WIP: - Could not resist... |TK

[Ripper_L[Admin]]

Me and a friend started to have a look about "the foundry" and we could not resist to give it a try. So we will try to make at least our own helmets and maybe also our own armor.

We have a complete FX armor as a bad example here and an Anovos kit as a good example for comparison. We also have a CAP helmet, which we can use for comparison.
Since the vacuum table build - shown by mynock's Den - looks pretty easy, we decided to start with the difficult part. The mold making!

I guess the most difficult mold ist for the helmet face plate, so here is what we've done so far:

 

HQ-Pic

We took a piece of would, wrapped paper and aluminium foil arround it and formed the (air drying) clay on top.
 

HQ-Pic
 

this was all formed by hand and with the old kitchen knife, later we decided to use some more tools....

 

 

HQ-Pic

details became more and more decent....

 

 

HQ-Pic

especially when we decided to use a nail, a spoon and a swiss army knife as tools


HQ-Pic

This is our current status. We left the mold for drying overnight and today we'll try to smooth the surfaces by sanding.

 

The plan is to make a silicon form to produce molds out of plaster of paris for the vacuum table.

We have two shop vacs and two 1000W spotlights, that we want to use for our vac machine.

 

Please give me some review and tips. Thanks a lot,

Danny

TK-55550

//edit: HQ-Pics added

Edited August 30, 2016 by Ripper_L

[haui[TK]]

Cool but the pic do not work

[darthcue[TK]]

when i click the HQ-Pics link i get this: Diese Webseite ist aufgrund eines Serverumzugs derzeit nicht erreichbar. Bitte versuchen Sie es später noch einmal.

This website is being moved to another server at the moment. Please try again later.

[Ripper_L[Admin]]

Sorry, My fault - should be working now!

[darthcue[TK]]

nice molds

[Zugor[TK]]

I don't know how your planning to use the spot lights but I tried them in my overhead oven and had problems with uneven heating. They might work better in an oven design with the plastic over the lights.

[Ripper_L[Admin]]

No update for a while now, I'm sorry - we had to put together another TK kit

 

So here is, how we continued:

 

(At the end of this post you'll see our first pull!)

 

First we tried to improve the mold with more and different clay.

 

   

 

 

Here you can see the backside

 

 

 

Then we wanted to make a silicon negative. Therefore we had to build this cube:

 

 

 

The silicon was ugly, but (we thought) it worked pretty well.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile the silicon was drying, we started to build our vacuum machine.

 

 

there were a lot of holes to drill

 

 

 

This is how the silicon looked like, after drying:

 

 

Unfortunately our original mold broke during this process, so we decided to make a new one out of plaster of paris using the new silicon negative mold.

 

 

The new mold was great, but the silicon was rubbish.

 

 

 

Now we had to work on the new mold, sharpen the edges, and smooth the surface.

 

           

 

 

 

To get the styrene pulled deep inside the eyes, teeth and mic tips, we decided to drill some holes through there:

 

 

Afterwards, we continued with our vacuum machine and some fun

 

 

 

Since we didn't want to have an ugly vacuum machine, we decided to paint it!

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

This should become our heating element:

 

 

 

 

Those two 1500W spot lights are very old and produce more heat than light

 

 

 

To get a smoother surface and protect it from breaking, we decided to coat our mold with some blue wall paint:

 

 

 

We finished the vacuum table and the heating element:

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

This was our whole setup:

 

 

 

 

We started heating up the styrene, controlling the temperature with a laser gun:

 

 

This is unfortunately not shown on a picture, but we decided to cover the styrene with aluminium sheets, which made it heaten up much faster!

 

Then we tried our very first pull...

 

 

 

and our vacuum table...

 

 

 

... simply imploded!

 

 

The damage was massive:

 

 

Also on our mold:

 

 

 

But I think the outcome is not too bad for a first trial:

 

  



But we are not giving up!

 

We started to make the backside of the helmet and repaired our faceplate. Although we will have to smooth the surface down much more!!!

 

  

 

[troopermaster]

The trials and tribulations of making a Stormtrooper. It's not as easy as you think, is it?

 

Keep at it and you will get there in the end

[CadBane3[TK]]

Wow, this is totally fascinating to me. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses. Good luck!