mjt82

Hey @Chaos - Can you describe your method for weathering your armor? It looks great!!

What type of leather are you using for this one @nanotek? I haven't seen anything at my local craft stores that seems to be as thick as what you have there.

You will have to put that part on first, then put on the shin pieces. I probably will attach that part to the shins with velcro for security.

I'm not exactly sure how I will join them together. I have seen a method using strong rare earth magnets in the front and back, which is attractive to me. I will probably attempt that first! Velcro is a popular option, as well. Cheers, and happy building!

I gave watered down wood filler (a la Nathan Ritchey on the Facebook group) on my remaining shin pieces. It's much easier to apply, that's for sure, and will likely be much easier to sand down. On the right you can the shin that I covered in spot putty. I think the spot putty I got was old - It had separated somewhat in the tube, and was very "pasty" and not easy to spread. I've got alot of sanding ahead of me on that shin.

Well I haven't been very good at updating this thread, but I have taken a few pics of my progress, and I can describe what I've done so far during my build. I have nearly all of my parts printed - I've learned a lot about 3D printing in this process, and have had to work through quite a few print imperfections as I have assembled my parts. Using the smaller print bed means I have to cut most everything into smaller pieces, then assemble them. I had a few problems with "elephant foot" deformities, but eventually got those under control for smoother assembly. The TDK Props files are super detailed, though... I'm very pleased so far with what I've printed. On my back armor piece, I ended up having a severe print fail after about 20 hours on one of my prints. In an effort to avoid scrapping the whole print, I estimated the spot where the print failed, cut the model in my slicer at approximately that spot, printed it, then sanded the parts down to fit. I think it turned out OK. It's the right lower blue panel that I had to fix: I coated my parts with fiberglass resin to take care of the print lines. I learned a lot about resin during this process as well - Some of the applications needed to be out in the sun to fully dry. I'm not sure if it is the UV from the sun or the heat, but a few hours in the sun seems to full "set" the resin on the parts. In the pic here there are a few of my son's Scout Trooper parts that I was coating with resin at the same time. I tried to coat one of the sections of my shins with spot putty like I see done often, but this was a huge mess, and I think from here on I'll use a light coat of resin to fill print lines. I reenforced the chest, back, ab, lower back, shoulders, thighs (front and back), cod, butt - basically any part with a seam - with fiberglass for strength, and I really like how this feels. I've read where some people are worried about the weight of the parts with fiberglass reenforcement and resin coating, but I don't think it will be too much of an issue. Here is a shot of my chest piece with the fiberglass backing. It really does create a more robust piece of armor. As you can see, there are a lot of air pockets under the fiberglass - This was my first attempt at applying fiberglass, and I definitely got better on subsequent attempts. I'll paint the inside, but I'm considering adding some adhesive-backed thin neoprene to the inside of the larger pieces. Current status: Armor parts are in various states of completion. I've gone through several cycles of spot putty, sanding, primer to reveal the spots that need more putty, apply putty, sand, repeat as needed. It's definitely coming along! I even went ahead and applied some black paint (just some older paint that I had in the garage) just to see what it looks like in black, and I'm excited to see how it looks! I have a couple of days off next week, and I hope to spend the majority of both of them working toward getting the parts ready for paint. I'd really love to have it done by June, if possible, for the return of the Mississippi Comicon and our "Blast-a-Trooper" fundraiser event. Thanks for following!

I can try to get you one. I’m currently in the process of 3D printing a new suit because I was so unsatisfied with my KB kit. When I purchased it, however, I didn’t know what I was doing, and there weren’t but 2-3 making the kit at that time, so I did the best I knew to do.

I have a KB kit, and my brother has an 850 kit. I wish I would have gone with the 850. In fact, I purchased a set of shins from 850 to replace my KB ones, because the KB shins were incredibly bulky looking.

Looks great, Paul!! Well done!

Having finished printing both of them now, upside down would save some support material!

Well, the bed thermistor has been replaced! Time to resume some printing!!!

@DHKnecht - I’ve done something similar to what you have there in my slicer. I don’t see any way around having to use a ton of supports (and waste a lot of material) to get them printed right. For the time being, I have had a bit of an unplanned pause in my printing. I am having some issue with the bed thermistor wire on my printer - I think it’s just something I’ll have to re-solder when I get a few minutes to tear into it. Kindof a bummer because I was about 1/3 of the way printing the ab parts during my camping trip this weekend when my wife sent me a message that I had an error and the print stopped. But! I’ll get it fixed and press on! My goal is to have all of the parts printed, puttied, and sanded by the time the weather is warm enough to paint, so I have a little time!

Regarding the fans, I have found that pointing one fan downward as an exhaust will help keep my bucket cooler.. The St. Paddy’s parade two years ago resulted in our Fett being hauled off in an ambulance due to heat exhaustion, but I wasn’t too terribly hot with my fans running!

I am about to tackle printing the ab, which I’ve actually cut into six pieces so that the joints will be in easier to finish areas, as in, areas with less detail. I’m going to see if I can print all six pieces at the same time - I usually like to keep my print times down to around 12 hours or so, just for my own comfort, but I have faith in the Prusa! Question for you @DHKnecht, if you don’t mind, how did you go about printing the top portions of the shins? Those parts are such odd designs that if you print them flat, you end up with tons of supports, and thus wasted filament!

I need to look, but I think my MK3 is a large... I wonder if the MK4 would look less "bobbly"...

@wook1138 - Great build thread! Out of curiosity, your Armory Shop MK3 helmet: What size was it? I also suffer from the same "bobble head" syndrome with my MK3, and wonder if I could squeeze my noggin into a MK4, medium size.

Out with the old, in with the new... When I decided to build a Deathtrooper costume as my first venture into costume building, I honestly didn't know what I was getting into. All I knew was ABS, as my wife was building a TK at that time, so I went that route. I ended up settling on a KB Props kit, which was one of the couple that were around at that time (August 2017). I didn't know what to expect out of an ABS kit, and I sure as heck didn't know what I was doing, as there weren't many (read: 2-3) build threads available to consult when I was building mine. Needless to say, I learned a ton about costume building, and made a ton of mistakes. The lack of detail in the ABS kit has always bothered me, and I honestly have never felt "proud" when trooping in my kit. Enter the 3D printer... My wife got me a Prusa i3 MK3S for a combined anniversary/Father's Day/early birthday gift in early 2020. I have always wanted to get into 3D printing, mostly for droid building, which is what I've been doing since I first powered it up. I've been a little burned out on the droid building recently, which turned my focus to costume printing. I enjoy watching the Galactic Armory channel on YouTube, which made me want to start a new costume, but I thought to myself, "Why not just re-work the DT costume and make it what you've always wanted?" So that's what I've decided to to. I contacted Tom Campbell and purchased his files, and got to work! I tinkered around with resizing things (see my other thread), but after a discussion with Tom, I've realized that resizing may not even be necessary, which is nice! The smaller print volume of the Prusa means I have to chop the files up into smaller chunks, but so far I've been able to do that without too much trouble. I tend to chop them up into 12 hour print times, which means I can keep the printer moving 24 hours/day for the most part! At this point, I've completed both forearms, and have moved on to the shins! I'm printing the kit in PETG (I live in Mississippi - Can't have my kit warping) at 20% infill, 0.3 mm layer height, with 3 shells (all per Tom's recommendations). I'm hoping to keep this thread going to help others that come along the way find answers to any questions they may have in the build process! Any input on 3D printing, finishing, etc.. is greatly appreciated!

I spoke to Tom about the sizing of the models, and he encouraged me to print them as-is. I went ahead and printed a forearm, which turned out to fit nicely. I'm moving on to the shins next, and should have the first on finished tomorrow evening! From there, I think most everything else should be OK, size-wise.

So I did some resizing based on my measurements in Armorsmith, and printed a modifed forearm, which came out way too big. Maybe I am overthinking my need to resize these files. I am 6'3" and about 250 lbs - I lift weights alot so I'm not too pudgy around the midsection. I built a KB Props ABS kit for my first build, and it fit me well enough out of the box to get approved. If anything, maybe I need to add a couple cm of length to things, and keep the girth measurements as they are. Opinions?

@CyberNinja89 I looked for a free version, but only found a 30 day free trial. Maybe I missed something - I'll go back and look. So far using Armorsmith seems to be working well enough. I finished up my son's Mandalorian helmet, so I am going to try to print a scaled up forearm this weekend and see how it turns out!

https://imgur.com/gallery/ByYMBH9

Oh the Prusa is a beast.. I’m very well pleased. My son has been wanting a Mandalorian helmet to go with his costume, so I thought I’d “practice” armor making with that project. So far, so good!! https://imgur.com/gallery/ByYMBH9

I messaged him - He's the one that suggested using the Netfabb program, but it is quite advanced and quite expensive. I'll go the route of learning it and paying for it if the simpler method I am trying above won't work.

So I've been tinkering around with printing a Mandalorian helmet for my son, thereby learning about resizing and cutting up models. Here's what I have done with that helmet (I assume I can use the same process for any other piece of armor): I put his measurements into ArmorSmith and imported the helmet, then resized it to fit his head measurements. I exported that model, and attempted to cut it up in Meshmixer, but kept having issues with the program crashing (I'm not smart enough to figure out why the program kept crashing). So I then imported the file into the Prusa slicer, where I easily was able to cut it into pieces that will fit my print bed, and then exported each of the pieces as a .stl file for printing. When it comes time to apply this to the DT files, I'm planning to add my measurements to Armorsmith, adjust the parts to fit my measurements, import them into the Prusa slicer, and cut them into printable chunks, just as I did with the helmet above. Is there anything wrong with that method? Seems much simpler than some of the other methods I've read about. It does create a lot more post-print processing, but that is one of the (very few) downfalls of having a smaller print bed with the Prusa. Thanks for any input! ETA: Once I get the files sized in ArmorSmith and exported, I'll use @lancer's method above, and print a very small section of the parts to ensure circumferential fit before I commit to printing the entire part.

@lancer That is awesome advice! I’ll do just that. Especially the part about printing small sections of the armor to ensure a fit!