Jimbo said:
Sorry to hijack this thread a bit, but I finished my Guy Manuel helmet today. Its a pep/fiberglass/bondo build. Its no way near as good or accurate as DerKrakens but im quite happy with the outcome as its my first ever attempt at using pep, fiberglass and bondo. Heres a video:
DUDE! Very nice job! What are you using for the lighting effects? And where did you get the color gels? I'd love to know more about your build, especially the tint you used - the colors show so well through it!
Tool said:
I am Not going to let this topic just fade away It's too good. I guess Derkraken is busy with other propwork, So in the meantime I just give a quick bump for him and pm him letting him know we support him.
Thanks brother! Glad to know people are interested in this. I have been delinquent in posting updates, so hopefully this enormous one will suffice.
Sort version: Here's where I'm at. I'm not happy with it.
So heres what I did to get to that point:
I used a piece of the visor plastic that was trimmed from the helmet to make the wire "hair" piece for the back of the helmet. This is really just a test piece to make sure my idea worked. I used wire I had already around the house from my car projects, need to do some more research to figure out the correct colors. Apparently the most updated ones on Guy's helmet are red, white, and green... but I am dubious about that. I worry it will look too "christmas-y" I kind of like the gray I used, but we'll see.
The plating... well, the plating didn't go so well. Apparently the cosmichrome reacted with the primer I used and caused "clouding" in the final finish. After this, the company I sent them to decided to strip the helmets entirely back down to the resin themselves, and some detail was lost. In the end, they tried baking one helmet to rid the primer of any chemicals, but that only succeeded in melting it. The second one, pictured here, is also warped but not nearly as badly.
Because of that warping, the only visor that would fit was my thicker piece with the webbing. From about 10' away it looks okay, but there's a lot of orangepeel, scratching, and haze in the finish. I've pulled another helmet since then, and will do another one tonight. In the meantime, I'm sending these guys some test pulls of smaller molds to try out their finish on. A "learning experience" with freshly pulled and 2,000 grit sanded helmets was just stupid on my part.
On the plus side, they charged me nothing for these saying they weren't happy with the finish, and they don't charge people for inferior work. They even covered the COD charges from M&M because one of the helmets got destroyed. It sets me back time-wise, but at least not financially. Hopefully round #2 will go better.
On the up side of things, I got all my PCBs in and I'm about 90% done with soldering.
I need to get a few more resistors in before I can wrap up the "chin" boards, but outside of that they're done! Now I need to start making the wiring harness for the helmet.
Outside the visor:
Inside the visor:
The tint discolors the lights to a slight bluish tint. I think I'll have to go lighter on the tint in the final version to let more light out. Still, this is promising. The visor here was my first test piece and has the spray tint on VERY thick (probably about 6 coats)
I got a chance to wear the "dud" helmet at DragonCon this year, but didn't get to see many of the guys from the 405th. It was fairly well received, and actually not a bad piece to knock around at a con since I didn't have to worry about the finish.
Next up is some programming work and making the harness for the helmet. Fun times ahead!
