, 2014 by russellr2d2