Iron Man Helmet and Armor 3D Print Plus

Well here goes..

The first part of the helmet printed on a Dimension sst 1200es printer. It's made of ABS plus. Pretty sturdy.. and pretty heavy too! We're going to use this to make a few molds and go from there. We'll post pics as we go!

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That looks fantastic. :thumbsup

TMP is going to have an absolute fit when he sees this. :lol

Wow!

I can't wait to see how this turns out.

damn I want one of those printers

Can't wait to see more on this.......

I was wondering when someone was going to use a 3D printer to make armor! I first saw one of these 3D printers on a Jay Lenos Garage video and though "Wow this would way simplify the armor making process!" But the over $30,000 price tag... yikes!
Do you have the 3D scanner to go with it? Or just the 3D program.

Wow, awesome! It´s still a hefty price tag for one helmet I guess. I once estimated a similar project to come out at around 1500 - 2000 Euros.

Finhead said:

That looks fantastic. :thumbsup

TMP is going to have an absolute fit when he sees this. :lol

Click to expand...

Uh oh :angel

Agreed, looks spectacular!

Thomas

verra nice!

i was wondering when i'd see that file 3d printed or cnc'd! How detailed does a file have to be for either of those two methods to work?

Detail for rapid prototyping can be quite small.
But depending on the machine, the results can come out pretty grainy.

Never used it for props, but did do some 3D models (miniatures) for an agency once.
Very fun to see virtual creations come to life. Though the pricetag on even the smallest of objects (though the price is slowly coming down) nearly gave me heart attack.

The price (and run of casts to be sold) would have to be quite substantial to warrant the cost involved in creating the initial sculpt/copy.

Excellent result!
We're looking at the future of sculpting right there.

Lol.. well it takes a lot more talent to do what TMP does, that's for sure! I've learned a lot from TMP's threads and hope I can at least come close to that level in my armor. Thanks though!

So I work for a university that got a great deal on the abs plus and basically told me to go to town and really get to know the process. On top of that, I actually got a case of the abs for free! Been saving it just for this! And now that summer break is here, my brother and I are basically spending all our time in the lab! They've actually ok'd a grant for us to start building two of our own printers, since we'd like to experiment with different materials and that would void our warranty. Which would NOT be good on a $30,000 printer! Though the price of the newest machine is down to $15,000. Pocket change! Lol! The program I'm in is a Engineering and Design program that focusses heavily on digital and rapid prototyping. I graduate this summer and start teaching officially in the fall (actually I'm already teaching the CAD/Inventor and Rapid Prototyping classes as a TA). Of course you know what that means.... MORE FREE EXPERIMENTAL TIME ON THE EQUIPMENT!! Best part about this job!


So with a lot of free time on the equipment, and access to all the tools and software, and this amazing community, we're gonna try and get this armor built. Have to tell ya though, it takes forever to print on one these things. I mean sure, it cuts the time waaaay down from traditional methods, but it's not as fast as you might think. The lower faceplate took 15 hours to build. The major portion of the rear of the helmet is going to take 58 hours! But once you start the print, you can walk away and start building something else, so that's cool.

that has to be the COOLEST class in the world!!!!:love i'm just gettin back into school at 24 and taking CAD.... hope i get to do something like this!!

That is sweet and most clean.
We got a company nearby thsatdoes 3D printing. looking really sharp.
We are in fact looking into investing in a machine like this our self. It has great benefits.

Looking forward ot seeing your progress on this.

I am glad I ran across this post! I have been in the planning phase of my complete Iron Man build here for about two weeks. I went through many different options in fabrication, and initially wanted to try 16g sheets of Aluminum T6 (6061) but dropped that idea after realizing that the helmet alone would have around 80 different weld points.

After reading about the 2nd movie using 3D print to create the new suit, I began digging into the possibilities. I have already begun designing my pieces in 3DS Max, and got the helmet complete aside from the moving parts. Those will be added in AutoCad Inventor soon. I found many different 3D print shops that have a quick online quote system. You just upload your 3D model file, and you get an immediate estimate on cost.

I got 8-9 different estimates using my helmet design, and they were all over the place. The cheapest was $1,200 and the highest was over $3,000 on ShapeWays.com You can actually view my estimate (and order if your loaded) right here on their site ;-)

http://www.shapeways.com/model/118692/test.html&h=4c3ed
http://www.shapeways.com/model/118690/test.html

And I stuck a recording of my helmet rendering on Facebook that you can view here:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=1182930432488&ref=mf

So, like so many times before, my project has broken into many new projects. I found a free source community that has created blu-prints for building your own 3D printers at home, and have released all of the software, and guidlines you need to get one working for right around $500. Now, these aren't as high a resolution as your $30,000 printers, so you still spend allot of time sanding, smoothing, and dremmilling out pre-defined holes etc. But, it looks like it will get the job done.

Here is the main page of their development community:
http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

These have a limitation of around a 9" sq print area, so in taking on this new 3d printer project, I have decided to attempt the completion of a concept printer a gent designed in Germany. We have been going over the details this week, of what it will take to get built and running.

This printer has a 1mx1mx1m build area, so I will not need to break my large pieces like the chest into multiple sections. I have also found some higher grade extruders that give better resolution, and faster speeds that I plan on building into this new model.

Here is the page for his project:
http://lebigrep.org/

If only I had the skills of Mr TMP here, it wouldn't take this much work to build. But, the thought of having a large scale working 3D printer sitting in my office, has me extremely excited!!!

For 3D model reproduction, note that all companies charge by object volume.
Making objects thinner (as they will be recast most likely anyways) and not making them a solid inch thick, but only giving it thick edges, will reduce the cost by a LARGE amount, as you can shed half to three quarter of the model volume by making all objects with a reduced thickness in certain places.

mccordia said:

For 3D model reproduction, note that all companies charge by object volume.
Making objects thinner (as they will be recast most likely anyways) and not making them a solid inch thick, but only giving it thick edges, will reduce the cost by a LARGE amount, as you can shed half to three quarter of the model volume by making all objects with a reduced thickness in certain places.

Click to expand...

Very good point mccordia, I spoke with a couple of these companies about my options to reduce cost on them, and that's what they said as well. Unfortunately, it would still leave my helmet around $500 or so for print, which means I would still have a sky rocket cost in total completion of the suit.

As long as this RepRap system can handle the project, my costs will only be $600 - $700 for the system, and then estimating around $200 or so in total cost of the raw plastic materials.

I will likely be casting my finished pieces to save time on replication afterwards, but it will be really nice to be able to reproduce any 3D model I wish at any time for minimal costs. Lets hope this works!

I'll be sure to update this forum along with my others during the project of building the RepRap system, and my attempts of building the suit parts from them.

:cool Wish me luck!

No updates !! :unsure