Steampunk Mega Man!

UGH. I am having a hell of a time with this this weekend.

- Bigger boot rockets failed twice during printing. I am confident it'd be fine once the printer gets past the bottom 20% of the design, but I did put a lot of fiddly bits in there. Perseverance is needed. MMMMaaayyyyybe a slight redesign?

- This barrel is driving me insane. I finally mounted the gatling assembly to the front - getting the whole thing seated on the motor shaft took a long time tapping with a hammer - and the damn thing (the motor itself, it turns out) is crooked. I should not have trusted that the endcap of the barrel would be perfectly planed and level. So now I have to keep unscrewing the motor mount and trying to shim it from every angle to both make it level and not bind in the hole. FFFFUUUUUU.....

- I still haven't finished the helmet because I have to drill the sides to accommodate the LEDs and I haven't figured out the EXACT drill spots yet.

I have to say, as much as I have always loved building things from existing objects, I am sorely tempted to literally model and 3d print the helmet and buster in their entireties. At the very least I wouldn't have to cut, drill or sand anything tougher than plastic.

I will share a couple new photos though...

A view of the Buster from the underside (well, the side that will be facing "inward" when it's on my arm), where you can see the door's hinge and the clasp I just added today to secure it closed. Also, the smaller set of barrels in place. Still haven't fully leveled the motor and screwed it down yet. At the very least I'm seriously considering printing a new endcap for the barrel to make that a little less stressful.



Closer on the clasp and hinge individually... The hinge is mounted atop two little round "pucks" i had almost discarded, leftovers from another print. I just painted them up and sent the hinge screws through them into the wood; they hold up fine and made the hinge alignment work on this round surface.



Open Sesame... (battery is just hanging around from testing the motor)



And staring down the business end, I noticed that I totally accidentally made the power lights, hinge and clasp pretty much perfectly spaced around the perimeter of the thing! My mathematical brain bits, everybody.



(the oblique angle visible is just the camera position, it's not the aforementioned leveling problem showing; that's harder to see from the front)

Holy crap, it's been 3 weeks with no updates! Sorry about that. I made small progress but then hit big snags.

Good: I had the red LEDs for the ear dishes redone by a professional - my original setup was too janky.

Bad: I'm having a serious problem mounting the ear dishes to the helmet sides. Even though I've reprinted the "gear" surrounds a couple times, i just can't seem to match the curvature of the helmet well enough to make it sit nicely against the surface. AAAAAAAAA! I also had to carve out some material from the helmet sides so the ear dish centers fit in (the LED wiring was pushing them way out from the surface).

So I'm suddenly discouraged, between the helmet sides and the motor mount problem on the gun. Dammit.

ANNNNNND I'm sort of back. After 2 years of radio silence, which is stupid, I have decided to start these lovely pieces over anew, almost 100% 3d-printed. Just so much going on, no idea when that will be, but I will probably start a new thread with reference to this one.