Continous Improvement

[Crusader1080]

Hello!

This will be the first of many posts on improving my Master Chief pepakura that I completed and worn for Comic Fiesta 2019 (Basically Malaysian comic con), after the event, I decided to repair and continuously improve based on the experiences before, during and after the con.

First all, the goals are:

1. Improve the strength of armor pieces so it won't get deformed during transit.
2. A method to secure and fasten the armor pieces around my body so it won't move around
3. Improve the mobility so I can make more action poses
4. Produce a in-game-accurate weapon
5. Increase the level of details and smooth out any hard edges from the pepakura construction.

I already tested out using wood putty on a few test pieces, details are here. Although wood putty is a bit fiddy to get on but once its cured and set, it can be worked like bondo or car filler putty.

As a preliminary stage, I already printed out armor pieces for chest, arm, legs and helmet for detailing purposes and pending the return of the box where I stored the pieces during the convention from a friend of mine. As it for now, I only have the helmet.

As for the weapon, I decided to head out and sourced a cheap but reliable 3D Printer from Creality and will due to arrive in a few weeks. The weapon I chosen is part of a set (halo-reach-unsc-ma37 icws-assault-rifle) and since the rifle would be too large, I decided to split it up into three parts and glue them together afterwards. Here are some screenshots of the pieces in the Microsoft 3D Viewer app.

That's it for today. I will update this thread once I got my 3D Printer.

 

[WolfsParadise5]

I actually wanted to 3d print one of these but eh I wonder if you would get caught by immigration if it were to be brought overseas

 

[Dirtdives2424]

I actually wanted to 3d print one of these but eh I wonder if you would get caught by immigration if it were to be brought overseas

You could always ask a Customs Agent. Immigration deals w/ the people, not their belongings......or just have it shipped from the company.

 

[Crusader1080]

I actually wanted to 3d print one of these but eh I wonder if you would get caught by immigration if it were to be brought overseas

That's the reason why I brought a 3D Printer and print it in my country instead of worrying about importing it.

 

[WolfsParadise5]

That's the reason why I brought a 3D Printer and print it in my country instead of worrying about importing it.

Ah yes i see , thanks

 

[WolfsParadise5]

You could always ask a Customs Agent. Immigration deals w/ the people, not their belongings......or just have it shipped from the company.

True that

 

[Crusader1080]

Update 1
14th January 2020

Hello guys! Its me again, just a quick update on the continuous improvement for my Master Chief cosplay for 2020. From my last post, I mentioned about getting a 3D Printer for the rifle and miscellaneous components, well, its here!

It costs $188 (RM 765.72) plus RM 84 ($20.62) customs and import duty and it is the Creality Ender 3. I finished setting it up on the 11th January after receiving it on the 6th and I made a test print yesterday and it turned out quite decent.

 

[Crusader1080]

As it turned out however, 3D Printing is not as straight forward as it sounds when comes to larger components, running my 3-piece rifle files through Cura slicing app for the printer resulting a print time of 1 day or longer and I can't run it without me monitoring the progress as from what I read from the forums and watching YouTube videos on the subject, it tends to catch fire and/or get screwed up prints.

Therefore, I made some modifications and decided to further split the model into 6 parts, each took more than 12 hours but still less than a day to print. I already saved the Gcode files to the SD card and will print the first part in the weekend.

Here's the slicing app in action:

 

[PlanetAlexander]

Commitment to a good cosplay - great to hear.
Good idea to split the rifle into parts, I've used my CR10S printer here and there over the past few months and even I get paranoid about it. Not too worried about power faults but I wouldn't leave the house with it running. Out of curiosity, what layer thickness are you using?

 

[Crusader1080]

Commitment to a good cosplay - great to hear.
Good idea to split the rifle into parts, I've used my CR10S printer here and there over the past few months and even I get paranoid about it. Not too worried about power faults but I wouldn't leave the house with it running. Out of curiosity, what layer thickness are you using?

I used Ultimaker Cura as a slicing software for my Ender 3 and here's my settings for the rifle print. I originally stick with the default settings and the first print took far too long. So I made some adjustments to cut the printing time down to 12 hours at most.

 

[Crusader1080]

New Update: 2/2/2020

Hello guys, sorry for not posting on this thread for a while since the previous post, I being busy with the 3D Printing of the Halo Reach armor over several weekends and Chinese New Year. However, I am happy to say that the rifle is successfully printed and assembled.

Post assembly, I might going to use a fine sandpaper to sand down the layers and hopefully to hide the seams where I split the build and adding a few details like sliver paint on the bolts and metal parts.

 

[Crusader1080]

Continued:

After the first part of six of the print, I decided to tweak the printing parameters to reduce the print time (the first part took well over 17 hours and I don't fond of letting the printer run without supervision). Hence I reduced the infill of the parts to cut down the print time down to 12 hours and I let it run during the Chinese New Year holiday break as I was at home most of the time during the print process.

For the last three parts however, are printed over the course of the weekends (yesterday and today) with each pieces printed in less than 10 hours using this following settings in the slicer.

I changed:

• Wall line count from 3 to 2
• The infill pattern to Cubic for increased strength
• The print speed of the infill from 50 mm/s to 100 mm/s and the print speed of the inner and outer walls from 25 mm/s to 50 mm/s

I was happy to see the print time was reduced so much from 12 hours to 7-9 hours per print and I am glad how well it turned out despite the changes.

 

[Crusader1080]

I also going to print out a USNC M6B PDWS Magnum pistol to go long with the rifle.

Here's the model on the Cura slicer and the estimated print time using the existing settings.

 

[Crusader1080]

A quick update: finished 3D Printing a new Helmet that won't hurt my ears and face when wearing it.