The Great Experiment-Or, How To Build Armor Without Really Trying...(Much)

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hobbitdude13

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Good Afternoon or Morning or Night 405th.

I have stepped away from armor building for a while now, (reason below).

11209671_847039472016688_3828901219760429118_n.jpg

But now that I have completed that project, I turned my attention back to building Halo armor. I have next to no skill pepping and bondoing (despite many attempts).
I found foam also a little too complex for my hand-eye coordination. I admire all of you who are capable of working in those materials and you'll never hear me knock anybody who does.

So, what to do?

My answer: 3D printing.

Now I know its maybe not a good idea, but I will attempt an entire suit of MKVI Halo armor (abandoning my previous build, obviously) using my newly-purchased 3D printer.

I at this point would now like to thank KingRahl for his EXCELLENT Youtube tutorials on 3D modeling for 3d printing, FlyingSquirrel, Robogenesis, and anyone who has modeled/unfolded for the 405th Archive.
I do NOT take credit for the pep models I started with, and won't try and do so.

If anyone wants a step-by-step for I arrived at these models, (I altered KingRahls method slightly), I will gladly write a short tutorial.

Here are some screencaps of my models so far:

MKVIChest.png

Chest piece. Most definitely the largest piece and the one that will require the most "chunking" into my build volume. (8" by 8" by 8")

MKVIBoot.png

The boot required the least amount of alteration, thankfully.

MKVIForearm.png

The forearm has some odd curves to it and I will tinker with it some more before printing.

MKVIHAndplatebetter.png

I'm rather proud of how the circular indents turned out.

MKVIShin.png

Now the shin looks stretched in the z axis, that is intentional. Being 6' 2", I found that when scaling the MKVI armor for myself, it made the shins almost comically wide.
So I stretched it ever so much so that it won't look like clown pants.

MKVIShoulder.png

The shoulder also required little alteration, it's mostly the bicep plate that needed the most done to it.

MKVIHelmet.png

The helmet is what I started with first, and took the longest to finish. I included two views so that the back is shown.
I like the look I arrived at, and comparing to ref pictures I came rather close. I did choose to not model the visor, and it didn't adversely affect the first print like I dreaded it would.

11739483_860677000652935_1310014815_n.jpg

It took 3 tries to get started, but I had to be sure that the bed leveling was perfect, I had some issues where the nozzle was touching the glass.
I set it to the thinnest layering my printer can do (.01mm), and while visible the layering is BARELY detectable to touch. It took 35 hours, but patience is key with this method.
Once I can afford more filament, I'll keep plugging along.

Thanks for looking!
 
iam more then half done with a full H4 armor( King rahl file) . its SO slow .
But like you allready had a printer for my biz and Ive got NO pep skills.

what printer did you get?
Peter
 
iam more then half done with a full H4 armor( King rahl file) . its SO slow .
But like you allready had a printer for my biz and Ive got NO pep skills.

what printer did you get?
Peter

I actually purchased the printer specifically for this project, after saving for months. I have a what could be considered a "low end" or "cheap ass" printer,
I have the Davinci 1.0. I am actually happy with it. The slicing software is basic, but I can make whatever changes I want in Blender than re-export. It's worked so far anyway.
 
Sweet !
I never knew of the Davinci! under 500 bucks. I may pick one up as bestbuy has them .... I kinda want a spare to my flashforge and at under 500 its less of a shock then another 1250 for mine ,,
Granted its all cheap on the whole ;)
Up the street from me is 3D systems .
They make stuff that is in the 500 Grand range that can do a entire chest armor in one go.
* drools*

Peter
 
Sweet !
I never knew of the Davinci! under 500 bucks. I may pick one up as bestbuy has them .... I kinda want a spare to my flashforge and at under 500 its less of a shock then another 1250 for mine ,,
Granted its all cheap on the whole ;)
Up the street from me is 3D systems .
They make stuff that is in the 500 Grand range that can do a entire chest armor in one go.
* drools*

Peter

Yeah I'm of limited means so this was the way to go for me.

I am rather proud; modeled the cheek detail from scratch on my own.

20150711_090519.jpeg

It sagged during printing unfortunately (forgot to add supports, it was 2 AM afterall).

20150711_090534.jpeg

But the concept is sound, I'll have to reprint it later today if I don't run out of filament.
 
Hey! Any updates/progress on this build lately? It looks great so far, keep up the good work! I'm very curious to see how it turns out
 
Was wondering if any one was familar with DazStudio? I've just loaded the halo5 undersuit obj. file. I got the diffuse map, and the normal map applied, but I'm not sure where to apply the control map. Is there another name for a control map?

SORRY, NOT SURE HOW I MANAGED TO POST THIS QUESTION HERE. PLEASE DISREGARD THIS POST.
 
I took a break to print some swords, but I'm back to this project now, and will probably be switching from Halo 3 to 4,
because my 3 files have caused WAY too many issues to get into. I'll have some progress pics up in a few days I promise you guys that.
 
12200632_908700615850573_1299847181_n.jpg

Ok so, Here is progress on the helmet, finally. I had to re-wire the x-axis motor on my printer to fix an ongoing stepping issue (stepping is where the motor will not carry out a move command, and instead sit and clack, then think its moved. It's a bad thing), but now I'm printing flawlessly. My spool is about to run out so once I get paid again I can order some more. Red filament smells the least, plus it'll be primed over/glaze puttied/sanded a whole bunch anyway before painting. I'm leaning towards a green/brown tigerstripe pattern to somewhat emulate the modern-day Marine green cammies, but that's also months away before a final color has to be chosen. I appreciate the support, and look forward to more progress!
 
So should have the helmet done this weekend-my filament arrived 2 days early!

But I was considering how best to do padding for the inside this go-round, and rather than fashion padding on my own,
I decided to raid Goodwill and found one of these:

pr-hd-820_black.jpg

I had to cut it down a lot to get it to fit, but my end result was thus:

helmet padding-preliminary.jpg

I did have to add a thinner square of black foam at the back, to minimize wiggle and improve comfort.
I added a peg in the top of the helmet for the hole in the padding to fit onto, to keep everything aligned.
I should have the last 2 pieces printed by tomorrow night and the helmet will be ready for priming/filling of seams.
 
THAT is brilliant !!

heck it has a chin strap too!

Ironically I had to cut off the chin strap part to get it to fit. It's actually so snug once it's glued
in I may not even bother with a chin buckle, since it's already somewhat a squeeze to get my dome into it already!
 
So for the shoulders, I don't want to lock myself into 1 design.
I'll have the MC shoulders as the default of course, but I'm going to make them able to be swapped out.

Shoulderconcept.png

This way I can print a helmet variety, and various shoulders and change them as the mood strikes me.
 
I've got the helmet primed, puttied, sanded, and a black base coat put on. I'd post a pic but it's outside drying and giving off some serious fumes. I did black first, then I'll mask off what I want to stay black when I get ready to do the color coat. Since I have yet to make a final decision on a color coat, it'll be a while before that step.

I did finish printing the wrist half of the left forearm:

12235381_910649038989064_2145849418_o.jpg
 
So, this happened:

12228029_910980152289286_2073655132_o.jpg

Which makes about 8 hours of printing and 40 or meters of filament down the drain.
This is the downside to 3D printing, is sometimes prints can fail for absolutely no reason.
It is absolutely not a "magic wand" for making armor.

But I did get the helmet dried out overnight with the primer and black base coat:

12235452_910978215622813_823034748_o.jpg

The light details and back fan-looking thing will remain black along with the masked-off areas once I decide on a color for the suit.
 
So, this happened:

View attachment 20070

Which makes about 8 hours of printing and 40 or meters of filament down the drain.
This is the downside to 3D printing, is sometimes prints can fail for absolutely no reason.
It is absolutely not a "magic wand" for making armor.

Owtch! Thats never fun.......... half the battle is finding out why things fail.
 
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