Valafar's 3D-Printed Shoretrooper build [FINISHED]

[Weasel]

8 hours ago, Valafar said:

Where and how much do you apply?

Just cover the whole part with a thin layer or use more but only at the sides?

Any contact cement you get, will have it's own instructions, like most other glues. Best practice would be to follow them,bbut generally speaking you coat both sides with a thin layer of it and then let them sit (usually 5 to 10 minutes) for them to get really tacky and then push them together.

I cannot stress enough that once contact cement touches each other it's bonded and almost impossible to get apart again without damaging whatever you glued together.

I would recommend for pieces that are a bit tricky to line up without any repositioning or (like the plates) or if you have shaky hands that you make a 'tape-hinge' or use some other additional positioning that will help you get it right the first time. 

If you have some scrap pieces of the materials, practice with gluring them together to get a feel for the process. 

Good luck!

 

 

[KOtrooper]

Where and how much do you apply?
Just cover the whole part with a thin layer or use more but only at the sides?

Just do exactly what Weasel said. It's weird to coat both sides and wait before putting the items together, but it works and works well.

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[Valafar]

@KOtrooper @Weasel Thank you two

I thought I'd share a few pictures of some of the parts I already have painted:

 

the parts above don't have any kind of blackwash or weathering besides paint chipping. Here are some boxes that are weathered:

To be honest I'm not sure if the chipping is too much on some parts, I oriented myself on the flickr original costume references.

It's just that other STs in my garrison have much less chipping, so it might look odd in group photos

[Minimo]

Nice work!

[Weasel]

I think the chipping looks great, fantastic base for more weathering. I am worried myself thst some stuff has too much weathering but then I remember to look at the reference pics and realize how messed up those uniforms are haha. 

It's impossible to get a super consistent look of weathering between costumes and I also think that it doesn't make sense. Just think of it this way: The cleaner to armor, the less time in the field spent by the trooper. More weathering = more experience

 

[Valafar]

Working on the strapping of the shins. It's working pretty well so far, velcro is pretty strong.

I increased the size of the shins to fit my height, as well as the size of my calves. Because of that they look quite big over the shoes. We will see how it ends up looking like when I'm wearing the rest of the costume.

Right now the shins are resting on top of the shoes. In some references the STs have it like this as well, in others they sit higher. I think it looks better if they are higher. Did you guys put padding in yours to have them higher?

[Weasel]

I think your shins look great and I think the distance right now fine. It's very easy to worry about this, when you are so close to the part. Once you are trooping, nobody would even think to look there, to make sure the distance is "correct". That you see differences between costumes gives you an idea that it's probably not an area to worry about - The one missing diamond on your right is of more concern

[KOtrooper]

Shin placement is fine. Mine rest on my shoes.

[Valafar]

Alright, I tried on the upper body parts as well. Unfortunately I can't put on chest + back on myself, mostly because the neck collar is making it hard to put on the chest. I really wonder if people can put it on themselves with printed armor.

I guess it's possible if the neck collar is seperate, but I didn't want to make it seperate because the original has it in one piece and I don't like a seam there.

I also need to lower the abs, the back plate of the abs has magnets at the bottom to hold it close to the rest, however it doesn't really do a whole lot. Luckily the belt will hold it together

[Weasel]

Looks great! I just recently finished my collar work and I can put it on my own, but I also did a lot of messing around with the collar to make it easier. For one, I remove the ABS plug and sank a longer piece if metal into the spot to make it more rigid and have a longer piece sticking out the front, which makes it easier to feed it into the holes. There are several parts where help from another person would be really handy, but if you're trooping with others, I am sure another trooper will help you out putting it on. If you have a handler helping you out, even better!  I just got my shirt from KeepTrooping, so that gave me a boost to keep working on it extra hard!

Keep up the good work!

[Valafar]

Well I encountered a small problem with the strapping of the shin straps:

I wanted to attach the straps with velcro, as it's the most simple way to do it.

Unfortunately that didn't work as planned, because the sticky velcro doesn't stick to the rubber straps very well. At least the velcro holds tighter than the glue and rips it right off the strap. So I need a different solution, or a better way to attach the velcro to the strap

[Minimo]

I ran into this issue. Found that scoring the underside of the straps really helped with promoting adhesion, also enhanced the underside with a bit of ca glue.

[Valafar]

31 minutes ago, Minimo said:

I ran into this issue. Found that scoring the underside of the straps really helped with promoting adhesion, also enhanced the underside with a bit of ca glue.

Interesting approach. How did you score it I can't really imagine what it would look like

[Minimo]

I used a belt sander to scrap away the glossy underside finish, subsequently took a dull knife and scrapped it.  This created texture so that the glue had something to adhere to. 

[Weasel]

On 10/5/2023 at 2:24 PM, Valafar said:

Well I encountered a small problem with the strapping of the shin straps:

I wanted to attach the straps with velcro, as it's the most simple way to do it.

Unfortunately that didn't work as planned, because the sticky velcro doesn't stick to the rubber straps very well. At least the velcro holds tighter than the glue and rips it right off the strap. So I need a different solution, or a better way to attach the velcro to the strap

 

So if the straps are silicone (which I assume they are, you can use a very permanent adhesion: CA Glue / Super Glue. Word of warning - It will bond aggressively to the silicone, meaning if you ever want to get that velcro off, you will most likely rip out pieces of silicone before you separate the two parts. It also makes it possible to use CA glue to bond silicone pieces back together. 

Chances are, you've gotten straps that are longer than you need, so like before, experiment with the excess to see what gives you the best result. I bonded my velcro to the straps with CA glue. If I ever have to replace the velcro on the silicone, I will most likely have to sand off the velcro, but I don't expect this to be an issue moving forward. Hope this helps.

[Valafar]

Okay so sanding the straps makes  the velcro stick a lot better. It's not perfect but I'll figure it out.

I put many parts on a puppet to see how they work together:

The belt/ hip plates area is a lot more complicated than I thought. I might need to remove a bit of the velco at the back of the belt to make it a bit longer and the velcro doesn't stick quite as well to the foam as I was hoping 😕

I finished the back boxes and installed them:

Right now I'm in the process of adding more weathering to all the parts and doing the strapping of the arms:

The lower arms are a bit sagging, I might add some padding to keep them in place.

One more thing I'm unsure about is how I attach the shotgun shells to the foam. I have the three of them seperate:

If I glue them to a plate and screw the plate to the foam, the contact surface for the glue isn't really big. Any ideas?

[KOtrooper]

Contact cement will be your friend for the Velcro to foam adhesion.

I super glued the three shotgun shells together, then glued a small square of spare plastic to them as a base. Finally, I glued that to the armor or I velcroed it. I can't remember.

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[Valafar]

On 10/23/2023 at 11:20 PM, KOtrooper said:

Contact cement will be your friend for the Velcro to foam adhesion.

 

 

Thanks, that worked pretty well.

I'm almost finished with the costume, I screwed the boxes to the belt and the detonator(s) to  the back plate thing as well as the oiler pouch to the foam on the back.

Now i still need to paint the red symbol on the helmet, weather it completely and add the greeblies. I also need to do the strapping of the shoulder straps and add the foam to chest and back and do the strapping for the leather ammo pouch

[KOtrooper]

You're almost to the finish line!

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[Valafar]

I finished the costume (except for the helmet) last sunday, so I did my fist full suitup:

I would say that most parts are sitting pretty well, except for the shoulders and the helmet which isn't properly padded yet. I'm also adjusting the strapping for the ammo pouch to get pulled more under the faulds in the front

The strapping in the back where the belts closes with the covering is probably my biggest issue, it's quite thick as you can see:

Yesterday I finished the weathering for the helmet, now only the visor is missing:

I also had trouble glueing the blast shield to the front. The plate below the shield was attached easy with contact cement. However for some reason the shield above didn't want to stick. I ended up using a very strong power adhesive that takes more than a day to dry.

I'm going to make approval pictures on thursday, I hope I get approved on the first try.

If you see anything else wrong please let me know

[Valafar]

I am finally finished with the costume.

Today I took some pictures for approval, I hope it gets through on the first attempt

I still need to adjust some padding for better comfort and maybe figure something out to prevent the back of the shoe from slipping out of the shin.

 

A big thank you to everyone who gave me tips and helped me though this build!

[Minimo]

Woohooo! Good luck!!!!

[Aradun]

You look awesome! Good luck with your approval!

[Valafar]

Got the costume approved today without any changes necessary 😁

I'm planning on making the E-22 in the future.

I have sean fields files, but I'm wondering if there are more accurate files out there that people use?

[Tarok]

Got the costume approved today without any changes necessary
I'm planning on making the E-22 in the future.
I have sean fields files, but I'm wondering if there are more accurate files out there that people use?

Congratulations! That’s awesome!

I’ve got the 3D Props NL files, which are available for purchase from his website. That said, I believe a member here may have released an updated version of Seans files.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk