Transcript:
Hey, I’m Bobbitt. I like to make stuff today. We’re going to 3d print a stormtrooper helmet as you probably know. I’m a huge Star Wars nerd. And this is my version of the short trooper from the new rogue one, a Star Wars story movie. This thing was a huge amount of work, but I’m super happy with how it turned out. Let me show you how I did it. I modeled this entire project in fusion 360 and it was a fantastic way for me to learn more about the software. I added some reference images from the front and the side and modeled to match those images based on the different views. I can’t show you the entire modeling process here because I had probably 40 or 50 hours into this model, but I will say that it was a huge learning experience. I got far more comfortable with the software, and I think the next project I do in fusion is going to be even better after I had it fully modelled. I cut the model into several pieces, each of which was smell enough to fit on the print bed of my printer. Then I just printed them out. There was a huge amount of print time and obviously. I can’t show you that either. But here are some views of the different parts coming together. I finally got all the major pieces for this printed, and they turned out fantastic. Almost all these pieces have some sort of a support material that held them to the print bed. So I have to cut all those away before I can start assembling it. In total, there are 11 pieces that are roughly this size and each one took anywhere from 8 hours to 18 hours to print. So I have a huge amount of print time into this, and I’m really glad to have it at the point. Now where I see pieces that I can start putting together, but first I had to finish cleaning up two pieces. There actually wasn’t a whole lot to clean up. Most of the support material was on the inside, but there were a few pieces like this on the bottom where I had to use a knife and some sandpaper to get them fully smooth, mostly. I use the sandpaper to flatten the edges that we’re going to be glued together. The flatter the surface. The better the seam is going to look once. They were pretty good. I use some activator on one side and some CA glue on the other side. These lock together immediately when they touch the rest of the pieces went together very quickly. It’s just important to make sure that you start at the corners and push the pieces together so that the seams are flush and nice and tight. It was really cool to see this thing. Start to turn into an actual shape of a helmet and once. I got these pieces together. I started to get super excited. Overall, most of the seams turned out really nicely, but they weren’t all perfectly flat so to fill in the gaps. I used some bondo. This is a two-part mixture that they use to fill bodywork on cars actually mixed it a little wrong the first time and it set up too quickly, so I had to experiment with how much hardener to use based on how much putty. Eventually I got a pretty good mixture and was able to add some of this over all the seams. I had to do several coats of this. Adding some sanding it down flush and then adding some more to completely hide all of the connection points between these panels. I found that by putting it on a little bit thicker and then going back with a knife before completely setup. It was easy to get rid of some of the high spots. That made the sanding process that much easier also. Make sure you wear a respirator when you do this stuff because it’s nasty and you don’t need to breathe it now. I sand it a lot on this entire project. I sanded in bondod and sanded and bondod over and over and eventually used a tack cloth to get rid of all the dust and then blew it off with an air blower. Then it was time to get the surfaces flat, but instead of just sending them all. I started out with some filler primer. This fills in some of the area in between the build lines of the 3d print. It also makes it really obvious where those build lines are. So you know where to sand but before removing the build lines. I tried to clean up the details first. I used some sanding blocks on little pieces of wood to get rid of stuff in the corners. A lot of this was leftover Bondo that I thought I had sanded down. Well, enough! They actually didn’t. You can see here where the shapes are still sticking out from the bondo underneath. I spent the time to get rid of all those details. First before working on the overall sanding mass of all the surfaces to start cleaning up the main surface. I used a fine sanding sponge. These are nice because they. Bend over curves and do a pretty even job of sanding after that. I use some flexible 220 sandpaper and just went over everything again. This process just happens over and over until you get the finish that you want. I sanded up two high grits, then remove the dust with a tack cloth and then added another layer of primer. The primer dries pretty quickly And eventually it got to a point to where I was making marks in the areas that needed to be corrected, rather than sanding the entire surface every single time and after far more sanding than I would have been happy to do. It was pretty much done, so I cleaned off everything. One final time and then added one final coat of primer. This was a nice thick coat, but I was really careful to make sure I didn’t get any drips or anything because this coat just got sanded down with some super fine sandpaper to get it Ready for paint. I also printed out a few detailed pieces that needed to be painted. Black on these. I just had to really sand the edges to make sure that they would fit into the helmet where they went after. I did a test fit and was happy with them. I just did one coat of primer and then some paint and it was finally time for full color on the whole helmet. I grabbed a rattle-can from the local store that I thought might be the right color, and once I got, it sprayed on, it wasn’t. I decided just to use it as a base coat instead so instead for the final coat, I mixed up some acrylics and just played with the color until I got something that I thought was pretty close to the images that I was looking at it. Maybe a little bit too yellow, but I think it’ll work out. I also got out my cheap airbrush the first time I’d never used it before. And it was a really good experience, trying to figure out how to use it and apply color. Often, air brushes are used to add details rather than fully covering something. But this was kind of the best way for me to add all of this color. It just took a long time. It took several tries eventually. I had really even color that I was happy with next. I added the detail pieces using some CA glue. I wasn’t sure that CA would be strong enough to hold the visor on since it’s pretty large, So I mixed up some two-part five-minute epoxy. I smeared quite a bit of the epoxy onto the helmet where I knew it would meet the visor, then position the visor and make sure I had it at the right angle. We’ve actually kind of tough to get it centered and make sure that. I had it right then. I just had to hold it in place. While the epoxy set up next, it was time to add the paint that looked like it would have been there if the helmet was brand new. The black line around the top of the visor was the biggest detail that needed to be painted in, but I wanted to have a clean line on the underside, so I used some masking tape. That’s made for pinstriping. I put that down there. Coat it over the whole thing with black and then pulled off the tape. It with a really nice, clean line. I filled in some of the other details on the helmet and then masked off a couple other areas to fill in with black for the insignia that goes on the visor. I use my vinyl cutter and cut out a little stencil. I use my airbrush to fill this in with red now. The red didn’t go on very well and to get it nice and opaque. I had to do several coats. It was really happy with how it turned out. Though, and then it was time for weathering. I used some burnt umber to start with and made a wash with a whole lot of water. I smeared it on with a paper towel and got it really really wet and then went back with a wet paper towel and wiped the majority of it off. I did the same thing with black and actually ended up using a lot more black than burnt umber and eventually all the cracks and the seams get filled in with the stuff and it just adds a layer of grime that makes it look like it was used after. I was happy with that. I went back with the chip brush and some black paint and went over the edges to make it look like the paint had been scraped off and it was a black metal underneath. This is a technique that it’s really easy to overdo. So I had to stop myself and just call it done. Finally, it was time to make the visor and to do this. I put a piece of paper on the inside and trace the rough shape. This gave me an idea of how big of a piece of plexiglass. I needed to cut on the bandsaw. I just cut out a little strip of the thinnest Plexiglas I had around and then used a heat gun to start bending it into shape. I messed with it until I got just about the right curve in general and then fit it on the inside of the helmet Once I was happy with the overall shape. I had to do the details and get the corners been out right for this. I held it in place and use the heat gun, but be careful because you can melt the 3d printed material as well once the shape was a pretty good fit. It was time to add the tint and for this. I’m just using regular window tint. I cleaned off the plexiglass with some window cleaner and then cut a piece of the tent That was a little bit bigger than what I needed appealed off the backing and sprayed it with some soapy water and then started to apply it to the Plexiglas. This is not something I have any experience with and having the curved Plexiglas made it more difficult, but eventually I got most of the air bubbles smoothed out. I used a squeegee to get rid of the air bubbles and then use the heat gun to bend the corners of the tent around the corners of the plastic. This took quite a while, and I don’t have all the footage here, but eventually I was pretty happy with it. I fit the lens on the inside of the helmet and held it in. Its final position. Then I trace the outside now. The point of this is to show where the piece of Plexiglas is going to sit so that I can add some adhesive. I mixed up some more two-part epoxy and then applied it to the areas where it marked. I made sure not to put it too close to the eye opening because I didn’t want it to squeeze out and get on the lens. Finally, I masked off the lens and then ran over the whole thing with a couple of coats of matte clear coat to protect the paint and here It is completely finished and I couldn’t be happier with it. I am super happy with how this thing turned out. Even though it’s not a hundred percent screen accurate as I was assembling it and painting it. I found several things about the model that are not quite right, but overall, I mean, it’s a stormtrooper helmet. It’s super cool, regardless of the imperfections. I love how it came out and this might be my favorite project that I’ve ever made originally. I only wanted to make the helmet just as a prop, but now I kind of want to make all the armor pieces as well, so I may end up doing that on my live stream on Twitch. I also think projects like this are a really good example of how 3d printing can enhance the stuff that you’re making rather than just 3d printing, something use it as a step in a larger project. If you are as excited about rogue one and star wars in general as I am, let me know down in the comments, no spoilers. I’ve got several other 3d printing projects that you might be interested in as well as tons of other woodworking and metalworking and electronics and all sorts of stuff. So be sure to check those out if you like this video. I’d love to have you subscribe, and I have a second channel with some behind the scenes stuff. That’s it for this one guys. Thanks for watching. See you next time.