Sauron Full Armor - Finished

[Aerie]

Certainly possible that that its just the way it looks. I'm it should be black it looks very odd and out of character for it to be blue. Looking at all the different version of figures its also consistently black. So thats what what I will stick with.

 

[greenmachines]

Certainly possible that that its just the way it looks. I'm it should be black it looks very odd and out of character for it to be blue. Looking at all the different version of figures its also consistently black. So thats what what I will stick with.

Agreed. Black.

 

[Kroenen77]

Also, need to share this, found some amazing images recently.

Someone on reddit posted a lot of on set photos in high resolution. If you are into the Lord of the rings, and have not seen them, then I cant recommend them enough. So many pictures from this time was just so low res, to have this is a treasure.

Among them, was this, my current favorite picture. Just a great composition and and angle.

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Great pics..thanks for sharing this.

 

[Aerie]

Just wanted to make a quick post. I did finish on time, but with literally only minutes to spare. In the end it came down to assembling everything so that I could actually wear it, I had all the parts, but there is a fair amount of leather straps to figure out where they should go, so that pieces fit correctly. And since this mean drilling holes in the armor you really don't want to make any misstakes. And it was tricky work. Attatching tassets and gardbrace were the last ones to come in place. And the very last thing was sowing the fingers to the leather gauntlets, took about 3 hours to do 28 stitches across to gloves. And I did this waiting for my rind to comic-con. Finishing 20 minutes before she arrive, everything else packed in bags.

Very happy with the result, and i could not have worked any harder, and have no regrets. There are a few things I will work on in the near future, and then do a proper photoshoot. But i need a bit of a break now, having worked on the project 5 hours every weekday after a normal work day, and 12-14 hours on weekends for 3 week, im tired
But I did want to post a few pictures immediately.
One from the con, I love how the armor looks from the back, and the star-struck Witch King.
The other is from our company office party, I arrived late, but got a heroes welcome.

 

[Kypropguy]

Absolutely amazing

 

[N2darkness]

Looks great to finally see it all together!

I think in your hurry to get this completed and ready to wear, you reversed the shoulder pauldrons

 

[Aerie]

Looks great to finally see it all together!

I think in your hurry to get this completed and ready to wear, you reversed the shoulder pauldrons

Haha, indeed, never noticed that before. The are indeed put on upside down in the left shoot.
They attach with belt straps. So they are not made reversed, just attached incorrectly this time

I literately blame my squire. I have to have one, there are several parts of my armor that I cannot put on myself.
Fun fact, my wife's sister has a hobbit cosplay, that she was in the entire day, helping me with my costume. She put it on and off several time during the day.

 

[greenmachines]

Haha, indeed, never noticed that before. The are indeed put on upside down in the left shoot.
They attach with belt straps. So they are not made reversed, just attached incorrectly this time

I literately blame my squire. I have to have one, there are several parts of my armor that I cannot put on myself.
Fun fact, my wife's sister has a hobbit cosplay, that she was in the entire day, helping me with my costume. She put it on and off several time during the day.

Good squires are terribly hard to come by without political strings attached. It's been this way for about 1500 years.

 

[Aerie]

Epilogue

Now that its all done with. Lets talk number.

TL.DR
* 650 hours working on the project.
* ~3800 hours of 3d printing, 1820 hours for one complete armor
* 30 kg of filament used in total, 12,5 for one full armor set.
* 310 prints (failures not included) for 159 different parts, 116 assembled parts
* 244 Rivets, 28 leather straps.
* Total weight, 16 kg.


So, how many hours did I spend working on it. I know almost to they day how many days was spent. Since i kept my chart. The only unknown is the days I spend making the helmet back in 2019, and the mace in 2020. For this year, assuming on weekends I worked only 15 minutes some days, on 2 of those days, half an hour on another, 1 hour on some and 3 hours on a few. Then 2 and 8 on weekends, I have 15 hours in a week where worked every day.

I Estimate that i spent somewhere between 600 - and 700 hours in total.

Off that time, 80% was spent just 3d modeling, printing prototype and adjusting. Spending about 100 hours doing sanding, spraying, weathering and assembly.

Total print time, including all the prototypes comes out to around 3800 hours.
And the exact time to print one armor is 1820 hours, if you do it with no failures. That's 75 days of round the long printing on one printers.

I've used 29630 grams of filament including all the prototypes. And one armor needs exactly 12363,8 grams. So that's about 30 spools on the project. and 13 for an armor.

There are 28 leather straps to hold it all together.
Boots, leather gloves.

244 Rivets, almost all of which are functional. Just few decorative rivets

Total weight of the armor, with leather straps, rivets and boots. comes out to 16 kg.

PS. I bought a Sauron Bobble-head 15 years ago. During the project I've noticed that its actually really really accurate. With amazing detail, and cramming in every major element. So to any fan, i must recommend it.

PPS. I know a lot of you are interested in the .stl files, which I have been contemplating during the entire project, and still don't know how I want to approach that. But, if I decide that I will share them, this will be the first place I will post about it. My expectation is that I likely will share them in some fashion in the fairly near future. There are many reasons, but I guess for now at least I just want to have my moment in the sun.

 

[Thewalldi]

I registered just to congratulate you on your great work. I'm waiting for the stl files because it's simply beautiful.
In Poland we have sayings like "me vs. my mother's friend's son" or "me vs. the type you don't have to worry about".

You are that son and that type. Great work!
I ad my picture from that halloween

 

[Pikezer1337]

Just phenomenal mate! I'm building a Sauron myself and this is next level. The sense of accomplishment from doing EVERYTHING from modeling to printing to painting etc must be awesome! You should be very proud of yourself!

Hoping you eventually share the files as you mentioned but I think for now you should definitely just enjoy the sense of accomplishment

 

[Darth Suiryu]

Wow! This is the best Sauron armor I've seen, a lot of time and love put into it! Please tell me you sell the stl files somewhere!

I have unfortunately not been able to post anything for such a long time, but only because literately any time I have to spare has been spent on the project, which is proceeding really well. Only having some time to pause because everything is printed, everything is sanded, and everything is sprayed with filler to even things out, and I'm just waiting for things to dry, so I can do the last and final pass of spraying and sanding before proceeding to paint.

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The gardbrace and cloak holder were finished a long time ago, unceremoniously some time in august. Since then basically the vast majority of 10 weeks were spent doing the legs. Create a cast of my thigh and then photo scanned that, which was a great success, and nailed it almost immediately. Did a scan of my leg wearing the boots I intend to have under the armor, which helped a lot. The leg consist of 16 parts, so took some time to model. But the biggest challenge was the knees, which too so many prints, with only minor changes to get it to move correctly. Just 5 mm here or there where the holes are located makes a huge difference.
And since the entire leg, from the top the thigh, to the tip of the toe's are connected, and everything wraps around the leg, is rigid and almost skin tight, it takes a lot of precision to make it mobile. But I'm proud to say that with all the armor I can still both squat, and bend forward and touch my toes without any problems.
Before I was most happy with the helmet, but now I think the legs are the coolest part of the armor.

Prototypes for feet, greaves and knee.

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On second place for satisfaction are the hands. Which did not take a lot of time, but did take a fair amount of prints. Had all the pieces finished, and just needed to adapt them to fit on the hand with a leather glove on. Many short prints, and some trial and error and they were solved.

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Also spent some time making the cloak, which i think will turn out great. Had a detour where I needed more fabric of what I had bought, but the precious store was out, and I reverse google searched the image of the fabric and found ONE store. In the Netherlands, which only shipped to there, as well as Belgium and Germany. Luckily I had a Dutch friend, who was in country at the time, and could buy it and bring it back. Great luck.

All the sanding has left my fingers very sore, and if you ever have a project like this, i deeply recommend trying to sand as you go, so you don't have to do it all at once.

Have also done a lot of leather craft, for the 30 or so straps needed to hold the armor together,.

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With 6 days to go, time is running out fast, but there is a detailed plan, with every step left and estimates, hope things go well and finish things in time for next Friday.

 

[EnchantedCheese]

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Epilogue

Now that its all done with. Lets talk number.

TL.DR
* 650 hours working on the project.
* ~3800 hours of 3d printing, 1820 hours for one complete armor
* 30 kg of filament used in total, 12,5 for one full armor set.
* 310 prints (failures not included) for 159 different parts, 116 assembled parts
* 244 Rivets, 28 leather straps.
* Total weight, 16 kg.


So, how many hours did I spend working on it. I know almost to they day how many days was spent. Since i kept my chart. The only unknown is the days I spend making the helmet back in 2019, and the mace in 2020. For this year, assuming on weekends I worked only 15 minutes some days, on 2 of those days, half an hour on another, 1 hour on some and 3 hours on a few. Then 2 and 8 on weekends, I have 15 hours in a week where worked every day.

I Estimate that i spent somewhere between 600 - and 700 hours in total.

Off that time, 80% was spent just 3d modeling, printing prototype and adjusting. Spending about 100 hours doing sanding, spraying, weathering and assembly.

Total print time, including all the prototypes comes out to around 3800 hours.
And the exact time to print one armor is 1820 hours, if you do it with no failures. That's 75 days of round the long printing on one printers.

I've used 29630 grams of filament including all the prototypes. And one armor needs exactly 12363,8 grams. So that's about 30 spools on the project. and 13 for an armor.

There are 28 leather straps to hold it all together.
Boots, leather gloves.

244 Rivets, almost all of which are functional. Just few decorative rivets

Total weight of the armor, with leather straps, rivets and boots. comes out to 16 kg.

PS. I bought a Sauron Bobble-head 15 years ago. During the project I've noticed that its actually really really accurate. With amazing detail, and cramming in every major element. So to any fan, i must recommend it.

PPS. I know a lot of you are interested in the .stl files, which I have been contemplating during the entire project, and still don't know how I want to approach that. But, if I decide that I will share them, this will be the first place I will post about it. My expectation is that I likely will share them in some fashion in the fairly near future. There are many reasons, but I guess for now at least I just want to have my moment in the sun.

This is sick!!! Congrats on finishing, all that work looks like it paid off big time! This is THE BEST Sauron cosplay I've ever seen!
Any estimate for when those .stl files will be available? I'm eager to buy them and get started!

 

[greenmachines]

So, when you sell these files to someone and they just go and resell them on their own stl site or to an stl buyer, how do you get any money from that? Seems like a one time sale to me.

 

[greenmachines]

Excellent work by the way!!

 

[EnchantedCheese]

So, when you sell these files to someone and they just go and resell them on their own stl site or to an stl buyer, how do you get any money from that? Seems like a one time sale to me.

I think I saw somewhere that you can report it or something, at least that's what people on r/3dprinting have done with success.

 

[greenmachines]

I think I saw somewhere that you can report it or something, at least that's what people on r/3dprinting have done with success.

There is one in Spain that produces at least 15 different stolen stls from therpf and faces no punishment at all. It is why no one trusts the request for files anymore.

 

[Aerie]

Finally took some pictures yesterday. Here is the best one, nice and sharp.
I very much recommend looking at it at full resolution

 

[David3]

Effing outstanding!!!

 

[TymanRoach]

Oh my god, That might be the best thing I've ever seen!