McCool
New Member
Okay, some of you may have seen my previous contribution in the form of a .stl for the MKVII base shoulder. This is something else. This is what I hope will be an evolution in two major processes of armor manufacture. A handmade fiberglass helmet usually starts out as a pepakura that is then reinforced. While we have some fantastically talented members in 405th, the innately handmade process means that it is always going to be imperfect. A large part of this can be worked out with bondo, rondo, and many hours of painstaking detail work. If you're me, you get through all of that only to realize that it is heavily warped due to a missing strip of paper you didn't glue in right. Another disadvantage of this process is the products we use for finishing, like bondo for example, don't have the same material characteristics of the fiberglass nor the same look. What if you could create a armor piece with the fiberglass weave visible?
On the other hand, you have 3D printing. There is still a lot of post-processing involved but the details are built right into the printed part. The result is much more uniform since most of the forming is done by a computer. The big disadvantage here is the material choice and weight. You can't rely on PLA not to warp in your hot car. PETG is great but it's still heavy compared to fiberglass.
What if you could combine the accuracy of 3D printing with the material advantages of fiberglass?
Hopefully now I have your interest.
Now I can't take credit for the process, I think many people have had the idea. I've seen it implemented in other fandoms but I personally haven't seen it in Halo yet. What I've done:
Make 0cm offset of outer skin of .step file
Make copy of offset
Scale up the copy
Stitch them together
Split into halves
Add flanges
Export as .stl
Start to finish it can be done in 15 minutes, maybe a little longer for larger and more complex pieces.
As of right now, I'm waiting for the first mold to print. I'll update this thread as I make more progress.
I know there are a lot of talented modelers out there. I'd love to see this take off beyond just me. Maybe this could even become a new standard method that 405th caters to like foam, pep, and 'classic' 3D printing. If you have base files that you can make these tweaks to, I'd encourage you to try it out and perhaps we can start building out another type of digital asset repository.
On the other hand, you have 3D printing. There is still a lot of post-processing involved but the details are built right into the printed part. The result is much more uniform since most of the forming is done by a computer. The big disadvantage here is the material choice and weight. You can't rely on PLA not to warp in your hot car. PETG is great but it's still heavy compared to fiberglass.
What if you could combine the accuracy of 3D printing with the material advantages of fiberglass?
Hopefully now I have your interest.
Now I can't take credit for the process, I think many people have had the idea. I've seen it implemented in other fandoms but I personally haven't seen it in Halo yet. What I've done:
Make 0cm offset of outer skin of .step file
Make copy of offset
Scale up the copy
Stitch them together
Split into halves
Add flanges
Export as .stl
Start to finish it can be done in 15 minutes, maybe a little longer for larger and more complex pieces.
As of right now, I'm waiting for the first mold to print. I'll update this thread as I make more progress.
I know there are a lot of talented modelers out there. I'd love to see this take off beyond just me. Maybe this could even become a new standard method that 405th caters to like foam, pep, and 'classic' 3D printing. If you have base files that you can make these tweaks to, I'd encourage you to try it out and perhaps we can start building out another type of digital asset repository.