GasmanR's BvS Armoured Batsuit - some thoughts. (Pic Heavy)

Hi RPfer's

Sometime ago I purchased a BvS Dawn of Justice Armoured Batsuit Helmet from TheRocketeer - I'm not sure if that particular thread is still current in the project runs forum, but I can certainly recommend therocketeer's products and customer service. The helmet is a work of art.

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=242962



The initial plan was just to have the helmet as a display piece - but as other members of this forum detailed their suit builds using EVA foam I decided to try building one myself. This idea was only reinforced after seeing the movie and how imposing and awesome the mecha suit looked.

I bought Aztlans patterns and thought this looks do-able. Despite practicing with some EVA foam pieces before committing to a build, purchasing and reading Bill Doran's books as well as purchasing and watching Stealth from Heroes Workshop videos along with watching Evil Ted Smith's YouTube videos - I still couldn't get my cuts straight enough nor my seams smooth enough nor get the patterns scaled right.

Looking at the revisions IM Nation did to his build, he mentioned that he got some components from Do3D,

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=244404

I checked out their site and the penny dropped - they make 3d models for 3d printers, I have a 3d printer !

http://do3d.com/product/3d-printable-batman-suit-bvs/

A few emails latter, a funds transaction and some down loading later it's time to get busy.

I had initially planned to do a build log - but found there were not enough hours in the day to go to work, fabricate the suit, get on with my life and write a build log. So what I thought I would do is now that the build is finished I'd write some thoughts and reflections here in following posts to maybe help others who are interested in following this route to make a costume.

Chris

The files from Do3D included a video detailing one process for building a suit with a 3d printer. From my experience the process is as follows:

1. Scale armor to correct size
2. Section scaled model to fit your printer.
3. Print the sections.
4. Reassemble the sections.
5. Smooth and finish the armor pieces.
6. Paint.
7 Mount, wear and enjoy.

I'll share more thoughts on these sections later.

Great stuff! I'm stuck on the scale portion! [emoji51] I have the Aztlans file to build out of foam but can't get the scaling correct for the life of me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just a tease to keep up some interest

GasmanR said:

Just a tease to keep up some interest

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Awesome!

Part 1 - Scaling.

Once I had the files I needed to scale them to my correct size. The most vital information is to know your actual measurements so get a friend to help you and actually measure all your dimensions (eg Height, head circumference, neck, chest, total arm length, upper arm length, forearm length, , etc) and write it down so you can refer to it later. By knowing your measurements and the size of the models you can calculate a scaling factor to be applied across the entire suit. However you may have to adjust individual pieces to more closely fit your body.

To adjust the models I used Meshmixer - it's free and although the documentation is almost none existent, the program is relatively easy to figure out, very simple to use for the purposes of scaling and sectioning your armor.




Other programs which could be used include nettfabb (free version) or the 3d model builder bundled with Win 10. While there is a measurement tool in Meshmixer, I could never get consistent results using it and so used the measurement tool in nettfabb.



A possibly more elegant approach is to get a 3D body scan of your self and to drop that into your program of choice and then apply the armor to your 3D avator. Scaling each piece to fit on your virtual body

I have only just now, after I have well and truly finished the build, via a Bill Doran (Punished Props) live cast on Youtube discovered http://www.makehuman.org/ - using this program and entering in your measurements you can create a virtual "duct tape" dummy and size your suit on this - although I have to admit that I have not tried this method yet - it looks extremely promising.

Looking back on this stage - it was a very much hit and miss affair. Some pieces scaled perfectly but others required re-measurement and redoing once printed. For this reason I am keen to try the digital avatar approach.

Awesome work on the suit mate. Just wondering what printer did you do this on.

GasmanR said:

Just a tease to keep up some interest

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nice. Is this your actual 3D printed suit? Or just an example image of a 3D printed one?

hikz said:

Awesome work on the suit mate. Just wondering what printer did you do this on.

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I have a HyVISION System Cubicon Single 3DP-110. I believe they are sold by iMakr in the states
.

It has a build volume of 190mm x 240mm x 200mm. It also has a heated bed ( with some sort of coating on it that makes parts stick very readily when warm but just lift off when cold) and a heated build chamber. The bed is self leveling and the extruder heads are very easily exchanged. Using a high quality filament it's as close to a "just push print solution" that I have come across. That's the Rocketeers helmet sitting on it in the second photo during a testing of a an LED diffuser to add glowing eyes.

Reznor9 said:

nice. Is this your actual 3D printed suit? Or just an example image of a 3D printed one?

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Thanks for the compliment.

That's me in the actual suit at Oz Comic con Sydney on the weekend of 10 -11 Sept.

Thanks for the info. I have a similar size print area. I'm so tempted to get the files and have a go at printing one.

Part 2 Sectioning

Prior to discussing sectioning your model, I need to speak about smoothing or remeshing, If you look closely at the the first two images of the forearm armour,you will notice that it looks rather "chunky". The second image overlays the wireframe and makes it more obvious.This was how the model was supplied by DO3D. It has a relatively small number of vertices and mesh triangles so while it is easy to manipulate in your 3D design program, it will be rather "chunky" if you print it.



The next two images show the forearm after I remeshed it using a trial copy of 3DS StudioMax, while Meshmixer has a remesh function, in its current form it is a bit clunky. The major point to note here is that all the model is now as smooth as the proverbial baby's bottom, the vertices and triangle count is now through the roof. The model size is large and somewhat unwieldy producing lots of blue spinning cursor circles in Win10 ( and I'm using a machine with a current gen core i7, overclocked to 5.0 GHz with 32GB of ram and 2 GTX 980Ti in SLI for the rendering). So I I obviously over did the remesh but continued on away.



In Meshmixer I have set up my 3D printer's build plate area and build volume, this is the platform that the parts are resting on and the wire frame box around the parts. When sectioning your models for printing, in my opinion there are multiple competing interests - fitting the piece to the size of your printer, sectioning with a view as to how the printer will need the piece to be oriented to produce the best possible print, sectioning the piece so there is minimal reconstruction needed post printing and sectioning so that once built seam lines are hidden to minimize finishing to list but a few. ( You could also perhaps add section it into pieces that you are going to be able to wear ie get on and off easily). You will have to make your own decisions and compromises in this regard depending on the size of your printer and what you are producing.

I'm using the low res model in these pics and I'm using a relatively easy piece to section. It's the forearm (bracers/guantlets) which is basically a cylinder. Here's how I sectioned and arranged the forearm for printing.



This is done using Meshmixer, via the plane cut function, the shells are separated and then recombined if necessary into 2 halves (sometimes a model is composed of different pieces called shells. The multiple shells only become apparent when you separate them - forcing a rejoin before exporting the sectioned model), the inspector function is used to ensure the mesh of both shells is water tight (ie printable) if not the mesh is repaired via the repair option of the inspector function. The two halves are then exported for conversion to g code plus or minus further positioning in your printer's software.

More thoughts to come in part 3.

A another tease to keep the interest up.

Me with a Madam Tussards' waxwork Wolverine

3. Printing the sections

This will be a very brief post as printing will be largely dependent upon your printer/ slicer software combo.( Slicer software is the program that turns your 3D model into G code which drives your printer) But as a piece of general advice print using a raft and supports( I'll leave the amount of infill to your discretion but see my later comments).

For those without a 3D printer, a raft is a disposable base that helps anchor your print to the bed of your printer and supports are structures which support overhangs (hence the name). While using both of these may be wasteful in terms of filament used, it will ensure that your prints are successful and given that you are going to stick together, sand, fill, finish, paint, age and distress your pieces - it really doesn't matter if you have to spend a little extra time removing the supports and the raft.

Regarding infill, (infill is how solid your 3D print is a 10% infill means the inside of your print is 90% air) while a 100% infill will give you a robust model, the cost in filament and time maybe prohibitive.Most of my armour is printed at 10% infill - but with some software jiggery pokery in critical areas it is 100%. My current slicer of choice is Simplify3D, I like for many reasons - 1. It"s very fast at generating G Code. 2. It has an excellent G Code preview viewer that allows you to step through your print layer by layer and see any potential points of print failure. 3. It is extremely easy to generate custom supports if necessary 4. It has multiple for options for generating infill - most slicers only generate rectilinear (ie square) infill. Simpifly3D will allow different types of infill including hexagonical (there's a reason why after several million years of evolution it's favored by bees and other nest building insects - this is the strongest support structure form per unit of material used). 4. Simplfy3D is process based by this I mean you can set different printing processes to run a different levels of your print, for example you could set it so that some layers or sections of your print could have different print resolutions or different percentages of infill ( eg the lower levels (the rim around the sole )of the boots are 100% infill while the top of the boot is 10%) different types of infill - this is a very powerful feature.



But ultimately it comes down to what you are comfortable working with and as the title of this thread says - it's just my thoughts thinking about what went right and what went wrong after the build has finished.

Another tease photo thanks to Steam Kittens Photography

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Parts 4,5,6 and 7. (Gluing, finishing, painting and wearing)

Having got your sections out of the printer, you will need to reassemble them into the actual piece of armour. I chose ABS plastic to make my suit not only because ABS is a little bit stronger than PLA but also because it is readily stuck to together with Superglue or "ABS juice". ABS juice is merely acetone into which you have dissolved scrap ABS ( ie the rafts and supports used to print your sections). The ABS juice is slower to cure than Superglue giving you a longer working time to position pieces and is more of a gap filling agent than regular Superglue. Once you have your pieces stuck together I suggest you used blue painters tape to hold things together until the glue is cured. I would also suggest that once your section is printed, you label it and indicate its correct orientation this will speed the assembly process as you won't have to try work out what bit goes where like a giant 3D jig saw puzzle. Also you need to remember that parts will warp as you make them- this will lead to gaps in your model when you try to stick things together - this can be corrected during the finishing phase - this is also a good time to add any battle damage.

Finishing - there are many resources out on the net about how to finish 3D prints. I would say use whatever works for you - but be careful of using acetone vapor smoothing as this technique is potentially explosive. I used the traditional approach of wet & dry sand paper, bondo and XTC 3D by Smooth ON. The XTC 3D is a 2 part epoxy that you paint on your model. I have a love hate relationship with it - I love that it a relatively small amount has a large coverage area, it really does eliminate the need to sand most of your work and it produces a lovely smooth gloss finish. I hate that in order to achieve this you have to layer it on quite thickly which can produce a loss of detail in your prints and that basically you have to sacrifice a brush to each new batch and that each batch only has a relatively short pot life. Here is the chest piece following XTC application


Painting and weathering - My life was made difficult by the fact that my helmet that I had purchased from The Rocketeer had an incredible paint job. I had to match it and lucked out finding a Rust -Oleum product that was a close enough match (but if you compare my paint job to the Rocketeers, it's no contest he wins by a country mile). If I hadn't had been so lucky I would have used the techniques described in this course from Stan Winston School: www.stanwinstonschool.com/tutorials/metallic-painting-techniques-real-metal-effects. This DVD is well worth the money in my opinion and if you sign up to the mailing list there are often great discounts on purchases thoughout the year. I used what I had learned from that course to weather and age the suit. Here is the chest piece post painting.



Mounting and wearing - I fashioned a harness system using , plastic buckles, snaps and nylon webbing. Again lots of information on the net and on the RPF on how to do this. Here is the first trial fitting of the whole suit - it was a this point I realized I had made something that I could be proud of .



There are some issues that I need to resolve - the biggest being the slightly oversized forearms ( while I realised they were big it was not until the whole suit was assembled could I see the proportions weren't quite right). I'll make a new pair in the new year.

In the meantime thanks for reading and get in touch with me if you think I might be able to help you with your 3D printed armour project.

Chris