Pseudonym said: ! This is going to be awesome! Looks like you're off to a great start Click to expand...

sirspifalot said: Hot damn! Glad to see another Terran Marine in the works. Finished mine last year. A lot of fun. Learned much. I will also second the concern for arm joint placement and such. That was the biggest problem for me on my build. The torso ended up too wide and couldn't put my arms down. So I had to cut out a chunk of the arm pit to make it work. Range of motion was still sucked. Anyways, I like what you have going for your feets. I may try that out as mine need a rebuild. Great start. Gonna keep and eye on dis. Click to expand...

Thanks! Right back at ya on the Samus armor - that's a great looking suit! Best of luck with it!Yep I agree. As I get closer to that point I'll be making changes as necessary. Thanks for the insight! I thought your suit looked amazing - what did you use for the nubs around the base of the boot? I can't seem to get the right shape.MKII of the fingers! I hit the drawing board pretty hard and came up with a hollow two-piece design for each finger section that would maximize strength and articulation but minimize finish work and final weight. Each half would be bonded together with its mate, then an ABS dowel pin would attach each section together.The index and ring fingers would be the exact same size so that was another moment of relief, however I couldn't just scale it up and down for the middle and pinkie fingers because the joint sections would be out of proportion. Design continued long into the night....Next I had to build the mount that would tie the whole thing in together. Each finger was set at a slight angle so they wouldn't rub on each other throughout the full range of movement. the pinning was going to interfere in the middle two fingers so I chopped the whole thing in half and decided to assemble it that way. Made things that much easier down the road. As a bonus, the shape of the mount would form the contour I needed for the foam on the palm so win-win!Next I needed to design the mount that would attatch the entire monstrosity to my own hand. My original thought was a joint at my wrist with two supports, one strapping onto my forearm and the other onto the back of my hand. I wanted to build the entire thing at an angle too so I could flex my wrist down and straighten the arm, or flex it up and get much closer to 90° at the elbow. (sorry if that's confusing, my brain was a bag of cats at this point). I even planned a spring system that would help bend the joint due to the weight.Enough planning, get to printing already!Ok so I had my buddy print all the pieces out over the course of a couple months. As they'd finish I'd clean em up, sand em down, drill the dowel pin hole to the correct size and make sure they had enough clearance together so they could rotate smoothly. I will say, first off, thank you to my friend who did the printing, I tied up his printer for countless hours and many headaches. Couldn't have pulled this off without him! However, if I ever decide to do something to this extent again, I will be buying my own. Biggest drawback: weight vs strength. I shelled out all the pieces to 1/16". After a couple trial prints, the printed layers to finish off the upper shell of the part was so thin it would flex and break if I applied any kind of force on them. the mounts weren't holding up with the stress of the dowel pins and the part was warping on the table as it was printing so the two halves wouldnt line up at all. I ended up thickening the walls to 1/8" and the results were much better. Double the weight, but also more than double the durability, so trade-off I guess. I later found out that his printed is a home built, contantly evolving, problematic printer with rather large printing layers and heating problems that create weak spots between layers. A higher quality printer would definitely result in finer details and thinner walls with better strength, but these worked for my needs and I had neither the time or money to do it any other way. So again, thanks! Still turned out great and I can move on!This part has been by far the most time intensive part of the entire process. And no, for the record, I don't smoke - the lighter is for sealing the ends of cut paracord so they don't frayMore on that and assemly next time!