James's Rogue One TK Build

[jamesmillerio]

Hello everyone!

I'd been interested in joining the 501st for quite some time and finally pulled the trigger in January of this year with a set of 850 Armorworks Rogue One armor. I had seen one of your Boys in Blue White a year prior at the movie theatre when The Rise of Skywalker was released. After getting a picture and mentioning that I was interested in joining, @wingnut65 gave me his trading card. That card was on my refrigerator for the year as other home projects during Covid were getting done. And then, as I mentioned, in January of this year I finally put my money where my vocoder was. The armor arrived a couple weeks ago and I've already done some rough cutting work (and already made a couple requisite mistakes...) as I wait for some of my initial softgoods to arrive so I can get a better fit before cleaning everything up. 

 

But who are we kidding, enough talk. You all want pictures. This was the day the armor arrived, in all of its uncut glory.

 

Since then, I've been slowly trimming the armor with lexan scissors and a Dremel, being careful to leave enough excess material. You know, except for that one time I trimmed all the excess off of one side of a thigh piece... But I digress.
 
Here is where I stand now:

 

 

 

 

A lot of the excess ABS has been trimmed and I cut the eyes and teeth out of the helmet so I could actually see what its like on my massive head. The helmet has a lot of work to go.

In addition to all of that, over the past year I got into 3d printing. My first big project was to print my blaster using Blaster Master's plans. It's not exactly Rogue One accurate since it needs the added tactical flashlight, but it was 95% of the way there. I got lucky and happened across Droid Division's plans for the tactical flashlight. These are awesome plans that allow you to insert a smaller flashlight into the printed one so that it's both accurate and functional.

 

 

 

I believe there's still some work to make it Rogue One accurate, but I'm mostly there. That's it for now. I have some preliminary softgoods and strapping showing up this weekend that I can use to start getting things fitted correctly and then any final trims before embarking on paint and detailing.

 

Oh, and before I forget, if you've ever wondered what an expecting stormtrooper looks like, well now you know.

 

 

More to come!

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by jamesmillerio
Font color was strange due to copy and paste... Also adding link to Droid Division

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Looks like you have done some great research and have things well in hand, looking forward to seeing the progress, good luck

[Moredhel]

Quite the machine shop you have there! I'm working on the exact same kit. You're definitely farther along than me, so I haven't started my build thread yet. I don't think anyone's going to be impressed with just my Velcro'd hand plate. Good luck!

[TKSpartan[Staff]]

Hi James, welcome to FISD, congratulations for your BBB Day , enjoy and remember, we are here to help. Post tons of photos, ask every question you have the most important: Measure twice, cut once. check the gallery section and other's build threads.

 

[Chemi[Staff]]

Very good work. I love to see how well organized you have your workshop.. A lot of work ahead, but I see you are very excited, and for you, it will not be a problem.

Keep us updated

 

[jamesmillerio]

Thanks for all of the kind words everyone! It's definitely time for another update.

 

I've gotten a ton done, even though maybe it doesn't seem like it from the pictures. Made a lot of mistakes, fixed them, moved on, the usual.

I've been focusing on the upper body, abdomen, and the helmet when I have any down time for more sanding.

Looking around at other threads and reference images, I originally decided to attach the kidneys to the abdomen using snaps. This was a bad idea and looked terrible when attached due to the huge gaps between the two. This is how they were originally attached:

 

 

 

After a test fit and realizing how terrible it looked, I was very thankful I took everyone's advice and used E6000 instead of CA glue everywhere...

 

My main goal with the abdomen (besides accuracy) was to make sure it was adjustable. However, I was trying to make it adjustable in too many places. I eventually settled on just making the back where it connects adjustable, which means I could just glue the abdomen and kidney's together so that it's just a plastic seam that will be hidden mostly. I decided to make the seam the outside edge of the black line that has to run down the kidneys so that it would just look like part of the armor after I trim it. This is how it turned out, pre-trim and fitting.

 

 

From this angle it looks like there is a lot of excess near the top and that's because, well, there is. I'm going to have to trim that down anyways though so it'll eventually be flush. Here is a side profile of it.

 

 

You can see I tried to make the edge of the seam where the black stripe should be so it'll blend in. 

 

I also started doing some rough strapping and fitting with the help of my wife. These are some of the preliminary straps I've added to the chest and back. I'm going with the double snap system I've seen a lot of people use. I may add some straps across my shoulders also to keep things in place, but we'll see. Keeping it simple right now until I see how things wind up.

 

 

This is the chest, back, and abdomen attached before I put on the kidneys.

 

 

The abdomen may need to come up some, but it's sitting basically right at my waistline so we'll see once everything is in place. 

 

Since that picture, I've also done a lot of prep work on the helmet. It was resin cast, so there were a lot of imperfections. The main problem was the seam where the two halves of the mold go together, which went straight down the face of the helmet and across the vocoder, which isn't the easiest thing to sand and finish. I'm still working on getting everything baby smooth but this is where I stand right now.

 

 

 

Still a lot of work to go, but I'm getting there.

 

I've also been working on the forearms and biceps. I made a mistake at first with my choice of cover strips, which I had to eventually remove once I realized the ones I put on were most likely for the legs. This is how they looked initially before I removed them.

 

 

I was pretty unhappy with how these looked due to how I had to round the edge at the top and how square they were at the front. It looked... bad. I removed them though and I currently have cover strips  curing that look a lot better, though you can't really tell from this image. I'm not sure I used enough clamps on these...

 

 

I also trimmed and have put the first cover strips on the biceps.

 

 

Lastly, I made some progress with the thermal detonator. I have the paint drying now, but this is how it looked prior to paint. I still need to fill in the oval greeblie on the right, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with where it is.

 

 

Also, these helmets are creepy without lenses...

 

 

Making good progress and learning a lot though. Now I just need to get some of my soft goods in line while I work. More to come!

[Moredhel]

Isn't the back of the kidney armor supposed to go on the outside of the ab plate to create the "recessed" black stripe at 70 degrees? It's hard to find good closeups of this area, but you can see in the CRL photo that they got black paint up the sides of the groove on front and back of the stripe. Not a great paint job, but it helps illustrate the point. I think the fiberglass kits don't even have a joint here, just the groove, which would make it harder to paint.

[jamesmillerio]

Honestly, I'm really not sure. I've been going back and forth over that same CRL image and the reference images and haven't been 100% on any decision I've made in that area to be frank. The most unobstructed image I've found in the gallery is this one:

 

 

It looks like the stripe is directly next to the raised strip, but in the CRL image it looks like there's some distance there but as you said, it's kind of hard to make out where it ends... 

 

The side of my armor looks like this right now, though I haven't trimmed or really done anything with it since I joined the two so it doesn't look great right now:

 

 

I'm not sure exactly what to do because that diagonal raised strip doesn't look like the same angle as the CRL image or the gallery image... I'm half tempted to chop it off and use the kidney edge to create my own edge (on top of the ab armor) and then paint a black stripe on it further to the right at that 70° angle.

 

I don't know, I'm torn. I'm open to any and all opinions before I make a rash decision and chop that strip off...

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Another image

 

Here is an overlay 

 

Here is a better side view of the side showing the front angle section which appears raised.

 

Here's a clearer image of the side from the Mandalorian

 

 

I think I would cut that piece out, replace with another piece of ABS, join and fill the gaps, then cut an angle on the side and overlap to give the appearance of a raised area. 

 

Here is a rough overlay of the two angles from the CRL

 

Crude example

 

I have just emailed 850 and made them aware the angled section is incorrect and supplied the references showing so, they may make an update to their molds, hopefully.

 

 

 

Or maybe they won't, here is 850's reply

No, it is not being changed. 

We have had plenty of suits approved in current and past states. 

[jamesmillerio]

Holy crap, that's awesome! That must have taken a lot of time. Thank you so much!

 

I'll almost definitely wind up doing what you suggested. Luckily, the kidneys were molded as a half torso and the back where the trauma plate gets mounted has it's own almost half torso piece of ABS. I think between the two, I should have enough plastic to make those cuts and join everything back up as needed.

 

Even if it's approvable, why go through all of this effort and miss the mark on that detail by that much...

 

Thanks again! That definitely gives me some direction and some confidence that I'm on the right path.

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

You have the right attitude, it's a little more work now but will be well worth it in the end. What you do now will help others in the future.

 

Great to hear you may have enough excess material from the kidney to use.

 

Looking forward to seeing you tackling it, good luck.

[Moredhel]

Do you have a protractor? I have a 850 kit also and measured it at about 75 degrees, so I think his molds are fine. It's hard to gauge angles on round surfaces especially without a good horizontal reference. I think it's just your photo angle. I hope you don't have to hack it up! I was just questioning the over/under arrangement.

[jamesmillerio]

Do you have a protractor? I have a 850 kit also and measured it at about 75 degrees, so I think his molds are fine. It's hard to gauge angles on round surfaces especially without a good horizontal reference. I think it's just your photo angle. I hope you don't have to hack it up! I was just questioning the over/under arrangement.

I do actually. Here it is:




Looks like it’s in the neighborhood of 85°. Not sure at what point I’m nitpicking but I think I want to make it more accurate. I’m working on fitting the upper body right now so that gives me some time to consider my options. Thanks for all the suggestions!

[Sly11[Admin]]

Considering you will need to pain the kit, I think you should be able to make your side gaps pretty close to screen look anyway. If you have some spare ABS or even buy some thin A4 sheets of HIPS 1mm thick you can fabricate the angles you desire by gluing pieces behind almost like creating a shim only with separation visible between the front and rear sections. This is one benefit of working wit ABS or plastics compared to what you would need to attempt with fiber glass.

Nice build so far, keep it up James, you got this.

[jamesmillerio]

2 hours ago, Sly11 said:

Considering you will need to pain the kit, I think you should be able to make your side gaps pretty close to screen look anyway. If you have some spare ABS or even buy some thin A4 sheets of HIPS 1mm thick you can fabricate the angles you desire by gluing pieces behind almost like creating a shim only with separation visible between the front and rear sections. This is one benefit of working wit ABS or plastics compared to what you would need to attempt with fiber glass.

Nice build so far, keep it up James, you got this.

 

That's not a bad idea either, I like that approach. I could probably just 3d print the shims since I have some white and black filament laying around.

 

Speaking of 3d printing, I needed to make a bracket for the thermal detonator on the belt since the kit doesn't come with one. After looking around at source images, it looked pretty simple. It's essentially just a block with a cylinder indent cut out of it that the detonator sits in. The CRL says the mount needs all four sides to be self contained and to not have any clips or screws visible. I purchased some neodymium magnets for clamping snap plates while they cure and decided to embed one of those in the bracket and one in the thermal detonator so that it's attached pretty snug but can also be removed easily. 

 

This is what I came up with:

 

[Link if the embed doesn't work]

 

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I realize it might be entirely possible that I need to make it permanently affixed in the future less it get ripped off somehow, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. It might actually be better to have it come off easier rather than get ripped off the belt (or the belt get ripped off) if it gets caught on something.

Edited May 31, 2021 by jamesmillerio
Trying to fix preview

[Moredhel]

On 5/30/2021 at 11:15 PM, jamesmillerio said:

Looks like it’s in the neighborhood of 85°. Not sure at what point I’m nitpicking but I think I want to make it more accurate. I’m working on fitting the upper body right now so that gives me some time to consider my options. Thanks for all the suggestions!

It's hard to make sure the horizontal reference is perpendicular to the adjacent rib that's not angled. I snapped another photo but haven't had a chance to put it out there yet, and I measured closer to 77 degrees this time. Since the CRL says "approximately" 70 degrees and it depends so much on viewing angle, I can see why 850 would push back on changing it.

 

On 5/30/2021 at 11:18 PM, Sly11 said:

Considering you will need to pain[t] the kit...

Is that right? I do remember reading somewhere about ROTK and FOTK kits needing painted, but is that true for ABS? I don't see that in the CRL, and it's pretty glossy already.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Moredhel

[jamesmillerio]

It is pretty glossy, but when I first got the armor it already had some scrapes on the breastplate so my plan had always been to paint it anyways.

[JasonG]

On 5/31/2021 at 12:27 AM, jamesmillerio said:

 

That's not a bad idea either, I like that approach. I could probably just 3d print the shims since I have some white and black filament laying around.

 

Speaking of 3d printing, I needed to make a bracket for the thermal detonator on the belt since the kit doesn't come with one. After looking around at source images, it looked pretty simple. It's essentially just a block with a cylinder indent cut out of it that the detonator sits in. The CRL says the mount needs all four sides to be self contained and to not have any clips or screws visible. I purchased some neodymium magnets for clamping snap plates while they cure and decided to embed one of those in the bracket and one in the thermal detonator so that it's attached pretty snug but can also be removed easily. 

 

This is what I came up with:

 

[Link if the embed doesn't work]

 

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I realize it might be entirely possible that I need to make it permanently affixed in the future less it get ripped off somehow, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. It might actually be better to have it come off easier rather than get ripped off the belt (or the belt get ripped off) if it gets caught on something.

 

Hi there. Nice progress on your build. I'm almost at the exact same place it looks like.

 

Not sure if it helps at all, but I made this for 3d printing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4875306

 

It's a CRL correct thermal detonator with a screw top and the correct mount. What I discovered after looking at many photos of other builds and screen grabs from Rogue One and Mando, the control panel actually goes mostly around the thermal detonator. One kit I have has it a separate mount bracket and a separate control panel bracket. 

 

After working on it a bit, that 3d model is what I came up with. I just used the grebs from another model as a remix. I've also added several mount options to allow for magnets or how ever you want to mount it. Literally just got my neodymium magnets today. 

 

Good luck with everything and keep it up!

[Moredhel]

Ok... back from vacation. Here's my 77 degree measurement:

 

It may be hard to tell, but here is a picture of me with my ab armor temporarily taped together (tinted green for extra contrast) with the running stormtrooper on the beach overlaid with a little transparency. I actually got the same 7 degree difference.

 

Then here's the CRL image with the same picture overlaid. It's dead on. It looks like a fiberglass kit - I'm guessing Jimmiroquai's, but that's because he's the only one I know of.

 

So I have to admit there's more to it than viewing angle. I wonder if it's something that anyone else who's never read this thread will notice though... 

 

Anyway I hope your build is going well!

Edited June 13, 2021 by Moredhel
Fix links

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

Try using the "direct link" option and your images will show in your posts  

 

[Moredhel]

1 hour ago, gmrhodes13 said:

Try using the "direct link" option and your images will show in your posts  

Thanks. I was in a hurry and missed that.

[jamesmillerio]

It's been a while and I've done quite a lot so an update is in order. My goal was to mostly finish,  approvable softgoods aside, by Halloween. I believe I'm mostly there, the only thing left being paint and any final touches to fit and finish. I've been working on a ton of different projects, armor related and not, which have taken up a lot of my time.

 

Here's a family picture of everything laid out. It has all been trimmed and sanded at this point. Ignore the state of the abdomen, I primed it to see where the imperfections were so it looks a little rough right now but is mostly ready for paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giving the upper body a try on before adjusting the shoulders and straps.

 

 

One of the threads that was left unresolved in the older posts was the matter of the abdomen side stripe angles. I wound up cutting the abdomen up and reforming it. The angle I believe is much closer now to the original angle, or at least god I hope so... It was not a trivial thing to do. The way I approached it was to 3D print some ABS shims that I used to rejoin the armor together where I needed it to and then adjusted the angle of the stripes. I warn you, the images of the abdomen are pretty rough right now since I primed them a couple times in order to see where my imperfections were for sanding. They'll look a lot better once they get a few coats of paint on them. The last piece of trimming I need to do is to trim the sides on the top of the abdomen down some where the stripes end. Right now they just kind of stop and it looks pretty bad. I need to trim a scallop out of them and then they should look a lot better.

 

 

 

I think I for sure bit off more than I could chew with cutting up the abdomen, but hopefully it'll pay off once I get some paint and the final trim on it. The trimming and rejoining did deform the abdomen a little bit near the seams since it added some rigidity where there wasn't any before, but when its being worn it looks a lot better and isn't noticeable.

 

I did get a chance to try on the armor on July 4th. I walked around our neighborhood in it to see how things felt with how they were trimmed. Everything felt fine, save for the fitment of the helmet. I have some padding that I'm going to tweak to get things feeling more comfortable. I have some more updates about the helmet below that I'm pretty excited about.

 

In the meantime, here are some pictures from July 4th when I got to walk around.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 11, 2021 by jamesmillerio

[jamesmillerio]

I've been doing a lot of work on the helmet and associated electronics over the past few months. I wound up buying the typical hearing and voice assist as well as an iComm. I like them, but getting them in my helmet felt a bit bulky to me. Since I've been doing some light electronics work on the side, I figured I'd see if I could piece together a simplified amplifier system. The following images are what I came up with using some simple amp breakouts and designing a PCB for them to mount to.

 

 

 

 

This was from my first run of PCBs that I ordered to test out the design. There were a few things wrong with them, including the 3.5mm jacks being the wrong layout, but it mostly works. This combines voice assist, hearing assist, and fan control into one roughly 3"x3" PCB.

 

I have some revisions I plan to make, which includes realigning the modules on the PCB so that it's longer than it is square such that it can fit in the helmet hump along the neck better. I also want to do away with the JST connectors and have them just connect to pads along the side of the PCB so that it's as flat as absolutely possible.

 

In the meantime, I went ahead and molded the hearing assist mics into the ears of the helmet. I took some black ABS 3d printing filament I had and created some ABS paste so that the holes in the ears to accommodate the mics are basically invisible. 

 

 

Need to do some ear cleanup around that area, but I'm probably going to wind up repainting my helmet anyways so no big deal there.

 

Anyways, I'm pretty excited about the electronics in the helmet. I also have some wireless Qi chargers that I plan to embed in the padding such that I can set the helmet on a stand and have it charge without having to plug anything in. You can see the beginning stages of that circuit below also. 

 

 

[gmrhodes13[Staff]]

A most impressive working area, very jealous 

[Sly11[Admin]]

Great to see you still at it with this build.

Those electronics boards look like a great idea.