3D Printed Samus Varia Suit - FINISHED! (Pics on pg.14)

Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

great work on th' helmet and good job on th' modelin' for printin' very nice will be watchin' this.:popcorn
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Looking exceptional!

I have a CNC so am interested in 3D as well...have Blender but have yet to really do more than open it up...so far do most 3D prep in Aspire 4.0.

Rob

Sent from [location encrypted]...somewhere on the Tharkside of Barsoom ;)
 
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Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Do you think that all of the pieces will match your proportions or will some have to be scaled independently of the reference model? (If they even conform to human proportions... could never tell with the Varia Suit clavicle length.) Edit: Never mind! Started reading about the process on your blog and got the answers.

Man... How cool would it be to have a 3d printed arm cannon that could mechanically shift between the different beams? I hope this project continues into the Echoes suits. If you're ever in the NJ/Philly area after you finish, feel free to contact me about meeting up for a photoshoot with the Super Metroid costumes. :)
 
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Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

ChozoBoy said:
Man... How cool would it be to have a 3d printed arm cannon that could mechanically shift between the different beams? I hope this project continues into the Echoes suits.
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I was actually thinking that my next project would be a new arm cannon that does exactly that - servos to open and close the different parts of the cannon, changing light colors, etc.

Also, before I started this project I wanted to build the arm cannon so it could fire those yellow nerf balls (which for some reason aren't really made anymore - found some green ones though) and the orange nerf missiles too. :lol I decided not to do it for a few reasons: projectiles are generally frowned upon by conventions, it makes the costume less serious, and it'd be way more work. Maybe I'll do it some day.

ChozoBoy said:
If you're ever in the NJ/Philly area after you finish, feel free to contact me about meeting up for a photoshoot with the Super Metroid costumes. :)
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Will do!
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Very ambitious start but it's looks great. I want to have a Master Chief, Ironman, and maybe a Batman full armor setup in the man cave (said while not even having a completed man cave. :cry ) but this is making me think a Samus armor piece would also look great.
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

How fantastic! I can't wait to see the completed suit being worn. You wanted advice on cosplay? Only two rules: 1. Don't do an embarrassing face plant in the middle of a crowd and destroy the costume. 2. Pee before putting it on.:lol Ha, ha! Seriously, I agree that you needn't sand the grooves. they look fine. However, should you or anyone else have this problem, a company called Industrial Polymer Corp. makes a thin epoxy material that is "self leveling". That means that it is just thick enough to fill pits, grooves, etc., but runny enough to be relatively smooth upon curing. Think of a gravel road with a puddle on top. You don't have rough water on top of the gravel, it is smooth and level. It is a quick way to eliminate hard to sand areas, Another is to use thinned modeling putty and a bunch of wood coffee stir sticks cut to the size of the grooves. Just trowel the putty into the groove, wipe the excess off the adjacent surfaces and it should look much smoother. I only offer this tip for a future similar project by yourself or another member. As I said, this situation doesn't bug me, I agree with your decision to leave the texture. Nice work.;)
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Ray48 said:
How fantastic! I can't wait to see the completed suit being worn. You wanted advice on cosplay? Only two rules: 1. Don't do an embarrassing face plant in the middle of a crowd and destroy the costume. 2. Pee before putting it on.:lol Ha, ha! Seriously, I agree that you needn't sand the grooves. they look fine. However, should you or anyone else have this problem, a company called Industrial Polymer Corp. makes a thin epoxy material that is "self leveling". That means that it is just thick enough to fill pits, grooves, etc., but runny enough to be relatively smooth upon curing. Think of a gravel road with a puddle on top. You don't have rough water on top of the gravel, it is smooth and level. It is a quick way to eliminate hard to sand areas, Another is to use thinned modeling putty and a bunch of wood coffee stir sticks cut to the size of the grooves. Just trowel the putty into the groove, wipe the excess off the adjacent surfaces and it should look much smoother. I only offer this tip for a future similar project by yourself or another member. As I said, this situation doesn't bug me, I agree with your decision to leave the texture. Nice work.;)
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:lol

Oooh, interesting. Thanks!
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

I forgot I had these pictures!

Back during the printing of the helmet the printer errored and left a deep triangular gap on each tube:
bvlmpqk.jpgFxj9Nr6.jpg

To fix this I filled in the holes with bondo and had to re-shape the tubes. It was such a pain, but now you can't even tell!

OZIyqCU.jpgu3LD4Nh.jpg

The error was caused by having faces inside the model (which from everything I've read is supposed to be safe to do), and the printer apparently tried to make the tube hollow in that one part. Won't be making that mistake again!
 
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Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

msleeper said:
What material does your Zcorp print in? I've printed on a Zcorp Z402 and the results were, uh, not nearly as attractive.
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Hi Msleeper -

I am Talaaya's friend, and work on the 3D printing side of the Metroid suit. If you can give me more specifics on what issues you had that were "not nearly as attractive" maybe I can give you some tips.
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Anvil said:
I am Talaaya's friend, and work on the 3D printing side of the Metroid suit. If you can give me more specifics on what issues you had that were "not nearly as attractive" maybe I can give you some tips.
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Well first off, I don't own the printer it was printed on, I found someone local to me and he offered to print it for me. Secondly, this printer prints in plaster, so right away I kind of expected the print fidelity to be a little lacking. And, lastly, the print I ran was apparently the first print of his that was almost the entire print bed size, which may or may not have contributed to the issues I had.

As far as the issues go, pictures are worth a thousand words.




The green print was the first attempt, there were some problems (issues caused by me, I didn't check for non-manifold vertices) and I didn't clean the binder material off. The red is the second print, it came out a lot cleaner but still had a very noticeable texture to it. I gave it several coats of high fill primer and that kind of worked, but wasn't totally 100%. I was planning on trying to use bondo or spot filler to smooth everything up, but given how soft the print was and how long it took the guy to turn around on prints, I just went with what I had and decided to clean up the problems in the resin copy of it.

I'm pretty sure the solution to the problem is to use a better print material. Considering it cost me barely anything to get printed I can't really complain.
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

msleeper said:
Well first off, I don't own the printer it was printed on, I found someone local to me and he offered to print it for me. Secondly, this printer prints in plaster, so right away I kind of expected the print fidelity to be a little lacking. And, lastly, the print I ran was apparently the first print of his that was almost the entire print bed size, which may or may not have contributed to the issues I had.
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Looking over everything, (I went back and checked out your thread) it seems to be the powder used to print, the infiltrant used to seal the object and possibly the way it was cleaned off after removing it from the printer.
 
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Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Anvil said:
A few questions, how big are these objects, and are they hollow? They look massive, and if they are big I would assume they did not print them out using a high performance composite powder since you said it was cheap to print. So my best guess is that it is the material they used to print. HPCP would print much cleaner lines, and it almost looks like the objects were not fully depowdered after they were removed from the machine?

Do you know what infiltrate he used after pulling the objects out of the machine? Were these pieces supposed to be a solid color or is the brown/grey color on the red object something you added after? And if you don't mind answering, how much did these cost to print?
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The model is 9.959" tall x 7.538" wide x 10.370" long. The green print was printed mostly hollow but it fell apart very easily, as in I gripped it too tightly and it crumbled in my hands. Hence my decision to forego working with the print and fixing up the issues in resin. The green one was also not depowdered, again because the print had errors, no point in wasting time on it. I had the red print mostly solid, with the exception being the geometric front open face of it. I had the walls printed 3/4" thick and I filled up the body with some bad resin I had laying around to solidify it. The brown/grey is actually Apoxy Sculpt, I had to fill in some holes where the 2 pieces separated during print and I used Apoxy Sculpt for that and it worked out okay. I don't know what process was used after the print finished. I'm not at liberty to discuss exact prices.
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Talaaya said:
The error was caused by having faces inside the model (which from everything I've read is supposed to be safe to do), and the printer apparently tried to make the tube hollow in that one part. Won't be making that mistake again!
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Very helpful information, was the tube modeled to be hollow? Love all the process pictures, can't wait to see more!
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

Hemansixtyfour said:
Very helpful information, was the tube modeled to be hollow? Love all the process pictures, can't wait to see more!
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The tube was a stand alone closed mesh that was intersected with the closed helmet mesh. Separately the printer would read each as a solid object, and together it should have read them as one big object. Instead it read them as a solid helmet and hollow tube, although it only tried to do it in that one small part. Also, no, the tube wasn't modeled to be hollow.
 
Re: 3D Printed Samus Varia Suit

msleeper said:
The model is 9.959" tall x 7.538" wide x 10.370" long. The green print was printed mostly hollow but it fell apart very easily, as in I gripped it too tightly and it crumbled in my hands. Hence my decision to forego working with the print and fixing up the issues in resin. The green one was also not depowdered, again because the print had errors, no point in wasting time on it. I had the red print mostly solid, with the exception being the geometric front open face of it. I had the walls printed 3/4" thick and I filled up the body with some bad resin I had laying around to solidify it. The brown/grey is actually Apoxy Sculpt, I had to fill in some holes where the 2 pieces separated during print and I used Apoxy Sculpt for that and it worked out okay. I don't know what process was used after the print finished. I'm not at liberty to discuss exact prices.
Click to expand...

Ahh, this explains a lot. Removing the object from the print bed without damaging it can be very difficult. Sometimes I take 30-40 mins removing and depowdering some of these pieces. Then you have to infiltrate it without damaging it which can be just as hard depending on how fragile the piece is. If I have time I will try and video some of the process for future updates if anyone is interested.
 
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