(Almost) completely custom 3d printed armor (gen 3)

[Zippyzeek]

Hello everyone!

I'm new here and am very excited to share my passion for building and designing armor just like all of you!

This is a build I have been working of years! (Around 5). I am very happy with how it has turned out and I am very proud of it! The only pieces I didn't design and model myself are the shoulders, forearms gloves, boot armor and sort of the undersuit.

Although I am happy with the costume there is still much room for improvement and that's what I'm working on right now! So, if you have any suggestions or recommendations for any thing go ahead and tell me! I'm always looking for ways to learn and improve.

Some of the upgrades I'm doing are:
I'm redoing the gloves, as of right now they aren't super flexible or very comfortable, they don't have touch screen capabilities and fall apart easily. I hope I can remedy all of these problems while still making the gloves as good if not better.

I'm redoing the helmet so there is fans to cool me down and defog the vizor, speakers so people can hear me better, lights so I can see in the dark, wireless switches and a couple other things.

I'm redoing the entire chest and back pieces as they're simply not well built and designed. (If you have suggestions for how to connect the chest and back together in a way you can take them apart later I would appreciate that)

I'm redoing the undersuit completely! This is the most ambitious as I want to make as photo real as possible while it is still very comfortable and flexible. The current undersuit is fine but it doesn't look great up close, it's not the most comfortable and it's getting pretty worn down.

I'm adding water cooling, that will hopefully help a huge amount with heat because the new undersuit is most likely going to be thicker and therefore even hotter.

Finally, I plan on adding a small touch screen to the forearm piece. This will wirelessly control a large amount of the electronics such as the water cooling, fans in the helmet, LEDs and other things.

I believe that is all of the major upgrades I'm doing, I would love to talk with you guys about this and you're armors and please ask all the questions you want! (I put pictures of the sketches for the new gloves and undersuit if you want to critique those).

 

[PlanetAlexander]

That looks amazing! And your sketches are so detailed too

 

[Zippyzeek]

That looks amazing! And your sketches are so detailed too

Thank You! I was a little worried the sketches would be kinda hard to understand what's going on so I appreciate it.

 

[Cappyace86]

I'm super jealous of the fact you can kneel. Your kit looks awesome though, and I look forward to those upgrades!

 

[Zippyzeek]

I'm super jealous of the fact you can kneel. Your kit looks awesome though, and I look forward to those upgrades!

Haha Thanks! I made flexibility one of the biggest priorities while designing everything. But to be honest, I had no idea if the armor could take the weight of me kneeling so I was stressing hard while that picture was taken. (durability is still something I'm working on).

 

[N8TEBB]

Very cool suit! I’m interested in seeing how you tackle all those electronics. I love all the ideas you have for upgrades!

A lot of members do a clam-shell method for making the back part of the torso piece removable. For myself, the back part can not come all the way off, rather it can hinge up a little bit to allow me to take it on and off. I know that other members however have put clips near the shoulders AND on each side, so the entire back piece can come off. For example, JTF4 (the blue Spartan), you can see the clips on each side of his shoulders.

 

[Zippyzeek]

Very cool suit! I’m interested in seeing how you tackle all those electronics. I love all the ideas you have for upgrades!

A lot of members do a clam-shell method for making the back part of the torso piece removable. For myself, the back part can not come all the way off, rather it can hinge up a little bit to allow me to take it on and off. I know that other members however have put clips near the shoulders AND on each side, so the entire back piece can come off. For example, JTF4 (the blue Spartan), you can see the clips on each side of his shoulders.

Thank you! I'll be sure to post about the electronics when I get to them. Right now we're trying to figure out how the touch screen and water cooling system will work.
As far as the chest attaching/detaching I like the idea of having them completely detachable although I'll do the clamshell method if that doesn't work out. My question for using buckles is how do I attach the male buckle securely on the Armor. The male buckle doesn't have a lot of surface area to grab on to and I'm worried it will come of. Do you have any ideas to make it have a stronger connection? I only have one other idea which is a puzzle piece design but that has its own problems. I very quickly sketched out the buckle problem and my puzzle piece idea.
btw I love your about making a visor vid and tutorial and I'm using your method for my visor, post pictures of it when I've finished.

Thanks again!

 

[N8TEBB]

Hmm perhaps is you connected the clip to a strap that was connected to the inside of the armour?

I know other members also use magnets and such, I think Rock Lobbster explains how he did it in his build thread: Mark VII Spartan V Megurine Luka

 

[Zippyzeek]

Hmm perhaps is you connected the clip to a strap that was connected to the inside of the armour?

I know other members also use magnets and such, I think Rock Lobbster explains how he did it in his build thread: Mark VII Spartan V Megurine Luka

Alright I'll check it out thanks!

 

[Zippyzeek]

I know its been almost a year sense i last posted but I've finally made enough progress to actually make an update and talk about it!

I've redone the gloves and my oh my are they an improvement! It hardly feels like I'm wearing gloves. I wore them for 8 hours at HWC without having to take them off for any reason!

I've done some pretty major model work on the helmet changing parts that i aesthetically didn't like much and (hopefully) made it much lighter. I've also been working on making a vacuum form for the visor but its been going pretty slow.

I've also redone my boot armor, hopefully their much more comfortable and I can actually run in them without them breaking.

I've did some updates to the chest and done a complete redesign of the back and thrusters and I think they turned out great! I've decided that ill just be doing the clamshell method for taking the chest armor off and back on, just because its simple and reliable. I also had the idea of making the chest piece have extra battery pack that could be used for the chest piece electronics or plugged into the helmet via a wire that runs through the undersuit up to the helmet so I have a littler more power then the helmet normally has, but we'll see if that works out.

Speaking of the undersuit I was indeed a tad ambitions. I've decided it best that I don't try and completely make it from scratch. So I'm going to send the design out and have the suit printed and then just add things too it to make it really pop.

I've also decided to not do water cooling for now, I couldn't really figure out how to make it work. It was very complex with a lot of potential failure points, so for now I'm not doing that. I do need some way to cool myself though so i think I'm just going to have an ice pack go down my spine along with some other points. My biggest worry with this is that the ice will melt really fast. If you have any suggestions or ideas on cooling let me know please!

Originally the touch screen was mostly for the water cooling and its flow rate and how much the water was being cooled but now that I'm not doing water cooling I don't really see a need for a touch screen for now (unfortunately).

I am currently in school, so I'm pretty busy with that but hopefully now that I'm done with the modeling and design of all these parts i can start actually making them and making more consistent updates. That being said no promises, Thanks for reading!

 

[Zippyzeek]

I haven't posted anything in awhile (Mostly because of school business) but from now on I will do my best to post somewhat consistently. That being said, this armor cannot be deployed because its completely custom and therefor is not directly from the games so I'm going to start working on new projects soon so I can get deployed but ill keep upgrading and working on this kit.
Here's what I've done sense my last post:

I've finished the chest armor, at least mostly.

I've also finished the helmet although I want to do a little more as far as the paint job goes.

I'm currently working on upgrading the boots mostly for flexibility and with a hinge on the toe armor so I can walk completely normally and maybe even run.

I'm almost done with making the pattern for the undersuit so hopefully ill be able to send that to people to print it and everything.
Picture

Here's what I'm doing next:
I'm going to keep working on the boot and try and make it as comfortable and good looking as possible. I want to add decals lots of decals to the armor hopefully making it look even more industrial and detailed. After that I want to go over the whole armor with an airbrush and I think that will really make everything look just that much better. I also just have a lot of little tweaks I want to do to the armor such as making the back of the helmet look better and adding magnets so armor pieces stay where I want them to.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Garthok2962]

Im absolutely loving keep up the good work bro!!.

 

[Zippyzeek]

Thank you so much! I'll do my best haha.

 

[Worainu]

That's so sick, I'm beyond impressed!

 

[Zippyzeek]

Thank you! Hopefully it will look a bit better soonish.