New Build [Halo 4 Recon Helmet]

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Whaledalt

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Hi all,
It has been a while (about three years) since my last post.
This summer a couple of friends and I wanted a few projects to work on. We're all Halo fans and also studying engineering and computer science so we decided to make a Halo helmet loaded with a series of cool electronic components (customizable LED visor, fans, voice modulator, and possibly a HUD). The helmet will be 3D printed (big thanks to mmjames on Thingiverse for the model) in PLA plastic on a Robo 3D R1. So far we've been devising some ideas for the electronics integration and I have been working on refining the model and preparing it for printing. Originally, the file for the helmet seemed a bit too short compared to a game rendering of the helmet so I decided to make it taller. After this the helmet was scaled around a digital model of a head scaled to match the 3 axis dimensions of my head taking into account padding on the top of the helmet and electronics in both the jaw area and chin cavity. There are images below of both my version and the original dimensioned version compared side-by-side with the reference photo at roughly the same angle. The plan for finishing will be to prepare the model the same way it would be prepped to be molded and cast (filler primer, glazing putty, wood filler etc.) however we will simply paint over the surface once this is completed due to the cost restrictions of making a mold (We're all high school students so our budget isn't all that large). We should start printing here in the next couple of days so I'll update this thread throughout the summer as progress is made.
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Images:

Original helmet model:
comparison.png

Revised, taller, helmet model:
comparisonmodified.png

And just for fun here are a couple of ray-traced renderings:

Front view:
madsen_helmet2.png

Front-Right view:
madsen_helmet.png
 
Update 1: I just finished slicing the model and generating the G-Code for the first section. The helmet will be printed in 3 sections. Would anyone with more experience than myself be able to tell me if this print would actually work or not? I was unable to get Microsoft's 3-d print checker to work, I assume due to the size of the model. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! Halo 4 Recon Helmet Part 1 of 3 by shickma0
 
Heya Whaledalt! Your helmet is going to be sweet!

I'm currently working on installing a lot of the same tech into my helmet, and am in the process of writing a raspberry pi app to control everything. I'd love to collaborate with you, and if you're interested you can follow my progress here Ranger's HUD Progress
Also, super cool that you guys are going into CS/Engineering. I'm a Software Engineer finishing my last year of college next year, and currently work at a research group with government super computers and what-not, so I think it's great to see more CS/CE/SE representation here!
 
Update 1: I just finished slicing the model and generating the G-Code for the first section. The helmet will be printed in 3 sections. Would anyone with more experience than myself be able to tell me if this print would actually work or not? I was unable to get Microsoft's 3-d print checker to work, I assume due to the size of the model. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! Halo 4 Recon Helmet Part 1 of 3 by shickma0
Microsoft Azure has a pretty good repair tool but it outputs .3mf files that aren't accepted by all slicers unfortunately. Give the Trinckle Repair Tool a try. It's less black box style since it shows what is being repaired, has a list of repairs and outputs as an .stl which is a bit more universal.

Part 1 of 3 looks like it should be easily printable, just remember to keep things slow and steady!
 
Hello again,
Thank you for all of your replies, I used the MakePrintable analysis as suggested and have found that there are no issues with the geometry which is good. The only issue that I'm unsure how to deal with at the moment is that the helmet has a wall thickness of 1.38mm which is obviously too thin. I have tried thickening it in both Blender and MakePrintable however, both of the thickening tools in these programs thickens the object in both directions. In order to preserve the detail of the helmet, I need to thicken the helmet only inwards, towards the center, and leave the outside alone. Does anyone have any ideas of how to do this? Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you!
 
Hello again,
Thank you for all of your replies, I used the MakePrintable analysis as suggested and have found that there are no issues with the geometry which is good. The only issue that I'm unsure how to deal with at the moment is that the helmet has a wall thickness of 1.38mm which is obviously too thin. I have tried thickening it in both Blender and MakePrintable however, both of the thickening tools in these programs thickens the object in both directions. In order to preserve the detail of the helmet, I need to thicken the helmet only inwards, towards the center, and leave the outside alone. Does anyone have any ideas of how to do this? Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you!
I haven't messed with that kind of stuff for a while, but have you tried using Blender to "extrude" the inside surface futher inside? Extrusion is like a 1-sided 'thickening'. I'm not sure that'll let you do the whole thing in one go, may have to do each surface individually or in groups.
 
I haven't messed with that kind of stuff for a while, but have you tried using Blender to "extrude" the inside surface futher inside? Extrusion is like a 1-sided 'thickening'. I'm not sure that'll let you do the whole thing in one go, may have to do each surface individually or in groups.
Thanks for the reply. I have tried this, however, I would as you mentioned have to do each surface individually which is pretty impractical as there are something like 19,000 interior faces. Im trying to find if there is another tool in blender that would work for this purpose. If I find a solution ill update the thread.
 
The Blender Solidify modifier may be your best bet here Whaledalt. You can choose your offset, just make sure that your units are correct, I've definitely had head scratching situations when accidentally in µm instead of mm by accident.
 
The Blender Solidify modifier may be your best bet here Whaledalt. You can choose your offset, just make sure that your units are correct, I've definitely had head scratching situations when accidentally in µm instead of mm by accident.
Thank for the suggestion. I've just tried this and the main issue I'm having is that the offset acts in both directions so it is also thickening the outside of the model which is not desired. I can't select just the inside faces and extrude the vertex normals either for the same reason. I'm unsure of what to do here, I'm considering paying someone to do it for me on a modeling forum or purchasing a casting of the helmet as my main interest is in the finishing process and installation of hardware and I don't have enough 3D modeling experience to fix these issues myself. I will say that I have learned a great deal about 3D models and preparing them for printing in the past couple of weeks which is good information to have.
 
I'll just be over here making my popcorn waiting for the next post. Looking good!
 
That's some awesome pep work! Looking forward to seeing that recon helmet.

To me, it looks like the chest needs to be scaled down a little bit. Maybe take another picture at a different angle just in case.
 
That's some awesome pep work! Looking forward to seeing that recon helmet.

To me, it looks like the chest needs to be scaled down a little bit. Maybe take another picture at a different angle just in case.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s scaled slightly large intentionally so that it looks proportionate with the helmet and an undersuit but I’m not sure if I made it *too* large.
3CF96329-9E6B-428F-A1A7-5A49C686ADF2.jpeg
 
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