pandatrooper

Thigh armor sizing, trimming and construction video added.

Very cool! Keep them coming. My only suggestion with one of your ideas: I'd be careful about the Russian Roulette idea. Disney / LFL is fairly G-rated and Russian roulette as a subject matter might not be taken too kindly. How about missing targets at the county fair, and missing but shooting Greedo on the other side? etc.

Has anyone noticed that these don't look like 1:1 scale? They look a bit small. So was the Kylo Ren helmet.

You can't vacuform over an existing piece, you lose a lot of detail forming on top. You need to make a mold from the inside of the original. 3D scanning does not give you a "ready to go" result. Scanning gives you a point cloud in 3D which looks like a fuzzy ball of dots in 3D space. This is not good for a one-to-one print. It would need to be remodelled in 3D. When you 3D print, you only print a shell, you don't print a solid filled object as that would take forever and cost a lot in material. PLA is not strong enough to form over, the heat will damage it. You could try and print in ABS. So now you need to make a more solid version of your print, either by making a negative mold or some other solution. So 3D printing is only an intermediary step. This is even more work and time and resources. "Digital recasting" is not condoned in some circles because you're still standing on the shoulders and taking the preliminary work of someone else.

TL:DR - Without getting into the moral issues, let's just talk about what people know. Dollars. I've worked on enough props and costumes to know what's involved and I've done my fair share of vacuforming (from old school on-the-oven, to heaters to more production savvy setups), so I know fair and well what things cost. It's going to cost you more to recast something than it would be to just buy another set of armour. A lot more. And that's not counting any of your time invested. Read on if you want to know more. ========= Long version: A lot of people think vacuforming is like an Easy-Bake Oven. You plug this thing in and it just works. Couldn't be further from the truth. If you're spending thousands to tens of thousands to get a professional vacuform machine, that might be the case. But there goes your "tens of thousands of dollars" when you could have bought a ton of armor. Let's talk molds (or bucks as they are called) first. Say you're recasting, how are you going to do it? What materials do you need? Casting materials, mold making materials, mold releases, wood supports, hardware, etc. It's not rocket science or sorcery, go look up materials from Smooth on or other supply shops. Find out how much mold material you need to recast and do the math. The volume is incredibly deceptive in terms of how much you think you will use. Even with the cheapest materials, multiply that times every piece of armour and do the math. You're looking at many, many dollars before you've even pulled a piece of plastic. Let's pretend for a second that you have a setup at home using your oven, a plastic clamping frame and a couple shop vacs. I did this years ago for other costumes I've made, and it's a sketchy process. It really only works well for styrene / HIPS and even then, you're limited by oven size and vacuum. Many ovens are not big enough to properly accommodate molds that are TK part sized. So assuming your setup works, you're going to try ABS because it's nice and shiny and you want a decent gauge of plastic. Try that in your setup. It's not going to work consistently because ABS is tougher to vac form in a decent thickness than HIPS. Consistent heat all over the plastic and strong vacuum are key. ABS also costs much more than HIPS too. Since we're talking about plastic, try finding smooth both sides ABS in the right thickness without a minimum order from a plastics supplier. Get a quote on that and multiply that times every piece of TK armor. There's your plastic cost for one suit. Maybe... So now you're either vac forming in HIPS or ABS, but you have to use a thinner gauge because you don't have consistent heat and a good vacuum source. Let's just say you're getting it to work somewhat inconsistently. Now you're using 40% more plastic than a full kit needs because you have failed pulls etc. So now your cost of plastic is $XXXXX Don't forget the cost of electricity, other tools and supplies you may need etc. and simply do the math. You'll soon realize you could have bought multiple armor kits with just the costs, not counting your own personal time.

Why not just buy from AP. They're based out of Montreal.

I'm scheduled to film the sizing portion later in the week. I'll post it a few days after that.

Updated with a couple new videos today.

Added forearm video in the first post.

I am doing a build for a friend, so I thought I should film a tutorial series. You can see it in the first video.

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This video series will cover techniques that can be applied to any armor make or type, but mainly focuses on A New Hope style armor. I will also cover specific changes for Sandtroopers. Introduction and overview Tools and Supplies Cutting cover strips Biceo trimming and sizing Biceps Construction Forearm Construction Shoulder Bells Thigh trimming, sizing and construction Hand Guards

Here's what you need to do. First, trim the right side of the helmet along the red line in the top photo. You've got a return edge that is preventing a tighter connection between the back and the face plate. Second, pull the chin forward, so that BARELY any of the corner (where the green dot is) is overlapping the lower cheek tube on the face plate. See lower photo. You may see a gap develop (which I mocked up in the lower photo) because sometimes the face plate / cap and back isn't formed deep enough or it's trimmed a bit short. Don't worry about this gap. Install one of the ear rivets first. Go back to my build thread, you'll see that step. This allows you to hinge the face forward or back. On the right side corner where the green dot is, just "grow a pair" and drill a hole through both parts on that corner that barely overlaps. Pop a 1/8" rivet and backing washer through it. If necessary, sometimes I have had to glue or using the same rivet, extended that area a bit lower so that there's some plastic real estate for the lower ear bolt to go through. Don't worry about the gap between the cap and face where the ear goes. The ear covers it, and you haven't assembled the helmet yet. Once you put rivets and the bolts through, it will tighten things up. I've had to do this on several helmets. No one sees the inside edge as the rubber trim covers any shimming you might need to do. *BTW: I still think your brow is a bit low, it could be angled and trimmed higher but that's up to you.

Correct, in north America plumbing sizes are imperial not metric.

You only need hook Velcro on the underside of the cover strip, just the part that overlaps the other shin. If your rear shin cover strip is approx. 25mm, you only need 12mm of hook Velcro on the underside. On the opposite half of the shin, you only need 12mm of fuzzy Velcro where the cover strip overlaps it.<br><br> Hope that makes sense.

The Aker has an amplifier designed into it. Your phone volume doesn't have the same output capabilities as a portable amp. Now you could use a Bluetooth speaker amp but they are not as low profile as an Aker or similar voice amp.

With solvents, you risk damaging that area as it's a textured surface. I'd suggest painting over the entire black area to disguise it.

What type of armor do you have and which rivets did you use? Photos would be helpful to diagnose the problem.

Just take off the ears, leave the top screw or rivet in place and see if you can rotate the face plate up. Then drill a new set of lower holes, and reassemble it. It's a simple fix.

Trooper1 is the best.

Or just buy a proper kit that fits your body type and save yourself a bunch of work. Fx kits fell out of favour a long time ago, as there are many other options now.

It looks to me like the AM 2.0 shoulders are very deep, compared to the AM 1.0. Which is great, but maybe there are too deep? I would trim maybe a half inch off around the lip where the shoulder bell meets the chest and back armor. try that, then take some pics. Make sure the bells are almost touching the ribbed shoulder bridges.

No problem!