ODST Build - Starting with the helmet

[tomwardill]

Hi!

I bought myself a 3d printer. I mentioned this to a friend. Friend said 'Can you print a set of ODST armour?'. I've tried making pepakura based things before, they didn't go well, so let's see if most of the hard work can be done by a printer.

First job, find a file.
Download Halo 3 ODST helmet Wearable Cosplay by jeffrey

Thanks Jeffery (DutchProps), that will do nicely.

Sliced it up into 8 parts to fit on my printer, basically in half in all 3 dimensions. Then, start printing:

And this is where I made my first mistake, although it'll take a while to realise it. See also, the remains of my pepakura attempts in the background...

Print a bit more...

Print some more...
At this point, I realised it was going to take about 3 weeks, as I can't run my printer overnight (it's too loud). So I enlisted the help of work's slightly fancier one.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the settings quite right for this, so there was a lot of this looping in the overhangs. Oh well. Fix it in post.

After about 9 days worth of prints in various forms, and about a whole roll of filament, I had some work to do.

But, that's more than 8 parts! The aforementioned problem was that I didn't slice the model very intelligently, so ended up printing a few parts with massive amounts of supports. Slicing them in half again allowed a better orientation and reduction in the support material. The downside was doing more work to stick it all together.

I didn't want to reprint the original parts that I'd got wrong, so spent 2 days doing this:

And breaking out all the support material that had printed in the channels. In retrospect, I should've just printed them again. Too late now, WE MUST MAKE PROGRESS!

Printed out some test spheres to check that my glue wasn't going to melt anything:

Then got on with the sticking:

After a lot of sticking my gloves to the table, my gloves to the helmet, my gloves to my gloves and my gloves to the glue, I broke out the dremel, carved out the last bits of support material and had this:

Join us in part 2 as I use body filler (bondo) for the first time ever and try and work out which way up sandpaper goes...

 

[FlyinPhil]

That looks amazing dude! As someone who has been hemming and hawing about getting a 3D printer, this post has definitely inspired me to do some research and pick one up!

 

[tomwardill]

That looks amazing dude! As someone who has been hemming and hawing about getting a 3D printer, this post has definitely inspired me to do some research and pick one up!

Thanks! Though full credit to Jeffery for the original file, all I did was some slicing and pressing print. I bought a 'Wanhao Duplicator i3 plus'. I believe in the US it's rebranded as the Maker Select, but I can't get that over here (UK).
It's definitely a cheap(er) printer, but it's been decent so far, other than some messing with settings for the filaments.

 

[tomwardill]

Round 2: Lollipops and sandpaper and a few of my other favourite things

It's all stuck together. Unfortunately it's not stuck together very well, and has more gaps and holes than my cheesegrater.

The only answer to this is to head to the shed, break out the body filler (Bondo to everyone except the UK, I believe), buy some more sandpaper, a respirator and some lolly sticks (popsicle stick? I dunno, I'm going to stop translating things now).
I've never done anything like this before, but I read some books and some articles and seem to mostly gather that the answer is to cover the gaps in filler and sand it back till it's smooth.
Doesn't seem that hard.

At this point, I realised actually how long this was going to take and that even with a decent respirator spending any time around this stuff is painful. So one day at a time, doing about an hour at a time.

Marking out the bits that need filling and sanding again:

Then building up the base of the helmet where the different in prints between two sections led to a massive step:

Repeat:

Awkward fiddly bit where I didn't check where the slice in the model was and ended up having to rebuild most of the ear piece:

Break out the nice camera to take some closeups:

Eventually, I decided to do a sneak preview and polish up the centre section up to about 4000 grit (quickly, it still needs more base work, but I want to see the SHINY):

And now, we stand at this:

Still a fair amount to do, but it's getting faster as I learn things.

• Wet and Dry (120 grit) works well to shift bulk plastic to even the ledges before filling
• Fill small amounts and repeat
• Get rid of as much filler as possible
• Hope that paint will fix anything else...

All stuff that's well known to anyone that's done this before, but I'm happy with the progress.

 

[SI3RRA 117]

Looks like things are coming along great I too have just finish printing my first helmet. There is definetly a learning curve. But I like to think I'm getting the hang of my quirky little printer. I haven't started the filling and sanding stage yet. Not really looking forward to it. Instead started printing my second helmet as I have 3 possibly 4 sets of armor to build. What are gluing your helmet together with?

 

[TurboCharizard]

That looks amazing dude! As someone who has been hemming and hawing about getting a 3D printer, this post has definitely inspired me to do some research and pick one up!

Spool3D is based out of your neck of the woods FlyinPhil and that's where I sourced my Wanhao Duplicator i3 V2.1 which is the same body minus a touch screen that tomwardill is using in this build. About a month ago I picked it up for just shy of $650CAD with all taxes said and done.

 

[FlyinPhil]

TurboCharizard solid, thanks for the info!

 

[tomwardill]

What are gluing your helmet together with?

I've got a second one to build for myself at some point, but thought I'd try and get one further along. It's helped with planning how I would cut and print a second one. I'm just using CA (super glue), it seems to be working so far and any gaps are now filled with filler, so I'm hoping that will help the overall strength. Not that it felt all that flimsy, but there weren't that many contact points between some of the sections due to the printer

Spool3D is based out of your neck of the woods FlyinPhil and that's where I sourced my Wanhao Duplicator i3 V2.1 which is the same body minus a touch screen that tomwardill is using in this build. About a month ago I picked it up for just shy of $650CAD with all taxes said and done.

Yup, I'm not sure what other differences there are between these two. There's some mods and upgrades listed for the 2.1 that seem to already have been done on my Plus (fan shroud, etc). The Z axis bearings are as noisy as the reviews say, they're on my list to replace.

 

[SI3RRA 117]

I tried super glue too but thought it to be too brittle. Once cured I could easiler break the seam apart. I was just worried about the inevitable drop. My kids seem to be very good at breaking things. So I started using quick set epoxy for plastic. Seems to be much stronger but takes a little more time to set so your stuck holding pieces together for some time. It also seems to fill the gaps nicely too and sands pretty well. Plus you can glob it all over the inside seams for a little reinforcement.
Helmet looks great and painting stage doesn't look too far away