Stormtrooper Armor Lineage Chart

[OldKen]

ive been in the presence of a real ANH bucket...

but to see a full ANH screen used suit. :confused

i would crap myself.


and i want to make it very CLEAR that i NEVER felt or said AA didnt have ANY of the molds... just that he surely is lying somewhere... maybe they were dropped and broken, hell mybe even after the site was up...

i dont know...

but what i do know is that Gino has the best fan made copy of the real deal,

Paul has the best fan sculpted from scratch stuff.

and AP has the best deal on the market if you can let go of the 100% perfect stuff...

and ill go as far to say that the AP buckets look better than AAs

so regaurdless of who did what when why and how often...

thats my chart right there.



for the price, AP is the way to go.

money not an object and someone is sellin from there collection... Ginos stuff is the way to go.

and pauls made from scratch suits aint to shabby.

 

[Chris Martin]

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Anyone that has vacuum formed will atest to the fact that pulling a complex shape like the trooper face plate will stress the mold to no end causing it to fail, unless it's made of metal...
[/b]

Ultimately true but nowadays there are excellent epoxy based resins, often metal filled with steel particles, that allow you to cast vacform moulds. These are VERY resilient. Even humble polyester car body filler is quite good although not as good as the special resins. Standard polyurethane casting resin mixed with inert metal fillers is excellent and long lived. It depends on the shape of the item being formed but a Trooper helmet presents an easy pull anyway. The disadvantage of using resin (I'm talking about male moulds particularly here) is that you often need to drill small evacuation holes to let trapped air out of fine sunken detail because the plastic can make a very good seal against the resin at the outer edges of the piece. This doesn't tend to happen with more traditional wood moulds.

It would be no trouble at all to pour resin into an existing helmet and then make vacforms from the cast that comes out. The resulting vac forms would be near indistinguishable. Urethane resin makes this very easy. I have moulds made from plain urethane resin (no metal) that are still in use three years after they were made with no discernible wear to them.

You can also use plaster but this tends to crack and break after a while.

The addition of the metal filler helps the mould to retain heat which stops the plastic sheet freezing too soon. Ideally you need to preheat the mould before you start. However this is only really an issue when mass producing hundreds at a time on an automatic machine that you just press the button and walk away from. It's not necessary at all on a manual machine. Besides, the cost of the plastic is absolutely miniscule so you can afford to waste a few early ones. An 18" square of 1mm styrene costs about 50p. ABS is a tad more expensive and needs to be fresh (hygroscopic - the nerdy can google that for an explanation) but it is tougher than styrene making for a more robust product for the same thickness of material.

 

[rigormortis]

<div class='quotetop'>(Jumpin Jax @ Oct 2 2006, 10:14 PM) [snapback]1330706[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>(rigormortis @ Jul 6 2006, 01:03 PM) [snapback]1275372[/snapback]

While I openly welcome TE's inputs, he's banned himself here, so unless Matt is able to contact me (I doubt he's even interested anymore anyways), I have to go by what he's previously said here and openly said on other boards and contrast it with what is actually known to be true to the best of my research.

[/b]

That's grattitude.......considering that the lineage chart was his idea, began on the MEPD board.
jj
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If Matt was ever working a suit lineage chart, he never shared it - although he did share some argumentative, sometimes true/sometimes not history. But that's not a lineage chart at all. Unlike me - I publically publish as I go. No more secrets.

If I owe anyone a debt of gratitude, it's Jez. I'm ripping his excellent idea off from his excellent Helmets of Star Wars site, except I'm doing suits, not helmets. So nice try.

Look forward to an update later this week.

 

[craigjohn]

I'm sure its just a matter of time before a new pull of another ANH trooper helmet shows up. I've thought that for a long time.
I bet around 70 to 80% of all the original helmets made are still out there.

Keith.

And voila! Keith was right.

I bumped into this buried thread doing a search for a particular Stormtrooper helmet.

10 years later, I believe we can add a few more direct lineage makers to the list.