mattycsi
Master Member
I've always loved the Royal Guards. As a kid watching Star Wars, they were my Fett, they looked mean and menacing and just so sleek. And they guard the Emporer, so they gotta be tough, like nearly Vader tough, right?
I got a 3D printer at Christmas and after a few months of messing about and getting to grips with it, I had to do one of these.
I got a model from Geoffro, he has a free version out on thingiverse which is the slim shouldered version. I followed his link and purchased the wide shoulder version.
What a lovely model, it was already sliced up and ready to go. I printed at 0.2 resolution in PLA.
Overall it was close to 70 hours print time. I glued the parts together with loctite power gel, I use the activator pen from their all plastics pack on each edge. I also friction welded the seams at the back with PLA.
So it was all looking great, printed well with no problems. So I set off doing the back.
No problems there, or so I thought.
I taped it together to get a feel for the size, and tried it on. Not even close. Where the "cheeks" sink back into the helmet creates a bottle neck with the back wall of the lid. I have a 24" head, so I tried it on the wife, nope! Measured her and she has a 22" head (when choosing a wife always look for a little head!!). I untaped it and found that if I put my face in the front and then closed the back on to it, it would fit perfect. So it really is that point at the "cheeks", or where the back ends in that above pic.
It did however fit the kid just right!
So used lolly sticks hot glued in the inside walls to hold it together with about an inch gap.
Now it seems to fit. So I resined in some aluminium mesh and started glassing the gaps to give me something to fill on to. I found that quick wipe down with some 220 grit on the inside really helped the glass stick to the PLA, its totally bonded, no bother there.
Great. Tried it on. Didn't fit anymore!! There must have still been some give in it with the sticks that was taken out by the stiffening of the fibre glassing.
At this point the whole thing was printed out, at about 70hrs, I wasn't about to start over. So took the jigsaw up the back of it and pulled it open about another good inch or so.
Luckily, its not an overly detailed helmet. Even with the back splayed like that it doesn't look odd from the front, the sides aren't sticking out at all, so I got lucky with that. Obviously there are some lines that won't meet up properly now. I had glassed good portions of the inside to hold the seams better and give the whole thing some rigidity. So I took the dremmel to the lines around the band to the top to get them to line up nicer.
Then just started slapping bondo all over it like a mad man.
That's where I'm up to now. I'm going to clean that filler up and smooth it back and do more passes of filler and sanding till its good.
I got a 3D printer at Christmas and after a few months of messing about and getting to grips with it, I had to do one of these.
I got a model from Geoffro, he has a free version out on thingiverse which is the slim shouldered version. I followed his link and purchased the wide shoulder version.
What a lovely model, it was already sliced up and ready to go. I printed at 0.2 resolution in PLA.
Overall it was close to 70 hours print time. I glued the parts together with loctite power gel, I use the activator pen from their all plastics pack on each edge. I also friction welded the seams at the back with PLA.
So it was all looking great, printed well with no problems. So I set off doing the back.
No problems there, or so I thought.
I taped it together to get a feel for the size, and tried it on. Not even close. Where the "cheeks" sink back into the helmet creates a bottle neck with the back wall of the lid. I have a 24" head, so I tried it on the wife, nope! Measured her and she has a 22" head (when choosing a wife always look for a little head!!). I untaped it and found that if I put my face in the front and then closed the back on to it, it would fit perfect. So it really is that point at the "cheeks", or where the back ends in that above pic.
It did however fit the kid just right!
So used lolly sticks hot glued in the inside walls to hold it together with about an inch gap.
Now it seems to fit. So I resined in some aluminium mesh and started glassing the gaps to give me something to fill on to. I found that quick wipe down with some 220 grit on the inside really helped the glass stick to the PLA, its totally bonded, no bother there.
Great. Tried it on. Didn't fit anymore!! There must have still been some give in it with the sticks that was taken out by the stiffening of the fibre glassing.
At this point the whole thing was printed out, at about 70hrs, I wasn't about to start over. So took the jigsaw up the back of it and pulled it open about another good inch or so.
Luckily, its not an overly detailed helmet. Even with the back splayed like that it doesn't look odd from the front, the sides aren't sticking out at all, so I got lucky with that. Obviously there are some lines that won't meet up properly now. I had glassed good portions of the inside to hold the seams better and give the whole thing some rigidity. So I took the dremmel to the lines around the band to the top to get them to line up nicer.
Then just started slapping bondo all over it like a mad man.
That's where I'm up to now. I'm going to clean that filler up and smooth it back and do more passes of filler and sanding till its good.
