Steampunk Mega Man!

[PrimoOptimoso]

Well, the helmet keeps coming along. I will officially not make Katsucon, so my next goal is AwesomeCon I suppose.

Here you see the helmet with the mohawk in place (the very front square is a little crooked and it's cemented on so I can't fix it, ugh) and the ear dish is just kind of stuck on for the moment. You can also see where I'm going to carve back the forehead and cheek plates to really improve the shape of the face opening, closer to my original sketches.

I'm going to fill all the gaps with putty and touch up the paint and whatnot, of course.

I got the plasma discs in, but I won't be able to use them in the ear dishes until and unless I carve out FAR more of the helmet itself behind them than I had anticipated, to accommodate the battery packs. I didn't think the battery pack for a 2.5" plasma disc would be just as big as the disc itself; awkward. So I'll do something else for the time being maybe?

I also finally got the motor into the buster cannon! Carefully centered the shaft and screwed down the motor mount ... but then I spent literally all night last night trying to fix it - even though it worked fine by itself, something was binding when I mounted the gatling-barrel assembly and the motor didn't have enough torque to overcome it. I sanded and adjusted and sanded some more. Ran a battery dead with the motor, need to do more testing and adjusting tonight. Not to mention the lights.

I haven't even started the ether tank and the leg gaiters yet. Dammit.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Wheee, plasma discs were both broken! screwit i'll do something else.

Anyways, I thought the ear dishes looked a little small when compared to the official licensed mega man costume helmet, but I didn't want to scale the whole thing up, so I made a bit of a trim ring =0) unpainted as yet, probably will be a dark silvery grey. You may also notice I copper leafed the vanes/fins inside the ear dish. I think it looks awesome, photo might be underwhelming though.

And I also decided to remake the gatling barrels to try to combat the motor binding issue. This time the barrel assembly and the shaft that gets fitted to the motor shaft will be separate pieces with a keyed mate/hole, plus I made the shaft piece narrower and am making a little sleeve to act sort of like a bearing (will show detailed pics as that happens). New barrel assembly will print overnight as it's a 12h job, even though I scaled the parts town to 7/8 of the original size, in case the issue was partially weight-related as well.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

quickie update for the moment:

I put the end hoops back on the barrel, added the external power meter lights (which will really be lit from inside by LEDs), and I used some modeling clay to temporarily mount the handle at a comfy angle inside the buster - once that dries fully I will take measurements and make brackets to 3d print. I also beveled the edge of the "door" so it would open and close smoothly, and put a cabinet hinge on it. It technically doesn't need a latch because the cabinet hinge holds closed pretty well, but I want to add one anyway for protection against "flapping" and also for the look.

I also finished printing the new parts for the rotating gatling barrel assembly and painted them last night, finished the ear dish "cog" trim rings, and started filling in the helmet gaps and such with spot putty and sanding smooth. My spray paint job on some pieces is going to have to be replaced with brush work, but c'est la vie, I think it'll look better than having gaps around the attachment points and such.

 

[Pcoz]

Looking good ! You're technical approach is awesome....

I slapped together a steam punk costume in a few weeks for a masquerade themed Xmas party. If I could get off my lazy button, I'd post the entire build. It was such a blast. Love the genre now...

I posted the gun I made. If you want to check it out, it's in my threads.

I'll be watching, can't wait to it finished!

Pcoz

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Looking good ! You're technical approach is awesome....

I slapped together a steam punk costume in a few weeks for a masquerade themed Xmas party. If I could get off my lazy button, I'd post the entire build. It was such a blast. Love the genre now...

I posted the gun I made. If you want to check it out, it's in my threads.

I'll be watching, can't wait to it finished!

Pcoz

Hey thanks man!

Heh, and here I keep thinking my approach is hurting more than helping at times. However, my formerly-inexperienced self would have gotten everything done and THEN discovered the motor was binding, and it would've been too late to fix it. LOL.

I have a quandary at the moment about filling the seam around the face plates - basically, now that I've done that, I need to figure out how to make the surface transition from hard pieces to the leather of the helmet... Doh.

I have made one more discovery doing this: 3d printing makes custom pieces easier to make, by far. BUT, trial and error is still the order of the day sometimes. I'll take a photo of all the custom pieces I modeled and printed but cannot use for whatever reason; it's pretty funny.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

More photos today!

First couple are of the old gatling barrel assembly (left) and the new (on the right) at 7/8 the size. The old one was printed as the baseplate with the shaft as one piece, then the individual barrels which were glued into it. The new one was printed with the baseplate and barrels together, and the shaft printed as a separate piece. This allowed me to test the fit of the shaft against binding while the motor turned, before gluing it in its place through the baseplate of the assembly.

Here is a closeup of the "front cone" dish that the gatling barrels nest inside of. In the center hole you can see the motor shaft peeking through. The hole off to the right is where I will put an LED and some sort of lens, to shine through the spinning barrels as i'm "firing" the buster. It'd be extra cool if I could get steam going at the press of the same button, too, but I'm already taxing my abilities by trying to have the light and motor wired in parallel.

The helmet right now is OMG Attack Of The Bondo, but you can see the pieces I printed for the mohawk (I am AMAZED that my rudimentary geometry, based on heavy approximations of curve radii - ok, guesses more than not - got me such a great result!), and the reshaping I did on the forehead and cheeks to get more of the iconic shape going.

The ear pieces still need centers, now that the plasma discs are pretty much out.

With the buster cannon on my right hand (as it should be!!) I could have gone with a big ol' gauntlet glove on my left, but I like having touch and dexterity, so I started on a sort of gauntlet using a child's shinguard and a fingerless leather driving glove. We'll see how that turns out...

Thanks for tuning in!

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Good news and bad news!

Good: I figured out a cool alternative for inside the ear dishes. More printed pieces plus copper wire plus tiny glass bell jars, and I will put a red-tinted LED in the center hole you see in the pics...

Bad: I'm starting to hate this helmet front; the design ideas I've had just aren't working out. I made some thicker "cheek" pieces which I do like (the circular depression in each is just for a little "gear" detail, and the ring around it will be metalized - but I am not going to start just gluing gears all over it!), but the trim band across the original helmet opening is proving impossible to really blend with the intended design. I made an antique bronze color and painted it, but it looks... hinky. At least I successfully knocked the brightness of the colors down - using a mottling of navy over the blue and some thinned out bronze/copper wash over the tan. Of course, all the metallics I've started using on the helmet have spots that look "glittery" which is all sorts of wrong looking and I've been sanding those down.

Anyways, I might actually just rip the trim band all off and take the blue down into the widow's peak and all that. More accurate to the "real" mega man helm design anyhow.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Man, it looks like all my photos show no progress! I have to say, the "can't make this until I fix that, can't fix that until I paint this other thing" type hierarchy of this project is a bit more complex than I had assumed it'd be!

I'm not loving my lefthand gauntlet thing either; might start over in a different material altogether or something.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

BOOM. Good news again. I ripped off the trim band around the helmet front, redid the putty filler and started on the repaint, and it looks MUCH better now!

I wasn't happy with the gauntlet for my left arm, like I said, so I went to model a new one. Along the way, I thought I'd search to see if anyone had done a model of roughly that shape before - and I found a great base model for the forearm portion of either a prosthesis or an assistive device. I imported that as a basic structure, and "decorated it" with pieces-parts that I thought would make it nice and steampunky. Sadly, the first print came out too small (I didn't think to bother MEASURING my damn arm; I just guesstimated) - so it is printing again now. Here is the model, though:

And finally I got started on my boots/gaiters. I cut a $3 Walmart trashcan in half to get started. That will be the front halves of the boots. I don't remember if I mentioned, but I'm going to make jump rockets for the back!

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Aaaannnnnd I had to adjust the model on the big cog trim rings for the ear dishes and need to print again. Sigh. At least I'm no longer on a time crunch for this, so I can keep at it until everything is awesome.

On non-helmet news: For the back end of the buster, where my arm goes, I just knocked out the entire endcap of the barrel and am going to use some plumbing fittings like big pipe reducers and such to fit it to my arm. I have a gap to fill between the OD of the big fitting and the ID of the barrel itself so I'm going to experiment with how to tackle that bit. I also still need to actually wire all the stuff up inside the buster. Oy.

 

[Venom1989]

Great Build so far

The Steampunk Look is awesome

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

OK, lots of fiddly steps to go before I can put the ear pieces together and onto the helmet. Otherwise I'd be showing it off right now because that's nearly the last step for the helmet!

So I started on the boot gaiters in earnest. My little trashcan halves should be a good basis.

Referring to some quick sketches of MM's feet to keep the flare and the rocket exhaust in mind...

I made this simple version based on my existing plan - it's not as flared and I don't get the HUGE FEET phenomenon, but I think it'll overall look better for the style.

Then I embellished that some:

And I went out and modeled the rocket-pod part in Tinkercad, which is printing as we speak:

Still need to decide what the little "dynamo" or generator piece on the other side should look like. Don't want to make anything on the inboard side of my leg too big or fiddly, in case I accidentally smash them together while I'm walking or something.

 

[aeonpulse]

wow! great build so far, love it! can't wait to see more!

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Jump rockets are finished printing - over 24 hours, wow. They are a little smaller than I'd have liked, but we'll see how they do. I can always print them again larger if I have to.

Printed with the flat sides together so it almost looks like one fat rocket, lol.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

As my helmet inches toward completion...

I found this awesome 250 amp fuse at the auto parts store. Hey, it says MEGA right on it, so I had to grab it and put it somewhere prominent!

I also added some trim around the mohawk, as you can see in the above and the following photo: just a little strip of "rivets" where the 'hawk pieces attach to the bucket. There was also a gap in the middle between the front and back segments of the strips (print size limitation) so I found a couple little bits of metal and dusted them with rust-colored paint before screwing them on to cover the gaps.

And the ear dishes are finally complete themselves at least - with red-tinted white LEDs in place and all the pieces-parts glued together. The wire coming from the LED has some heat shrink on it which prevents it from lying flat, so I'll have to drill into the helmet to get the dishes to butt up against the sides like they did without the wire in place. That's okay, though, I needed to run the wire somewhere anyways.

Bonus, here is the gauntlet with the base paints almost finished, and a couple gears popped into the round sockets. Sloppy for now; need finer brushes to finish the edges of each surface all nice and such.

 

[PrimoOptimoso]

Quickie update: 2nd 3D printer is in the house; will be able to print in ABS now (can be smoothed more easily) and can do larger print volumes. Think I'll upsize the jump rockets for my boots, once I get it all set up and test prints out of the way and such.

 

[spydrwebz]

Awesome work man, subscribed!

 

[MemorY]

Something to check out if you're using ABS is acryl-green spot putty for smoothing. It chemically adheres to abs which makes it a better solution then bondo spot putty. It's available on amazon. I love that stuff.


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[PrimoOptimoso]

Something to check out if you're using ABS is acryl-green spot putty for smoothing. It chemically adheres to abs which makes it a better solution then bondo spot putty. It's available on amazon. I love that stuff.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh that's great to know, thanks! I still have to get my ABS printer calibrated and working well - test prints have been hit and miss - but between that stuff and acetone vapor, these things should finish up very nicely.

Considering I have given myself a way more generous deadline on this, I am actually considering reprinting a few pieces in ABS for the ease of smoothing. Like the gauntlet; it'd look way better were the large arcs more smooth.

 

[MemorY]

Oh that's great to know, thanks! I still have to get my ABS printer calibrated and working well - test prints have been hit and miss - but between that stuff and acetone vapor, these things should finish up very nicely.

Considering I have given myself a way more generous deadline on this, I am actually considering reprinting a few pieces in ABS for the ease of smoothing. Like the gauntlet; it'd look way better were the large arcs more smooth.

Ya. It's awesome stuff. In my experience it does work on PLA as well, just have it primed with a filler primer.

Something else that you can do when using acetone is use a sponge brush to "paint" on the acetone in coats. It gives you a bit more control.


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