My first build!! ANOVOS ANH stunt TK

[TKModder421[TK]]

Alright, so I actually received my BBB several months ago and I've been documenting my slow progress as I started the process. I haven't gotten too far yet, so I thought I probably should start my build thread before I get any further.

So far I've done rough cuts on my armor and have taken apart my bucket to make some mods for personal preference. I'm gonna go ahead and post some of my documentation that I've taken so far and get caught up to date on my build, then I'll continue to slowly update my thread as I progress. I'm aiming to get as high level of approval as possible. My armor is slightly large for me so I'm going to need advice on modifying to get it to fit right.

Anyway, so here we go...

 

   

[Frank75139[501st]]

We are here to help


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[Rat[TK]]

Congrats on that BBB and lets see ya build a stormtrooper. Good luck.

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[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Nothing better than a BBB on your doorstep. Good luck with the build, research is the key

[Triple D[TK]]

Congrats and good luck future Trooper!!

[CableGuy[Admin]]

Whoop!! The journey continues... :-)

[TKModder421[TK]]

Inventory of all my uncut pieces and helmet (as it came pre-assembled)

 

 

 

Here's some closer images of my bucket...

 

 

 

I want to file down the teeth and paint them in. I also want to reduce the flare on the ears and carve out the eyes a little more

 

 

 

 

I also want to replace the rubber brow trim. I want it to go all the way to the end of the trap and have the same angle. I also want to adjust the angle of the ears so the screws angle to the direction of the trap as well.

 

 

 

[CableGuy[Admin]]

Good plan of action, Greg.

If you wanted to add to that list, the tubestripes could be adjusted as they are currently sitting quite low (usually around a pencil width from the cheek) and the vocoder paint could be more defined. The latter will be more of a challenge, just depends how far you want to take it. :-)

Happy to provide ref pics if it’s helpful. :-)

[TKModder421[TK]]

7 hours ago, CableGuy said:

Good plan of action, Greg.

If you wanted to add to that list, the tubestripes could be adjusted as they are currently sitting quite low (usually around a pencil width from the cheek) and the vocoder paint could be more defined. The latter will be more of a challenge, just depends how far you want to take it. :-)

Happy to provide ref pics if it’s helpful. :-)

Thank you! Haha, I'm still catching up to my current progress on this post... and because of a little paint stripping accident I had to replace the tubestripes and I did make that adjustment actually. And I agreed with you on the vocoder and decided to repaint that as well. In fact I'm working on that right now!  I'm just having a little trouble with seeing brush strokes and slightly uneven paint. I don't want to start over because I like the lines, but I'm such a perfectionist. I may post these again as I continue the catching up the chronological order of my build.

 

here's my new tube stripes and my mods to the frown

 

 

And here's what's going on with my new vocoder paint job.

 

 

In different light you can really see the unevenness of the paint though...

 

 

[CableGuy[Admin]]

Thank you! Haha, I'm still catching up to my current progress on this post... and because of a little paint stripping accident I had to replace the tubestripes and I did make that adjustment actually. And I agreed with you on the vocoder and decided to repaint that as well. In fact I'm working on that right now!  I'm just having a little trouble with seeing brush strokes and slightly uneven paint. I don't want to start over because I like the lines, but I'm such a perfectionist. I may post these again as I continue the catching up the chronological order of my build.
 
here's my new tube stripes and my mods to the frown
 

 
And here's what's going on with my new vocoder paint job.
 

 
In different light you can really see the unevenness of the paint though...
 

 

Wow! Great improvements!

Keep up the great work.

[TKModder421[TK]]

K back to chronological order. Lol   

A few weeks ago I got all the rough cuts of the armor done

 

 

I'm gonna have to make adjustments as I have pretty thin legs and arms. I'll be getting to that after I finish the mods to my bucket

[TKModder421[TK]]

6 minutes ago, CableGuy said:

Wow! Great improvements!

Keep up the great work.

Thank you for the words of encouragement!!

[TKModder421[TK]]

I wanted more flexibility with the placement of the brow so I disassembled the helmet and cut off the lump above the eyes. I then carved out the eyes and the teeth a bit more.

 

 

 

I replaced the rubber brow trim and cut it how I prefer it to look

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by TKModder421
fix grammar

[TKModder421[TK]]

So I mentioned this earlier, I wanted to repaint the frown and was really unsure if I wanted to change the tubestripes to be closer to the cheeks, but I had a little accident when I was attempting to strip the paint off the frown (due to not taking proper precaution, such as taping other areas - lesson learned) and got some thinner on the left tubestripe decal and it took off a big chunk of it. So I had my decision made for me, lol.

I took precaution when stripping the rest of the decals. You can also see some of my tooth paint job.

 

I applied new decals. Here's the new placement and the full frown repaint.

 

[TKModder421[TK]]

7 hours ago, Bud Spaklur said:

You say this is your first build? Looks good to me, as if you’ve done this before. Always a good sign!


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Haha thanks! Yeah my first full build, I got my feet wet modding a pre-built Shadowtrooper bucket a few months before and have been doing a fair amount of research as well

[TKModder421[TK]]

I wanted to change the angle of the ears. Here's a reference from a sandtrooper, but you can see the angle of the ear screws runs along the same angle as the backside of the temple trapezoid and the screws on the ANOVOS bucket do not.

 

 

I also wanted to reduce the flare on the lower part of the ears, so they didn't stick out so much

 

 

 

So I changed the angle and drilled new holes. It took me like 3 times to get it right lol, but I finally got the angle I wanted.

I followed gazmosis' tutorial for trimming down ears to reduce the gap and getting them to sit right.

https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29238-my-helmet-ear-tutorial/

 

Unfortunately I didn't document much of the process, but here's a few shots of the new holes I set for the angle of the brow and ears

 

 

Here's the finished ears, though I forgot to take a picture of the new angle before I disassembled it...

 

 

 

 

The left side turned out better as it was more flush, but compared to how they were I'm happy with it.

[TKModder421[TK]]

1 hour ago, Bud Spaklur said:

Your right ear looks good. Mine has a larger gap and i just got Centurion approval. You’ll be fine. I believe it’s canon for there to be a gap.


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Thanks. Yeah, from all the reference I've seen all the ANH and ESB Stormtrooper variations have some sort of gap on the ears. I'm definitely not worried about it for higher level approval.

[TKModder421[TK]]

So I was trying to decide how I wanted to mount my lenses. It came built with the single long curved lens.

 

I'm really not a fan of that set up or that look so after some research I decided to follow Spyder918's tutorial and make lens mounts out of Plasticweld. Here's his tutorial I used:

 

https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/38963-howto-another-way-to-do-lenses/?tab=comments#comment-521839

 

here's a couple pics:

 

I just kneaded the Plasticweld around the eye sockets and left them to cure. The next day I started sanding them down, using my dremel and 80 grit sandpaper. Then once I got it close to the right shape I used 220 to smooth it out and up to 400 and even 2000 to make it really smooth.

The one on the left is rough sanded and the one on the right is unsanded.

 

 

So once I had them sanded down and cleaned up the inside of the face plate a bit I cut templates for my lenses using scrap ABS and then cut down the lenses. I decided I wanted to fix the lenses to the mounts with screws so I purchased some 1/4" OD (outside diameter) threaded aluminum spacers

 

 

and bored a hole in the mounts for them to be attached.

 

Then drilled corresponding holes in my cut lenses. I may use the ABS templates as rims on top of the lenses as well. I'll just have to see how that works out.

 

I then glued the lens mounts to the inside of the eye sockets using E6000.

 

I haven't glued in the spacers yet. I want to black out the inside of the helmet with Plastidip first. TBC...

 

[TKModder421[TK]]

3 hours ago, Bud Spaklur said:

Yeah, your right ear is probably one of the better ones I’ve seen on here to date. Come to New Jersey and fix mine.


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Haha! Thanks man! I'll be there ASAP lol

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Nice work

[TKModder421[TK]]

3 hours ago, Bud Spaklur said:

Glad you went this route. It’s similar to what I did and I found the welding shield lenses to be more durable and “realistic”. I felt a stormtrooper couldn’t protect his/her eyes with flimsy acetate plastic!

You did a nice, clean job on your lens mounting.


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Oh yeah I agree about welding shield lenses! The lens that mine came with was the thick welding style plastic luckily so I didn't have to buy new lens material, I was able to reuse what it came with. 

Yeah thank you, I really like the way they turned out! I'm excited to see what they look like once I get it all darkened with Plastidip.

[TKModder421[TK]]

1 hour ago, Bud Spaklur said:

How was it working with that plasticweld stuff? I used Sugru and found it to be a bit greasy. I got black fingerprints all over the bucket when I was working on it. Have you considered lining the inside with Velcro instead of plastidip? It’s a bit more expensive since you have to line the whole helmet, but I love being able to move everything around inside, anywhere I need to. The helmet gets crowded depending on what you put inside. A lot of guys use hardhat inserts too, instead of padding. Something to consider.

It was fairly easy to work with actually. Kind of like dry, thick clay, but it stunk. The instructions said to wear gloves so I heeded their warning. It was a little sticky with the nitrile gloves, but I just used a little water and it kept it pretty workable. And then after it has cured it still has a bit of flexibility to it.

I considered using Sugru but I decided I liked the look of a mounting area around the eyes, wanted to give it more of a functional look I guess.

I haven't even heard of lining the inside with velcro! I assume you mean line the inside with the soft "loop" side so you can attach the "hook" side to the padding? That sounds interesting (and possibly more comfortable). I was just going to reinstall strips of velcro, how the ANOVOS TK helmets come pre-built and possibly just supplement the padding that came with it. The thing is I've never done any trooping before so I'm not familiar with what I'd be most comfortable with, such as if I'll want to put things in the helmet, like fans or whatever.

At this point I've already taped up my bucket and have applied a few coats of flat white enamel to the inside (for a whitening layer) in anticipation of applying the Plastidip. So hopefully that doesn't cause me any attachment issues regardless of how much velcro I put in there. Whoops! I forgot about that.

[TKModder421[TK]]

8 minutes ago, Bud Spaklur said:

The white enamel you put inside shouldn’t prevent you from using Velcro should you want to. Here are a couple pics of my helmet (I’ll spare you trying to find that part of my build- 37 page thread). First pic is when I had only two fans, a power bank, and a Bluetooth mic:


This second pic is after putting another pair of fans and another power bank inside:


The four power buttons for the fans sit just up on the chin. I used industrial strength Velcro from Joann Fabrics. The stuff sticks really well.


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Oh dang! Yeah I like that!

Looks like fans are gonna be a necessity. I guess I should probably try and consider that into my build

[TKModder421[TK]]

8 minutes ago, Bud Spaklur said:

Yes, you need at least two fans in my opinion. They not only help keep you cool, but help prevent the lenses from digging up. I get really annoying and irritable when I get hot, so I opted for four fans! Lol

Haha, ok I guess that's now part of the plan

[TKModder421[TK]]

So I had taped up my helmet in preparation of darkening the inside with Plastidip and had already sprayed it with several coats of flat white enamel to add a whitening layer to the thin ABS before applying the black Plastidip when Matt gave me some good ideas of other good options to think about. He suggested applying velcro to the full interior. I really like this idea not only for ease of positioning of padding but also for comfort. I'm still weighing my options, but I think I may try a hybrid version of the two. Just gotta work through how I wanna do that.

 

Helmet taped and coated with white enamel.