Acrylikhan

That is awesome work there my friend!

Excellent Job! Congrats on the Promotion!

EDITED....

Is that a new boot you're using, or is that the same one from before?

If I only had a million dollars... I could finish this project within a week! But I'm NEVER lucky... so I'll try to quicken my pace, and put off getting my Imperial Officer for a little while longer! I was originally going to make urethane castings for the thigh boxes, my budget ran short at this stage, and I always wanted to try vacuforming. The shoulder bells were a great success a few months back, and the thigh boxes was the next logical step. Except this time, I was working from a drawing, and using a table saw to make the buck. The Shoulder bell was a constructed CAD file and then machined on a Computer Numeric Controlled Mill (CNC Mill). The thigh boxes were much more hands on. Ah, but Phillip, you have a very keen sense of detail! That is something that is always an asset to a project. Especially when the main goal is trying to replicate armor without absolute measurements. You've helped me refine my own guesses. Remember the razor holder that's on the bicep armor? If it wasn't for your information, it wouldn't not have looked as good! You've been a tremendous help on this project. (I think the pictures are still up on this thread, so check it out if you get the chance. The old razor holder compared to the new razor holder...) Oh, yeah... if you do a drawing-to-sculpture piece, please post it so we can check it out!

Thanks guys! Arcturus! I think that's the first time something I made was sexy... but I'll take it!!! :lol: Ghost! I wish you the best of luck modifying your DP/Rubies!! If you need help, gimme a holler! I think I might have started something with the DP/Rubies! I think, with Ghost, that makes three people that are now doing heavy mods to the DP helm!

No, it's an self made hobby vac. It's very small... the largest piece of plastic I can form from is about 18" x 16". I will try to make a larger bed for forming and heating, possibly a 24" x 24" with a vacuum pump. I'll need it to form the chest pieces. I may go back to urethane casting for the knee armor. So I have to decide soon, if I am going to make the vacuform buck or a plastic master for a silicone mold. The mold might be better, but urethane tends to be much heavier than a vacuform pieces. Decisions, decisions!

Thigh boxes... or probably should be better known as off-the-hip boxes! These parts were going to be my second attempt at vacuforming. This one was simple. I needed a table saw and an oscillating sander, and a Dremel. Madphisto: If this buck looks a little familiar to you... it should. It's essential the plan you drew up. I really liked it so I borrowed it, and made some slight alterations. I did put in some indents onto the buck. HOWEVER! I forgot one major rule of casting: beware of undercuts!. Even though this was a very cool idea, it became a BIG hindrance when I wanted to remove the plastic from the buck. These indents essentially LOCKED the part on. More on this a few pictures down. For the indent on the front surface, and the indents on the sides, I drilled small air holes with piano wire to help get the air out of these areas. 1/8-inch good ABS Pull! (This was the third pull... couldn't get the temperature and time right! Stupid me.) sweet. Here' in the above picture, you can see the problem. I broke the parts to get them off the bucks! The side indents caused the part to lock onto the mold. This is commonly know as an "undercut." It when an edge or surface moves toward the center of the part instead of away from the center of the part. Silicone molding for urethane casting can get away with undercuts sometimes because the rubber is flexible. Or you just place you parting line accordingly. Stupid me forgot this rule. So the part cracked at the edge. Both sides! Both Pulls! Size looks right for the webbing. Here's a close up on one of the cracks after I did a first stage repair. I used a heat gun to carefully warm the part up and move the cracked sections together. I then used ABS glue to bond it together from the back side. After that set for a day, I used a special cocktail of Methyl Ketone, and a few other chemicals, and Shredded ABS to make an "ABS Bondo." So I performed the operation on both pulls! Made the curved cuts to conform to my thigh, and the slots for the webbing. Coat of paint... and a quick polish, and we're done! That progress full body photos will be coming soon. I have to add some reinforcement to the shoulder bell. They buckle too much when I put them on. More to come.

I was thinking about doing one up white to match the painting and the comics.... but I think the camo might be a greater challenge! Mike has REALLY set the bar very high on that!!! :)

Great job! ...must make note of this for my construct.....

Interested... VERY INTERESTED. PM sent with Questions.

Thanks, Guy!

Ladyghost! Thanks! Please don't punch me out for wanting to give you a BIG HUG! "Thank You" doesn't say enough!! Ladies and Gentlemen! I have received my flightsuit, and VCP combo from our esteemed and beloved seamstress! SOON! Very SOON! Probably in about four weeks.... but that is very SOON! I will be suiting up with all the components I have finished to get a feel for how the costume is progressing. This is a moment in the making... the suit isn't finished yet, but I have so many pieces completed. I have been waiting for almost two years for this moment to arrive, and it's almost here. I just got to get all the straps attached to some of my parts, and get the chest cardboard mock up completed... More to come!

You know, I've been wondering about that. The bicep armor and the forearm molds I have are urethane base. So I could cast the sets, and then take them, out of the molds early and get them on a jig to increase the radius size. You know, for meater arms. For lengthing... I'd have to make new parts. It has crossed my mind though. It could get expensive for the buyer. Maybe I could figure something out. I though you were around 6' 1" (1.85 meters)?

Heading for the tank topper. Here's a quick recap: I had cut the acrylic some time back for the tank top, the base, the circle With a lot of help from my friends, started getting the greeblie action together. Made a master pattern, and then a mold of the part, then made some castings (or clones I like to call 'em! Then progress was halted.... Did some more digging and researching and started up the topper anew. I DO know where the greeblie bits came from for the topper. It was a military tank model kit. One of the parts from that kit goes on the snout of the helmet. As a good model maker, I wanted to create these parts myself. So here we go. This about where I left off: I connected the base, the circle and the "radar bar" with a couple of machine screws. I lined all the pieces together and tacked them in place with some cheap superglue. Since the pieces were set up exactly the way I wanted, I had to make sure all the holes were aligned. Then I drilled through all three pieces. I snapped the tacking superglue off and then tapped the bar to receive the screws. All too easy. In the R&D part of the project, I discovered that my master greeblie was WAY too big. They needed to be trimmed down. The trimming down to the correct length width and height also knocked down the angled edges. I needed bring those back. Sand paper and some files made all the difference. There are more details I have to add to these parts with some strip styrene. I'll finish these next week, after I go to the hobby store. The next part to tackle is the cylinder-dial thingy. It's a cylinder with a spherical top. How do I tackle this? Lucky for me, I had a huge project at work where I had to cut some spheres in half. I had made a mold of my parts, as I had to manufacture a couple thousand of them. I made some castings of the different sizes from the mold. Looks like two sizes are close to the curve I think I need. I do need to trim them down a bit. The cylinder has be be around an 13/16" in diameter. Great! A nice ODD size. Our lathe at work is under massive repairs so I had to carefully make the cylinder from a cast of urethane on the mill. First, I sanded down the spherical parts. I think the ending diameter was only 11/16": Thin little bugger too! A 1/16" at it's thickest! I managed to cut the cylinder on the mill. The glued the sphere and the cylinder together, and added a nice coat of primer. A little fixing with spot putty and it should be good! The next part was the gear looking thing. I cut some .100" styrene into 1/4" x 1/4" x 1/10" cubes. I set them in place using superglue, and a piece of metal to properly space them out. And here's what she looks like now: I guess I should put the cylinder in there.... More to come.

Getting ready for a short update....

ok-ke-doe-ke! Email sent!

EXCELLENT!

Pure beauty! Can't wait for more pictures!

Hey, I would rather you go a little slower than rush it. Again FANTASTIC WORK ON THIS ARMOR! I've gotta get one of those helmets, too!

Thanks!

Yes. The chest armor is on my mind constantly! I am still drawing up the measurements and should be getting set for the bucks by December. IF everything goes well according to my master plan. I think the AKA armor will turn out nicely. Not as nice as MC or SC or KS, but it should look okay. I'm trying to get the smaller pieces done, and the helmet before tackling the chest plate. So the menu will be: 1 - Thigh boxes 2 - Tank and topper 3 - Knee armor (grrrr...... ) 4 - Chest 5 - Holster 6 - ? (There is no slot six.) I figure I will have the helmet done before October starts. Knee and the lot by December.

The arm armor is complete! Mom with her two kids. Gee... over a year ago I finished the master pattern, and now... FINALLY! after having one section of the mold completed, I managed to get the other side poured after two months of waiting. This is probably one of my best patterns, because the urethane castings look beautiful! Better than the bicep armor! So there you have it! the arm armor is complete! I still need to get the shoulder resized. But I am waiting for an very important component of the suit to make sure that the shoulder is correctly sized. Then I can paint it. Whooops! Almost forgot to put the T-bits in the picture!!! There... DONE! I'll paint the forearms this week, and then get them to a beautiful gloss! On the other end of the spectrum, I painted the belt on Friday. I am now waiting for the paint to set. (about seven days). I am using the same Krylon fusion that I used on the helmet. Then the sanding and polishing begins! The buck for the thigh boxes that attach to the belt is almost completed. I forgot to take into account for the thickness of the plastic for some of the detail areas on the box. I'm confident that it should work out. Being that I am a glutton for taking on to many aspects of a project at once, I am still working on the knee armor. This too, will be another vacuform buck, and I am not convinced of my latest measurements are correct. So, because I'm scratching my head on that, I started a buck for the tank that goes on the back of the armor. I may have that done before the knee armor. Also, I have finished the master pattern for the tank topper, and will be making a mold of it very soon. It will be one solid casting in black urethane. Should look nice when it's done. C'ya soon!

Paul! Thanks! I'll keep you posted on my progress. Hey Jim! I should be there for September. I'll make a note to bring it with me. I'm not sure how much more I'll have done. I just got a big job in at work, so that will eat some of my break time. But, I still have at least two weeks of time to work on it.

Okay... so there I was, staring at the detonator and that's when it hit me: How to get the ALICE Clips on the back of the detonator. I found some acrylic, about 1/4 inch thick and about 1/2 inch wide strips. I cut them to size, so that they would fit in between the inside walls of the back of the detonator. The problem was that they wouldn't fit flush. On the oscillating sander, I carved out a nice circular trough so that it would fit over the hose. I tacked the strips in place with contact cement and then used an urethane glue to permanently bond it in place. The glue did take a while to set, so I used some zip ties to keep all the surfaces in contact with each other. The bond is quite strong. The next day I used the urethane glue again to bond the ALICE clips to the acrylic strips. The metal reinforces the plastic. The danger of a freak breakage should be very low. Looks sweet. Now for the ol' belt boxes. I had been sitting on this for the better part of a year. I had ideas of attaching them to a strip of leather, but it didn't have the same look of plastic. But the question remained. How to attach the boxes I made to a piece of plastic? The answer was to make bosses in the boxes so they could be bolted in place. Straight acrylic rod was cut into manageable pieces, faced flat, and then bored through. After wards, I tapped them so that a 1/4 x 20 bolt could be threaded in. I first used an acrylic cement to bond the bosses in place, and used a urethane glue to reinforce the first bond. I was worried that the edges of the boxes would be stressed by the flexing plastic. I poured in a urethane expanding foam to make the box solid. Great part about this stuff is that it bonds to everything!!! I used a 1:1 mix urethane foam that I got from a local art supply store. (Not Hobby Lobby, or Michael's). For sculpture "slush" castings, the foam is used to stabilize a urethane or metal shell. It makes the sculpture solid, but keeps the weight low. It's perfect for this situation. I think if you wanted to, you could used some of the urethane expanding foam crack sealers you can get at the hardware store. (GREAT STUFF is on such brand.) It might be more difficult to control. The foam is kept under pressure in the can, and as soon as it's released it begins to foam. My guess would be to make sure the outside of the boxes are coated with vaseline to resist the foam bonding. You'll have to work fast, and make sure you get in those corners. Oh, yeah, be sure to plug up those thread bosses! You DO NOT WANT the foam to get in there! a little vaseline on the screws will ensure the foam won't bond. The only belt box that does not get any foam is the buckle. The webbing for the thigh boxes needs to go through there. It should be pretty stable without it. Okay, the foam set. I removed the screws and then used a band saw to trim the excess foam flush. The other question was what type of plastic? Acrylic was too brittle after a few flexes. So it was down to ABS and styrene. ABS is VERY good, but to get it in the shape I need, it would have to be heated and then stretched over a form. (almost like vacuforming). If not, it will break like acrylic. I went with styrene, cut to about 3 inches high, 23-1/2 inches long, and 1/8 inch thick. This bends nicely, and has very good "memory" once it is bent into a certain shape for an extended period of time with low to no heat. To help it bend to my will (and waist), I riveted the nylon webbing to the backside. All the rivets would be hidden under the belt boxes. Roughly four hard points behind each box. Behind the buckle, there will be six rivets. After I riveted everything together, I got the web clip and tried it on. With the belt on, I had to figure out how to get the boxes to conform to the curve. I had my wife measure the distance between the two ends of the belt straight across my back. It was about twenty or so inches. I took a two-by-four, and cut to slots in the wood at the measurements my wife took. I slipped the ends of the plastic belt into each slot. The resulting curve is a good approximation of what the belt is like when I am wearing it. I got some paper and traced the resulting curve. This is my template for cutting the back of the boxes to the curve of the plastic. The boxes need to be at a minimum of 5/8th of an inch thick. The maximum thicknesses would be decided by the belt curve. I marked a line across the boxes at the 5/8th mark from the front surface. I placed the boxes on the template at that mark. I adjust the boxes so they looked "right" with the reference photos I have. I traced out the cut lines to the belt boxes. Combination of the band saw and the oscillating sander and the curve is translated to the boxes. I did the same for the remaining five boxes. I drilled and counter sunk the holes in the backside of the belt for each boss on each box. I used brass machine screws and bolted all of them to the plastic strip. Results. There's still a little tweaking hear and there. The boxes are still a little off in a few areas. minor sanding will shape them up quickly. Once they're attached, I'll fill any gaps with paintable silicone. The boxes and the belt will be painted together; the buckle will be painted separately. Next on the agenda, the redux of the thigh boxes. I've got my RenWood block almost completed cut into the correct shape. The surface details are next. Almost finished! Then it's off to the vacuform table! For the Helmet followers: pictures very soon. She's still not picture worthy yet, pretty ugly. Another round of spot bondo and a coat of primer. I am thinking the painting will be in two phases; Phase one will be painting the faceplate and the interior of the hood. The Second phase will be masting off the faceplate and the underside of the hood, and then painting the outside of the hood. We are very close my friends! Very close indeed! Stay tuned, more to come!