Transcript:
So I’ve got this 3d printer up and running and something. I’d really love to do is a big project. An afternoon on Thingiverse brought me here A full-scale wearable Imperial stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars. The files come divided up to be able to fit on most home in inexpensive 3d printers and the link for this files in the description. This seems like a really fun project just to let go on the 3d printer While I was either studying or doing work in my office or hanging out with my kids. It took quite a while to do just to get all the pieces together. In fact, here’s my stat sheet just for the print. I’ll be perfectly honest -. I didn’t have any failed prints or any real major problems doing this. It was really reliable. The next part was to take all these pieces and glue them up in a big 3d puzzle and the kind of the issue with the way that it was sliced with all flat surfaces and her facing each other is that there’s no interlocking it. They can move. Its kind of hard to get them. All lined up perfectly. As you kind of see, are you superglue it first and then reinforced all the seams with epoxy, the next step was then to go over the whole thing with well with bondo, and this was to fill in all those little print lines and all the seams. I switched back and forth between the Premix Bondo Putty and then the standard bondo that comes in a paint can. And you add the hardener in? I’ll be perfectly honest. I personally like the putty more. It takes a little bit longer to cure out, but it’s easier to apply and gives a little bit more working time for large projects such as this. The next 87 steps are to start smoothing the whole thing out and I started with files because those keep a nice flat surface where you’re actually smoothing it out. Sandpaper can sometimes follow the softer material and grind away more of the body filler from between those print lines that it does the actual plastic of the print lines, so using a file mixture, Everything comes out as flat as candy. Now that’s not to say. I got it perfect after flattening everything out getting rid of most of the high spots. I’m now hitting it with a sanding sponge, and I do love these things for contour work. They really follow lines and can really smooth out larger surfaces after a few cycles of applying and sanding and filing the body filler. I can now move on to adding some primer and this is a high fill primer, so it’ll really help fill in some of the tiny gaps. This will be another cycle to where I sand it down. Find the high and low spots and then repeat, I’m also using some of this rubberized plastic spray on the inside of the helmet and it didn’t really stick very well, and it didn’t do much of it than just kind of coat it white, so I don’t think it’s entirely necessary. And after several cycles of sanding and priming now, we can move on to the actual base layer of color for the white. This is a gloss white from just a rattle-can. It’s it’s krylon, which I’ve had good luck with. Yes, It’s running towards the bottom of the helmet. Don’t worry! I’ll fix that I like this method with a rattle can. I’ve done it before in refinishing guitars where you get that really built up really deep color that can be polished to a really high shine. I’ve done it a couple of times. It’s really rewarding, but it does take a lot of time. There are better methods of doing it like with spray guns and lacquers and things like that, but I really wanted to cut at highlight the accessibility of this project as you can see after one of the first sanding Sorority revealing high spots once again, so we just keep going back and adding more paint. We we do end up wanting a nice, thick layer paint, but we don’t want to apply it all at once, so it’s just, it’s a process of painting and sanding and painting and sanding and then painting and sanding and then painting and sanding at this stage of the process. I’m really just using 220 grit, sandpaper. It’s a flexible kind of Stretchable paper that works wet as well as dry between this and some small. Emery boards. I’m just barely smoothing out the surface of the paint, not not exactly cutting through it, except for the high spots. Of course in my head. This is like a Zamboni machine process where you’re just adding enough material to fill in the gaps and then removing all the material to make it nice and glossy, smooth once there’s enough paint, and it’s all thick and smooth enough. We can start moving into the wet sanding, and this is really fun because you move from, like 400 grit all the way up to over 1500 grit and it for this is a slurry that really smooths out that paint with that done. We can start doing some of the detail work. This really brought me back to my youth of painting models and doing things like that. It also ties that into the present. I’m having to hold a steady hand with the paintbrush. Really reminds me of skills necessary for something like. Oh, I don’t know Tig welding. I’m not short on imperfections with this, but I’m still excited about it because doing this kind of detail work, it’s it’s stuff. I really like to watch on Youtube. I follow a lot of prop and cosplay people. There’s a real inspirational combination of attention to detail and imagination and craftsmanship that goes into a lot of these kinds of projects and truthfully. If you’d ask me my fantasy 15 years ago, it would have been to have been a sci-fi armorer for things like movies and theater. This is also fun for me because it was outside of my normal kind of area of work. What I do in my shop. I just wanted to have fun with this. I’m a huge, huge Star Wars nerd, and it’s been my goal for years now to do a project specifically for Star Wars Day 4 [Music] another thing about a project like this that I get a kick out of is it’s diving into the collective Geekery / Props such as this and going into some of the details of such a cult followed movie like Star Wars, and there’s such a knowledge about it on the internet about every little detail of the design and all the provenance and all the features one of those things. I was trying to figure out. Are these few stripes on what are called the side due to the helmet? I was hoping that there was an in-universe significance of these, And maybe I didn’t research Well enough, but I couldn’t find it. I had to make my own template for it, which I laid out on some painters tape and then carved it out and then just applied that to the helmet itself. This was it was tedious. I’m not gonna lie to. You just took about 15 minutes just to carve the tape up and then getting it onto the helmet was a job. I used the trick from Jimmy to Resta of laying out the base color first to cover up any possible gaps, and then the over color. There was a little bit of bleed through, but it wasn’t too bigger a problem we. We fixed that with just a little bit of high grit sandpaper. There’s just a couple more details to go onto the helmet. These little pieces fit onto the ears, so I’m painting them silver in the middle, and then there’s these little nozzle pieces that go on either side of the vocoder on the front of the helmet. I didn’t like the shape that came with the file, so I’m on my own. In fusion 360 This is called a Hovey Mic tip Aerator tip and I modeled them to have a recess So that after printing them out, we could fit a little bit of aluminum screen in there. This is just something. I got from the hardware store for about five dollars and you can cut it with scissors, and it just shoves right down in there. You can secure it with super glue if you like. [MUSIC] All these accessories, I was able to just super glue right onto the surface of the helmet. I usually don’t glue right onto paint, but it ended up working out for this. I used a polishing compound in some auto wax just to give the helmet a final shine. A lot of prop guys like to do the weathering thing and stuff like that, which I love. But the stormtrooper helmet, they all have that perfect brand new factory made disposable hero aspect to them. They’re just right off. The factory line never been to war yet. I love that now to actually make it fit my head because the helmet is huge. I’m using some of this Harbor Freight floor mat. I started out a basic pattern around the top, and then I think I ended up going like three layers. Thick last problem to solve was the eye lenses, and my first thought was to bend Plexiglas over a large radius and then carve out the shapes on the bandsaw that I hate and then tint them with some Auto tint cling film stuff. This worked, okay, but actually no, it didn’t. It was problematic and it fought me every bit of the way, so I ordered a flexible face shield that was tinted from Amazon, And this is gonna be super exciting. Just cut it out and then I never got it. So that sucks what I did was take a face shield. I already did have that was clear. It was a lot easier to work with. I could lay out the design that I had traced from the eye sockets of the mask itself and get a mirror image of that because I used a nice, thin tissue style paper, and I drew enough on to give me some some area to glue or to fix into the helmet. [MUSIC] Again I’m using the tint film, and I can’t imagine using this with an actual vehicle. This stuff is incredibly hard to apply. It’s really difficult to work with just to get the backer paper off and to work with the actual film itself, it crinkles up and wants to air bubble constantly in this sticking is, it’s just it’s really bad and awful. We got there with this one. It’s not perfect, but we got there and it’s better than all the attempts. I tried before after a number of curse filled attempts to get the lenses in place, using a variety of different glues. I ended up going with this aluminum foil tape. This is usually used in, like duct work, kind of stuff like heaters and air conditioning stuff. Its rigidity and its extreme stickiness really made it the savior of the day here. I it was the key solution. I will admit that there are a few little very fine vertical black lines. I forgot slash didn’t have time to paint in on the little. What are called the teardrops underneath the eye sockets as well as on trapezoids of the back of the helmet? I didn’t get to that, but look at that. The hell is done, it’s ready to go and it fits. That’s just cool, and it’s impossible to see anything. I can see why stormtroopers don’t hit anything their aim for. I think I’m gonna be an adult about this and now. The great thing about this helmet is that it covers all the new kinds of stormtroopers introduced in the Star Wars universe like the compressor trooper. The scare trooper, the storm pooper, the party trooper and the uber trooper. Anyway, this is a lot of fun. Thank you for watching a happy. Star Wars Day and be sure to tune in next week for another one of my Harebrained Schemes, Check me out on Instagram for constant updates as well as on patreon for well Patreon member perks anyway. I’ll see you next week.