Slicing the Athlon Helmet

[Hackjale]

Hey guys,

I recently bought an Ender 3 and I've been looking toward the Halo 5 Athlon suit for the last year or so (I have the whole suit built out of raw foam, i just haven't had time to update my build thread yet ;D)

I need help trying to split the helmet for 3D print, as the helmet is too big for the Ender 3 dimensions and I'd like to Vaccum form the visor as it's a weird shape.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Hey guys,

I recently bought an Ender 3 and I've been looking toward the Halo 5 Athlon suit for the last year or so (I have the whole suit built out of raw foam, i just haven't had time to update my build thread yet ;D)

I need help trying to split the helmet for 3D print, as the helmet is too big for the Ender 3 dimensions and I'd like to Vaccum form the visor as it's a weird shape.

Meshmixer to the rescue!

You can edit your forms using Plane Cuts to divide up the helmet into more printer friendly chunks. For my CQB I split the helmet into a left and right hemisphere, front and back quadrants and then into eighths while dodging major detail pieces to minimize body work later on.

It's pretty easy to chop files up and then check for holes and test that they're manifold/watertight and if you get stuck there's loads of helpful videos on the topic.

Since I don't know exactly what your file you're using is and it could be a pepakura file or a game rip .obj you'll have to do some slightly wonky operations to make a bucket wearable depending on the source. If it's a pep it'll likely be a zero-thickness object with a wide opening at the bottom which is good for putting it on your head, terrible for printing so you have to thicken the form with an Extrude command in the normal direction with a negative value so that it thickens inward. If it's a game rip file it might include the head inside and be a solid bubble which you need to hollow with the Hollow command by setting your desired wall thickness and then cutting a shape out at the neck hole using another body of the desired shape and taking the Boolean Difference.

I did a slightly more in depth run through in my build log but if you hit any road blocks, give a shout.