revlimiter's AP TK Stunt build

[revlimiter[Staff]]

4 hours ago, gmrhodes13 said:

One thing that stands out which I didn't notice previously is your cover strips, they don't appear to be central to the thigh, this may come up at higher levels

 

While the cover strips are indeed not centered on the armor itself, they ARE centered on my leg and pass the yard stick test. The strips go straight up from boot to thigh... as long as I manage to line up the boots with the strips that is. I didn't do too great at that with my last set of pix. But yeah, the strips are centered when worn.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

A set of magnet boxes arrived from Eric @Scimitar  as seen in his build. THIS might be a link to the correct post.

 

It's a set of little 3D printed boxes with rare earth magnets embedded inside and separated by a thin sheet of ABS to give them easier opening. Nothing special? Or something very special? I'm super jazzed to have them!!!

 

This was 95% of the work - getting the torso halves aligned to my liking, taped in that correct alignment (on the down side just barely wrapping around to the inside), and the magnet boxes lined up correctly with the seem. Maybe I could have done the boxes separately, but what fun is that? All at once is much more fun.

 

Aligned, glued, and clamped. And there they sat for 3 days.

 

... well.... 12 hours. I opened them after 12 hours. But I just HAD to see if the boxes and armor aligned nice, the armor opened and closed, and I didn't have to redo it.

 

and then they actually really did sit with the clamps on for 2.5 more days. Really.  It was hard to not tinker with things during the long drying time.

 

And I didn't! The alignment was dead on!!! Top, bottom, sides. Just right. A little bit of excess glue seeped between the magnets and needed removal. That was the extent of the extra work.

 

Just perfect.

 

The armor snaps onto my body with a satisfying magnet-click. And it's aligned perfectly. This makes those 2 torso snaps wayyyy easier to find and snap.

 

There's a troop coming next weekend. This armor will get some use soon!!! And then I'll think about EIB cert.

Edited November 8, 2021 by revlimiter

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

A small tip when gluing magnets side by side is to add some clear food wrap on the sides that will touch, just in case any glue seeks in between, makes them easier to come apart  

[fishgoh0nk[TK]]

Congrats and welcome to the gang! Good to see some gusto and enthusiasm for higher levels from the get-go!

[revlimiter[Staff]]

10 hours ago, gmrhodes13 said:

A small tip when gluing magnets side by side is to add some clear food wrap on the sides that will touch, just in case any glue seeks in between, makes them easier to come apart  

 

OOooooooo. Thanks!! I have more magnet boxes to glue on and will try that.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

Browsing various threads here, I noticed something about my bucket...

BEFORE

 

I didn't do the best job of painting my vocoder. It's not terrible, but there's room for improvement. The AP helmet is pretty soft in this area and the vocoder isn't well defined. I struggled with figuring out what to paint... 2 years ago. When this build started. heh.

 

Also, the hovi tips are not so white. Again, not terrible, but could be improved. These are the built-in-speaker tips from Ukswrath, which I really really like. They just need a bit more white.

 

AFTER!

 

While maybe still not perfect, this is a LOT better IMO. Worth the half hour of careful painting, measuring, and repainting.

 

I also redid the inside of my bucket. I want to get the SHA and headphones built in and working, so I needed to move some stuff around. The ICOMM and amp used to be basically next to my ears. I had some padding at the top that was making the helmet flop around. And the USB battery used to sit in the very back, which caused the helmet to always be slowly pivoting backwards and obscuring my view.

 

Everything now fits better and it's much more comfy. Happy with these small changes.

 

I managed to drop my Hyperfirm and the counter popped off. It was held on by standard CA glue which was pretty crusty and sparse.

 

Black stuff to the rescue!!!

 

I sanded down the blaster side and matching side on the counter to remove all old CA glue. A quick coating of black stuff...

 

Repaired. Hopefully much more resilient than the old crusty superglue.

 

 

And finally, more magnet boxes from @Scimitar! These ones are in a slightly sexier black, complete with shadow trooper-sourced ABS covers.

 

These are going on the other side of the torso to keep alignment correct. And since there's far less visibility on this side, I installed them a bit differently.

 

Each set of magnet boxes got polarity and positioning figured out, then set aside. Then I sanded and E6000'd the area and all boxes. Next, I installed a box on one half of the armor, being very careful to line up the seem edge with the box edge. Some blue tape was applied to keep the box from shifting forward when it's buddy appeared for glue-down. Finally, I added the matching box, applied a little force to keep them in place temporarily, and repeated on the 2nd pair above.

 

 

Located, glued, placed, and clamped. And there they sat another 2 days.

 

Everything was dry enough tonight that I got to try things on and inspect the alignment... and it's just epic. No bulging. No gap. The belt doesn't skew anything. Nothing but perfection.

 

These magnet boxes are something else.  Huge thanks to Eric for sending them. And, well, everything else in this build.  It would still be in a sad brown box in storage if not for him.

 

 

[revlimiter[Staff]]

 

I had my first troop today!!! It was a comic store opening. A pretty low-key event, but still a lot of fun. There were about a dozen of us in attendance. Two TKs. I'm the shiny in the middle above.  

 

The armor performed flawlessly. Everything stayed connected, buttoned, and aligned throughout the ~2.5 hour troop. It was comfortable and easy to move around in. I have no complaints at all.  When test-fitting, the armor felt pretty tight around the neck, but it didn't feel bad or bother me while trooping.

 

My bucket was also very comfy. The @ukswrath comm system worked perfectly and everyone could actually hear me. I kept one fan running and stayed cool the whole time. I'm looking forward to adding the SHA and seeing if it'll all fit inside with the big headphones I chose to hack up.  Visibility was also amazingly good after removing a bit of padding and shifting electronics around.

 

A+ experience!!! Will troop again.

[Sly11[Admin]]

Congratulations on your first troop Adam, hope it was everything you were expecting and more.

 

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

Congratulations !!! Well done 

[revlimiter[Staff]]

I started working on my SHA. Because it's nice to be able to hear things outside the helmet... and I kinda can't so much right now.

 

And also because I got some spiffy new headphones!

 

This is a set of cheap Sony headphones. They're not quite over-the-ear like my nice Bose noise cancelling ones. They kinda sit on the ear. For $18 on amazon, they seemed like an inexpensive test of having real headphones in my bucket. I figured they can always be swapped out for ear buds if I can't fit everything inside. They're model MDR-ZX110 if anyone is interested.

 

My original plan was to just hot glue the SHA in these nice little holes I drilled in the helmet 2 years ago and call it good. But grinding from the fans made that an immediate non-option. I tested it with the headphones out of the helmet and the fans running (so I was standing next to the helmet while holding a headphone to my ear) and the fan noise... dang.

 

This is my test fitting of an outside-the-helmet mounting. I made some pencil marks at my approximate ear hole locations and test fitted the ears back on to see how much room there was for the SHA mics. And there was room! Plenty in fact.  And the wires allow this sort of mounting! Everything is coming together.

 

Seeing the excellent ideas in this thread, I scoured the garage for some foam to isolate the mics with.

 

I used some high-impact seat foam I had sitting around to make ear-recess sized foam isolators. They're about 32mm by 16mm and wedge into the ears quite nicely.

 

Hollowed out...

 

And mics in place. The mic bottoms out on the canvas backing to help keep the ear packet as slim as possible.

 

Gaffer taped in place for testing. It's not a real TK without gaffer tape, right?

 

No blue foam is visible. That means I got the mic lined up right with the holes.

 

Finished off with some spare packing foam that was rattling around the shop. The idea of this is to give a bit of insulation for the entire ear from the inner helmet. And it works great!

 

I didn't take a pic of the re-assembled helmet yet, but the ears snug down just as they did originally with all the extra stuff inside. It works better than I hoped.

 

Fan noise with the helmet on and SHA running is precisely as loud as it is inside the helmet without the SHA running.  So, while I can still hear the fans, the mics aren't picking them up at all. It's just what I hear inside the helmet anyway. And what I hear OUTSIDE the helmet - wow. I had no idea they would be this good and powerful. While tinkering with the helmet in one room, I could clearly hear my wife and daughter talking quietly in the next room. With my bucket on! I could not hear them with the bucket off.

 

Loving this upgrade. I just need to finalize the headphone mounting and my bucket will be packed with tech.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

Here's the fitment with the ear/mic packet in place. It's flush! I still can't believe it all fits well.

 

This is how the foam compacted after a day or two. Not bad at all.

 

For test fitting the headphones, I just put some velcro over my screws and popped the headphones in place. It worked but that didn't seem like a great mounting solution forever. Or even for a day. I wanted to do a more solid foundation for the headphones, so I made boxes to go over the ear screws.

 

This is a pre-finished version of the ear box. A passage for the mic wire and space for the three screws and nuts. I made it as tall as my tallest ear screws...

 

... which meant shortening my extra long ear screws to be about the same height and shorter than before by a thickness of spare armor plastic. Shortening the screws is why I had the ears off again for the photos above.

 

And here's an ear box in place. The layers of plastic were E6000'd together and they sat for a day. The next day I cleaned them up and evened out the edges. Then I did repeated test fittings while grinding down the edges to match the radius of the helmet around the ears for as flush a fit as possible.

 

 

[Scimitar[TK]]

I'm now certain I've created a monster.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

On 11/22/2021 at 7:05 PM, Scimitar said:

I'm now certain I've created a monster.

 

 

Sooooo... My bucket is insanely amazing and better than I ever expected. With the headphones on it's a perfect fit. Better than my actual racing helmet. The SHA works incredibly, the voice is loud, clear, yet garbled in the right way. The fans keep me cool. It's comfortable and not floppy. I have amazing vision through it after the careful repositioning of everything. It's a dream.

 

... and I can't actually put the helmet on while wearing armor. I have to slide one or both headphones in and out to install and remove it. I can't do that with the gloves on or the arm articulation I have while wearing the armor.  I've tried but... it just doesn't work. Not workable at all.  I have to be able to slide the helmet on while the speakers are in place.

 

I have 3 more sets of various thin headphones on the way to fix this issue.

 

I will fix this.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

The AP sniper knee. It's a pain.

 

This is how mine was. It wasn't bad but... man... it just wasn't great. I was not happy with it at all. I didn't feel confident in submitting this for EIB and Centurion... so it got cut right off and shoved in some boiling water.

 

I boiled the knee for about 20 minutes. Warming the plastic, bending and manhandling, rewarming, rebending.

 

The final shape had the outside end bent waaayyy down from where it originally was. The two ends were pretty even from the factory, but the knee armor isn't shaped that way. The outside edge is much lower. The sniper knee needs this shape as well if it wants to follow the armor lines.

 

While boiling and bending, the knee cracked. And honestly, it was pretty fantastic that it cracked. This allowed for a tiny bit more reshaping and let me get the knee to the shape it needed.

 

And then I clamped it. This was nearly as much work as the boiling. I got the outside edge clamped first and it started to cure and not slide around anymore. Then I added the magnets for the center and got it situated without having the outside edge move. And about 10 minutes later I was able to add the inside clamp.

 

Everything sat like that about 2 hours until the E6000 had just enough strength...

 

... to fix the knee crack. I (very very lightly and carefully) drilled a relief hole so the crack wouldn't spread. I also stuck some extra plastic behind it for strength. Huge thanks to @Scimitar for the tips.

 

Then some ABS paste to fill the gap and repair area. ABS also holds the plastic strip behind the repair in place.

 

After all that, the knee got to sit for over 24 hours. The paste and E6000 got a good cure with clamps in place the whole time.

 

I sanded the ABS paste flat and gave it a polish. Better than new!

 

Here's the finished sniper knee. I'm SO proud of this! I'm no longer embarrassed by that knee. I submitted my pix for EIB immediately.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

Back to the bucket.

 

This is a pillow speaker set. I had no idea this sort of thing existed till the other day. I guess they're meant for listening to books or white noise or whatever through your pillow.  They're thin and soft and seemed like they'd be perfect for a bucket.

 

 

Since I replaced the top two helmet pads with my amp and iComm, I had two spare helmet pads left over. They got immediately grabbed up and sliced open for headphone duty. I was surprised by all that was inside. Some soft couch foam, harder closed cell foam, and a sheet of stiff vinyl as backing. No wonder it's $20 for like 8 of these.

 

 

Hole cut for pillow speaker!

 

 

Taped in and ready for action.

 

And I wish I could report that these were awesome. They DID fit. My head can slide in and out of the helmet with those pads at my ears. And the speakers do work... barely. They are extremely quiet. They seem to be designed to be pressed hard against your head for sound to transmit to your ear, like if you were lying on a pillow. That's great and all, but I can't have that with the bucket. That's what I had before with the big headphones and I couldn't take the bucket on and off...

 

And then inspiration struck.

 

I hacked apart my big headphones and shoved them in the helmet pads. I managed to only take this one photo.

 

Basically, the headphones are held together with 2 screws each. Unscrew them and you get access to the little driver as seen above. The ear pad and driver are left mounted to a thin plastic wafer. It's about 3x as thick as the pillow speaker, but it's less than half the original thickness of these headphones.

 

I covered each driver with gaffer tape very carefully. The tiny thin delicate wires are tiny, thin, and delicate. With any luck they'll last a while and not get torn away. But the tape is quite secure and should hold things safely.

 

Then I cut larger recesses in the helmet pads. I cut the soft padding away completely, just leaving a donut around the outside of the headphone. Annnd...

 

IT WORKS!!!!!!!!

 

The big headphones are much louder than the pillow speakers and work beautifully. I can get in and out of the helmet without harming headphones or shifting the padding around. It's comfortable and I can hear clearly. I don't even have the SHA volume all the way up.

 

 

I feel like my bucket is now "complete." I'll tidy up the wires and get everything situated to my liking after my next troop, but I'm just over the moon about this.

 

 - the SHA works beautifully, doesn't pick up fan noise, and I can hear things.

 - the amp is wonderfully loud and the iComm makes a lovely crackle noise just as I wanted.

 - the fans keep me cool. One usually does the trick.

 - the bucket is comfortable and I can see clearly thanks to careful padding adjustment to get my eyes in just the right spot.

 

I'm a happy trooper.

[husky68[TK]]

Amazing work and effort.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[revlimiter[Staff]]

So, I took EIB approval photos... and on the pix, my magnet-aligned torso armor decided to do this:

 

It's not bad at all, but after taking the pix, I learned that the magnets can misalign themselves ever so slightly in either direction.

 

It's not very much, but it's enough to be annoying. The magnets seem to have a little bit of grab in them. They don't slide smoothly, but can rather grab and lock down kinda.

 

I needed something to ensure that they'd align perfectly every time. I could ask someone nearby to align them for me when I suit up, but it seemed like with a little thought, I could come up with something simple to do it. Like a little key to lock it in place just right by itself. So I was looking at the armor and I noticed that the space between the boxes was a perfect natural slot. If I had a key in one half, it would naturally close at perfect alignment every time.

 

So I made a key. Two layers of spare material seemed to be just right. I wanted it to have some strength and not accidentally bend on a bad closing. Two layers seemed better than one.

 

After getting E6000'd over night, I ground the two layers down to the right 13mm dimension for the 13.7mm slot. I gave it a little rounded edge as well to help the key shoot easily into the slot.

 

Another night of E6000.

 

And there we are! Half of the torso now has a key to align the magnet boxes.

 

Hot keyway action. It's simple but I'm really pleased with this mod. Mod to a mod. 

 

Repeated opening, closing, and test fitting on myself showed that the magnet boxes close perfectly every time.

 

I hope the misalignment doesn't come up with the EIB review.

[revlimiter[Staff]]

I received EIB today!!!! Approval 1037!!!

 

And my one big thing to fix for Centurion is my tube stripes. Which is... embarrassing. See, I was told that my tube stripes were backwards back in 2019. And I have a clear memory of fixing them! I ordered two sets of the tube stripe vinyl from trooperbay and have one set left. I knoowwwwww I fixed them.

 

However, the stripes on my bucket exactly matched the original pix showing my backwards stripes, down to the millimeter. Even if I managed to re-apply the stripes backwards, I don't think I would have had the placement so exact... I can only surmise that I never did that fix. Very embarrassing.

 

Anyways, here's a bunch of pix of tube stripes.

 

WRONG. Backwards. I have no idea how I didn't fix this. OR where that second set of spare stripes went.

 

Mr No Stripes Saves Christmas.

 

Carefully measured and laid out.

 

And fixed! It's so subtle but so much better.

 

 

My left side was quite a bit too low. I had the right really good, but this one wasn't at the level.

 

Careful alignment. Have I mentioned that I love these vinyl stripes?

 

Yeah. That's the good stuff.

 

Spacing on the right.

 

FIXED!!!  Ready to apply for Centurion. 

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

It looks great Trooper !!  

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Nice work, well done

[revlimiter[Staff]]

CENTURION ACHIEVED!!!!

Seriously over the moon right now.

 

[Sly11[Admin]]

B E A utiful!!!!

[revlimiter[Staff]]

I just realized I didn't update my build thread with my armor bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I probably spent far too much effort on this, but it was super fun. I painted it, weathered it, and shot it with a blaster. I designed and printed in-universe vintage travel stickers for it. And I turned the inside into a padded TK picnic basket.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Never too late to add to your build threads  

 

It's a very nice bin indeed

[revlimiter[Staff]]

TKs need pockets. That's just all there is to it. I've got a nice pouch velcro'd to my inner chest, but I have to take off my arms (and basically torso) to get to it. Not great for locking up the car after a parking lot change.

 

So I started digging around this board for a storage solution and found Mayo's ( @MakeNoiseMan )   awesome drop boxes. I had to have a set of my own.

 

Cracked the two halves free. I've never been happier about using CA glue on something. They came free with a satisfying pop.

 

I had a bunch of left over white shoulder elastic, so it seemed like using that for the card retention straps and the hinge would work well.

 

I cut and sealed each elastic edge. Folding elastic and then heating produces a very nice crease. Perfect fit for the larger side of the box. 

 

Hinge glued to the outside bottom of the inner boxes with E6000.

 

And the retainer straps got glued to the inside of the outer boxes. I used blue tape to keep the E6000 from seeping through and bonding both halves of the elastic together.

 

Seems like maybe overkill, but I had the clamps to spare. Why not let them be useful again?  You can also see the industrial velco I added to the tops to keep the two halves together. Spoiler: the velcro is stupid strong.

 

Once things were dry the next day, I sized up the hinge against the outer box and made some small black marks for where to cut. Then the elastic got re-trimmed and re-sealed. Trimming the hinge elastic exactly meant the boxes would pair up flat and not be thicker than they were before.

 

Held in place with some magnets and left to cure another day.

 

I added some finger grab holes to each drop box. This lets me break the stupid-strong velcro free and access the goodies inside.

 

Note, I can't really get to stuff in these boxes with my gloves on or while trooping. The velcro is just too strong. And that's okay. I just want a place to keep my keys and ID. Maybe a couple dollars for ice cream.  But if you're reading this and thinking of the boxes as a place for trading cards... ehhhh.... further modification of the idea would be needed. Maybe some weak magnets to hold the tops together.

 

Finished! That's a useful dropbox!!! A TK pocket if you will.

 

Proof of concept. The retaining loop is a little loose with only 1 card and a few bucks, but it's okay for now. I may tighten it later.

 

And, for me, the money shot - A key and fob fit inside the box! Note that the little ring won't let the box close, but that's easily fixed. I have some braided metal flexible key rings on the way from amazon. Replacing the split ring with the glorified fishing line will solve this and let the box close.

 

Reinstalled. Nothing is different from the outside. The boxes hang as they did before and have no extra thickness. SUCCESS!!!