JFcustom's FOAM files

A theory I've been thinking about,but can't help wondering about the practicality of it:

chest armor pieces have a bottleneck at the waistline.In order to put the chest piece on,you'd have to get past the bottleneck,which means possibly cutting up/dividing your chest piece and attach magnets to reassemble,right?

Would it work to make a notch in both side-abs,attach a wide elastic (used for making clothes) and then plastic coat the whole chest piece to add strength?
That way you can get in and out of the chest piece (the side will stretch) without the need for installing magnets.
Would this work? Just wondering...
 
A theory I've been thinking about,but can't help wondering about the practicality of it:

chest armor pieces have a bottleneck at the waistline.In order to put the chest piece on,you'd have to get past the bottleneck,which means possibly cutting up/dividing your chest piece and attach magnets to reassemble,right?

Would it work to make a notch in both side-abs,attach a wide elastic (used for making clothes) and then plastic coat the whole chest piece to add strength?
That way you can get in and out of the chest piece (the side will stretch) without the need for installing magnets.
Would this work? Just wondering...

You could do that actually. If the bottleneck is slight enough that it only needs to open a little further to get into it.

Coating the foam to make it more rigid will essentially put you into a similar suit-assembly category as the fiberglassers. I'm not sure if elastic is used much for keeping parts together for their costuming, because it won't give you a really tight, secure match between two parts. unless it's used for parts that do slide around, like abs or shoulder bells.

I think if you can find a way to hide the separation in the suit design, where it looks natural or so it doesn't create an extreme gap where things should be fairly smooth and tight fitting, then the elastic would make putting on and taking off a lot easier and simpler.
 
The elastic (especially the wide stuff) works great, but the pieces have to kind of lock together (I use alignment pins) or the pieces will try to slide out of place while moving. You'd think pulling the elastic tighter would make a better fit with less movement, but the extra tension can then make the two pieces slide off and overlap unless you've got something to keep them aligned.
 
I think I may have used the wrong words for my question.
I don't intend to connect my armour pieces with elastic; I wish to use the elastic to fill up a notch/vertical cut of - lets say 4" - in both sides of the waist of a chest armour.The waist will then expand to front and back like a horizontal positioned rubber band, so I can get in and out,without the need to cut up the chest armour.That way I can (hopefully) replace the use of magnets,and leave my chest piece intact.
Ofcourse you'd have to sandwich the elastic and reinforce the attachment,but I wonder whether this idea is practical at all?

I hope I phrased it right this time.Thank you again for your help everybody !
 
The more rigid you make your armor, the less that only a notch (and not a complete cut to separate the pieces) is going to be willing to flex when you put it on. You mentioned 'plasticoating' earlier, if you mean using something like epoxy resin to harden (like xrobots tutorials show), that's going to take away a lot more of your flexibility.
 
I understand it now.Initially I thought the plastic coating would prevent the elastic from ripping the foam when trying the chest on.
I need the coating though because of the heavy backpack for this particular costume.I will use magnets for the abs instead.
Thank you for clarifying,Laellee and Collin.
 
So every now and then you might run into an awesome papercraft file...that is locked and made in a small scale...
Is there any way to alter the size of the pieces while respecting the author's work and leaving the file intact?
My thanks in advance for any help
 
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Just wondering: If you made a muscle suit out of EVA foam,how do you merge that with a morphsuit? Do you have to cut the morphsuit up in parts for each limb? And how do you get the glue in between?
 
HOLY COW.

I've been lurking around this site for a few months now; I hadn't even HEARD of Pepakura until I stumbled across the term whilst trawling through the 501st forums, desperately looking for ideas to help fix an awful Ebay recast Stormtrooper outfit I'd stupidly bought without research...Soon realising I could have built my own superior costume for a fraction of the price, I was instantly fascinated and inspired by the talent around here...and now FOAM FILES???

That actual SAVE TIME and are infinitely less messy and intimidating than 1,000 pieces of cardboard/fibreglass/body filler/respiratory disease???

JF my man (is it Laellee now? I may just be confused, been staring at these pages for weeks!), I just need to add to the constant and richly deserved thanks around here; you have absolutely compounded the theory that this is my sole new hobby, at the expense of all other infinitely less interesting ones, and I can't wait to get going!

...So just to start off on completely the wrong foot and have you hate me IMMEDIATELY...is there any chance you could foam-friendly up the Rocketeer Jetpack?

I've already begun work on the helmet in foam, and need to be fully geared up by Halloween! The thought of building the pack from card/resin/body filler in that time is barely an option right now!!

Thanks again either way, because you, sir, are THE MAN.

(p.s. I have the PDO for it if you don't!)
 
Is there a foam template for the Shoretrooper helmet yet? Or even just the pdo pepakura file? I've started the helmet, I just need some scale references really. Thank you in advance.
 
I just realized that I never posted a picture of the Space Marine armor that I made using JF's files. Thank you JFCustoms for the work you put into these files.

18065354026_ba4d54c636_b.jpg
Space Marine Costume_3 by Matthew Crotts, on Flickr
 
So I'm working on a Halloween costume for my son. (EVA Foam armor and helmet)
Problem is, the closest Home Depot is about 4,000 from me.

I need contact cement, but can't find any.
So... I have a couple options
- Rubber Cement... like you use in grade school art class. WIll that work in place of contact cement or is it too gummy and and strong enough?

- Sprayway 66 Spray Adhesive. I only have about 2/3 of a can. It seems to work pretty well, but the over-spray means a lot of waste.
- Liquid Nails Professional Projects and Construction Adhesive. This still is more for laying floor tiles and that sort of thing based on the consistency. Not sure its suitable for foam but I have a couple pieces I'm trying it out on to see. So far the problem is it doesn't seem to get tacky as fast enough to do curved pieces that need to bond almost immediately.
- SuperGlue. I'm pretty sure this won't work since it's very brittle and would probably soak into the foam.
- Hot glue. Not sure about the strength of it and it cools almost too fast.

Anyone have some suggestions?
 
So I'm working on a Halloween costume for my son. (EVA Foam armor and helmet)
Problem is, the closest Home Depot is about 4,000 from me.

I need contact cement, but can't find any.
So... I have a couple options
- Rubber Cement... like you use in grade school art class. WIll that work in place of contact cement or is it too gummy and and strong enough?

- Sprayway 66 Spray Adhesive. I only have about 2/3 of a can. It seems to work pretty well, but the over-spray means a lot of waste.
- Liquid Nails Professional Projects and Construction Adhesive. This still is more for laying floor tiles and that sort of thing based on the consistency. Not sure its suitable for foam but I have a couple pieces I'm trying it out on to see. So far the problem is it doesn't seem to get tacky as fast enough to do curved pieces that need to bond almost immediately.
- SuperGlue. I'm pretty sure this won't work since it's very brittle and would probably soak into the foam.
- Hot glue. Not sure about the strength of it and it cools almost too fast.

Anyone have some suggestions?
Contact cement and hot glue are the most popular adhesive for eva foam

Envoyé de mon SM-G530W en utilisant Tapatalk
 
So I'm working on a Halloween costume for my son. (EVA Foam armor and helmet)
Problem is, the closest Home Depot is about 4,000 from me.

I need contact cement, but can't find any.
So... I have a couple options
- Rubber Cement... like you use in grade school art class. WIll that work in place of contact cement or is it too gummy and and strong enough?

- Sprayway 66 Spray Adhesive. I only have about 2/3 of a can. It seems to work pretty well, but the over-spray means a lot of waste.
- Liquid Nails Professional Projects and Construction Adhesive. This still is more for laying floor tiles and that sort of thing based on the consistency. Not sure its suitable for foam but I have a couple pieces I'm trying it out on to see. So far the problem is it doesn't seem to get tacky as fast enough to do curved pieces that need to bond almost immediately.
- SuperGlue. I'm pretty sure this won't work since it's very brittle and would probably soak into the foam.
- Hot glue. Not sure about the strength of it and it cools almost too fast.

Anyone have some suggestions?


Hot glue will definitely work, that's all I used for several years. If you have the availability, you want either a high-temp glue gun or a variable-temp glue gun. It doesn't have to be industrial-grade or anything, a craft gun will work, but one with a high-temp setting gets you more time to work the seams and a better bond overall. High-temp guns tend to string (those spiderwebs that come off the tip) a lot less as well.

If you do go this route, you do have to be patient; the slower you go, the cleaner your seams can be. I apply hot glue down the cut end of one piece (only about 6-8 inches at a time), join the pieces together, and then wait a good 30 seconds while holding the joint. Seems like a long time, but the glue does take a while to cool and if you release early it weakens the bond. There may be better alternatives for you that someone can suggest, but I can speak from personal experience (30+ full foam armors) that this will get the job done. Good luck!
 
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