Chaos

I can sit with my armor, its a Jim Tripon kit so the material is pretty durable. Some things to keep in mind if you so want to be able to sit. Your thighs will need to be trimmed enough along the top so that when you sit, your thighs are not pushing up against your belt and your hip joint. You will also have to build / strap your cod and posterior pieces so that they are part of the belt/lower abdomen, and lower back plate. Make your upper chest and back armor so that it floats up and down around the lower armor. Adjust the fit so that the visible abdomen horizontal ribs as mentioned in the CRL, are the correct count. When sitting, the number visible is not an issue.

@matt_aggy28 Matthew, welcome to Spec Ops, the darker side of The Darkside! There are plenty of Deathtroopers here and like Jacob said, many of us have run into the same questions/issues during our builds. Ask plenty of questions. As you are deciding on which Armorer to go with to purchase your parts, look thru the build threads for people who have used/purchased the same parts. They can tell you what issues/headaches etc that they have had and use that information to prepare yourself to decide on which route to take. Best of luck and we are always here to assist.

OK I am working on details of the back boxes. All the reference photos I have seen the left box vertical panels appear to not be symmetrical except for one. By that I mean the width of each "panel" appears to be of varying sizes. It does not look like the Shoretrooper where the panels are the same width. I looked at the 1/6th scale figure from Hot Toys and they appear to be varying widths as well. My 1/6th figure is boxed up so I can't get a good look at it right now and the photo from the Hot Toys website is at an angle. Can someone who has the 1/6th figure take a look and tell me what you think? Or if anyone has a better straight on look at the Mandalorian Exhibit suit other than what we have already posted. Screen grabs are too fuzzy to actually get a good look but I have one here that looks like it has 4 evenly spaced panels. I am leaning towards the fact that Lucas costume department folks are recycling pieces and parts from previous suits and making minor detail changes to set them apart, so maybe the panels are the same width. This is what I have come up with. Thoughts?

Have you contacted 850 Armor works? At one time they had an option to assemble and paint a finished kit.

It's heavy duty waistband elastic. I think I got it from a local Michael's or Fabric store

After attempting to make Nikko's statue files "wearable" I opted to buy his armor files as well and have been modifying them slightly to match up with the CGI screen suits. I'll probably use the statue files to build a display piece for Cons. Nikko did a good job of replicating the 1/6th scale, but I will have to change a few minor things to align with the screen suits. I had previously made the changes to the statue files so it shouldn't take me too long to make the mods. I have already mod'd Do3D's helmet slightly and added a few missing items (correct number of vent slots, etc). The screen helmets have two "knobs" on the bottom section each side of the voice coder. I have seen helmets that don't have them or have 4 "knobs" (not sure where that came from?) I did add a backing piece to it after @HidingInCosplay mentioned her's snapped off. I also added some small indentations on the eyes and forehead that were on the screen helmets. All in all Do3D did a great job modeling the helmet. After looking at Nikko's files and how he replicated the joint gears/circles I am going back to the drawing board to try and incorporate the CGI mods I made to work with his files. That's today's project. I'll post up when I have a solution. As usual, if anyone sees anything I missed on the helmet, please shout out.

@HidingInCosplay AMAZING!!! I put my build on a hiatus for a while, but have started working on my files again. Thank you for mentioning issues you have had with Nikos files and other things you discovered along the way of your build. I have completed the hands and finger files (such a pain in the arse!) but hopefully, and I have said this a couple of times, I can get them assembled this week to make sure the modifications I made work. If they do work out I'll post up the files if anyone wants to give them a try. (photos of assembled files in my build thread)

I roughed up the indentation with 80 grit and filled it with a 2 part epoxy and kept it level while it cured.

The mysterious screw hole is for the screws that attach the side tubes. Look at the tubes and see if there is a hole.

Paul, Looking good. I should explain why I told Hector to rotate his back up some, he was having an issue getting his tusks to lay flat. I actually have my collar farther back and even cut some of the back down so my helmet wouldn't make contact. So I think how you have it now will work perfect for you. If it does make contact you can always trim some off the back and it won't effect CRL approval at all. As far as your abdomen, if you look at the screen suits. The belt sit below the abdomen rectangle with the circle indent. With Jim's kits in order to make that work, you'll need to put an edge under the rectangle to give you some place to put velcro or snaps to hold the top part of the belt in place. I made some strips and attached them to the lower edge of my abdomen and attach my belt there. This requires you to raise your abdomen up some so the belt sits properly in place around your waist. The belt should be centered at your hip level. You don't want a "low rider" look! LOL Screen suit My suit My suit showing lower strips for belt attachment Here is the file for the collar tabs. https://www.dropbox.com/s/n56rr6rzxsm2vl2/collar tab support.stl?dl=0 You will have to position the tabs so that they fit under the chest center edge. Photo is for reference and may not be in the correct position for your suit

I have finally gotten around to taking a look at what you have going on with the neck area. Ideally, you want the neck "tusks" to rest evenly against the front chest armor slope. If you look at the Shore Trooper in Paul's files/build, the tusks have a piece (tab) that slides into a slot in the front armor. This keeps the tusks flush against the front armor. Jim's kit does not have this and I too had an issue early on with the tusks having a gap. I made a file that creates a "tab" that is attached to the back neck piece and slides under the front armor, basically replicating the tab set up on Paul's ST. It glues onto the inside of the neck and is then filled in with bondo or filler so its less noticeable. Once everything is painted you can't see it. You might want to look at having the back of the collar slightly aft, it will help prevent your helmet from banging on the top edge and it will give you more range of motion to look up.

@Mal86 I clam shelled my forearms for two reasons, one so that they would fit snug around my forearms and over the undersuit so they don't twist out of place, the second is since they are snug, and one has the 2 rubber band around it, it allows me to put my big ape hands thru the openings on the wrist end. If you look at Paul's shore troop forearms, the inside elastic bands pull the clamp shelled side tight and keeps it closed.

Awesome. If I could give you some advice. I put elastic straps on the bottom of the legs, so that I could put them under my foot arch when I put my boots on. It keeps the legs from riding up out of the boots. Also I put an elastic strap on the ends of the sleaves that lined up with my thumbs. This keeps the ends of the sleaves from pulling out of the gloves. I got the idea from a photo that Victor Botha posted, his undersuit had sleave thumb holes. Just a suggestion.

sounds like a "curing" issue to me. Go back and hit the tacky areas with the UV light again. If that doesn't fix it, put another layer over the top of the tacky areas and hit it with the UV light again. Make sure you are exposing the resin for the recommended time. You might also want to check and see what UV spectrum the resin requires for proper curing. Some resins require a specific UV wave spectrum to cure properly. Not all UV lights are the same spectrum. As far as the crack, put some superglue in the crack, before it cures sprinkle some baking soda on the crack and glue inside and outside. it will cure instantly, then put another thin layer of glue on top of that and sprinkle again with baking soda, sand smooth the outside and repaint. leave the inside built up as this will strengthen the filled in crack.

The sling is a 1.25 inch sling. I recommend not using any sling clip/buckle that you have to 3D print. I bought metal swivel clips from this place: https://www.unclemikes.com/swivels-and-slings/rifle-swivels/qd-115-swivel---tri-lock/P00951.html I bought this type so I could screw the mounting posts into my 3D print. It has held up very well over the years. and I bought a plain black 1.25 inch sling from this place https://qm-supply.com/product/m-16-slings/ Any similar item will do. There is no CRL specific requirements for weapons, they simply must look like the reference in details and size.

@HidingInCosplay Just checking in on this thread. Any more progress and or photo updates? Also I have been using Nikko's statue files and hollowing them out to be wearable. You said you also go files from Andromeda 3D, do you have a link for their files. I have searched their Instagram posts but no luck.

Yes

Just a little technique you might want to think about. After you adjust the buckles to where you want them, put a small square patch of black felt on the back side of the metal buckles. It will prevent you from taking off your chest rig and having an "oh sh1t" moment when you discover the back side of the buckle has scratched the crap out of your chest armor.

I use Frog painter's tape to mask off areas when I apply paints etc. Blue painter's tape works as well, I just prefer the pretty lime green color of the Frog tape.

So I have discovered something new in my life. Its called UV printer resin and it is amazing. I originally painted the inside of my Tripon kit with a substance like Plasti-Dip and it worked awesome at eliminating the fiberglass shards. Over the years that wears off and has to be recoated which is no big deal. However I tried brushing on a thin layer of UV printer resin and hitting it with a UV light. It cures almost instantly and seals in the fiberglass. It is AMAZING ! LOL wish I had figured this out the last time I upgraded/modified/repaired my armor. One more thing you might want to consider to help preserve the paint on your kit in the areas where the pieces overlap is epoxying some type of medium thick black felt on the inside of the overlapping pieces. Not only does it prevent the paint from getting "rub marks" but it quiets the armor rattle some what.

Sounds to me like you are already have a great system in place. You your self said you wanted to start off shiny and new and let the suit "weather" with use. I use an auto polish on my kit to bring back the shine after I wash off my weathering before re-weathering it again. Ceramic coatings are designed to protect from UV and dirt and oils. Like Doc said the coating is very thin and if you do go that route I would recommend putting multiple layers. I'm a cheap-skate so using something that expensive for armor that I want to look like what's on screen, doesn't make sense for me to use.

Dan, you might want to use a software program called Armorsmith Designer. It allows you to make an avatar to your body dimensions and then scale a 3D file to fit. Someone in your Garrison may have it and can do it for you. I don't have Tom's helmet file or I could do it for you. Another option is to straight line measure your head front to back and side to side and then scale the assembled file in something like 3D Builder (a Window's program) or Blender, and use the measuring feature to scale the file to your measurements. Try and error could waste a lot of material until you get it correct.

Congratulations!

Paul is correct. The black material prevents the "see thru" effect.