To get anything that looks like a battle walker, you’re going to have to learn how to get crafty with some sort of custom plastic molding to create armor plates. The internal structure is going to be similar to the scout, but what will really make it a “battle walker” is the external aesthetic, which SES alone will not provide.
The Lynx209 the silver and black one is actually shorter than the Scout. The two images are a bit deceiving due to the angle the camera, and the leg positioning.
The only bit of advice I have to offer at this point would be to watch your stance width. It’s a biped. It will need to balance on one foot while it steps with the other. Unless you plan to get extrordinarily tricky and get into the physics of the way that humans walk (essentially a series of controlled and arrested falls), you’ll need to work around a “zero moment gait” design that keeps the bot’s CG within the footprint of the points in contact with the ground during the stepping sequence. In order to do this, you need to be able to swing the body around to keep it over the grounded foot, and in order to do that, you need to keep an eye on how far apart you place the legs. Too wide, and your bot will have to waddle when it walks. Much too wide, and it won’t be able to walk at all.
There are a number of good resources out there on the construction and use of vacu-forming machines, all there for the googling. I believe that Make Magazine had a how-to article in a recent issue, which stepped you through the process of both building the machine and using it.
what im not aware of is what kind of plastic is used in the vacuum forming (specific type?) since different plastics have different properties and melting temperatures. Also, you would have to build the vacu-box around the specs of the plastic you would use (say 1’ by 1’) so that you get good suction when the vac is on.
Here is a small and rather coarse box I use for pulling uncomplicated parts http://home.roadrunner.com/~eballou/images/IM000632.JPG
and here is a model I built for a friend that has the engine cowls, nose canopy, and gunner canopy parts I pulled on it. http://home.roadrunner.com/~eballou/he111/IM000654.jpg
The box is built from MDF and pegboard and I use my shopvac to draw vaccuum. The plastic sheet is clamped in the holder which is placed on a cookie sheet in the kitchen oven and heated until the center of the plastic has sagged about 2 inches, then the holder is removed and pulled over a plug on the box. I use a small heatgun to encourage any edges that cool before they have had time to fully draw. Plastic comes from a number of sources such as hobby stores or mcmaster even. thickness ranges from 0.010" to 0.080" or so. I have the parts set aside to make a box about 2x this size and it will use perf board with 0.042" holes on a 0.156" (I think) pitch. that will allow me to make considerably more detailed and larger parts next year for another project.