Helmet Fans, Ducting, & Padding

[Elcorio]

So is the lesson here to point the fans directly at my face/visor, and pull cold air in rather than push hot air out? Heat hasn't bothered me too much yet, what concerns me more is not being able to see out of my visor, and condensation building up on my various circuitboards and such on the inside.

That is the plan when I get around to updating my helmet. Right now I am tied up with my wife's armor as well as my son's. When I do get back to mine, I will reverse the ducting to where the fans "pull" air into the helmet from the back of the neck opening and "push" it up into the crown of the helmet.

As far as fogging on the visor, I didn't have any issues at all with it being as the chin fans was pushing cooler air directly at my chin.

In the end, I believe the ducting system worked as intended, but not in the volume I wanted. I also toyed with the idea of leaving the exhausting fans in place at the rear and adding intake ducts with fans to the cheek pieces which I dremelled out and added screen covers to. By creating a duct type system, it gives me more option where to mount the fans (away from ears for example) and still get the air flow where I want it.

FIVE fans total. 2 exhausting from the top and 3 pushing in cool air. At that point it should be like wearing your own head surrounded air conditioning! LOL!

 

[Elcorio]

If what I have read on previous threads, its not necro-posting if the person who created the thread revives it. If I am wrong, please let me know.

I revived the thread simply because the cheek pieces on the ODST helmet have always haunted me for being of actual use. There is a whole lot of real estate there for something and I have always thought it would be a great idea to actually use that real estate for air flow. I also revived the thread because I feel like I have refined my original ODST duct system and wanted to share what I am doing this go round.

Over all my builds and all the time making or creating things, this one thing has always been something I wanted to work through. There were a couple of stipulations I put on myself for this. #1: I wanted the fans to be as least intrusive as possible. #2: clean looking on the inside of the helmet. #3: Keep as much of the set up out of the helmet.

So this is what I came up with. For simplicity, I used the DFT helmet pattern for the base and will use the ODST pep files for the check pieces and the back wraparound part. In the pics, this is the helmet that I built for my son use that mix of files. The cheek pieces are hollow as well as the back area of the helmet. Why not draw exterior air through the check pieces, bring it around the back and then into the helmet from the rear through a series of ducts riding over the head and dumping air downward over the visor from above?

The 5v blower type fans move a good amount of air, so in theory, this should work. 13mm foam was used to create the base of the helmet. This allowed me to completely mount the fans into the foam with very little protrusion on either side (interior / exterior). The "ramps" were cut out solid then diagonally cut and reinserted. Once enclosed by the cheek pieces and the back area, the only place the air can be drawn from is the vents in the cheek pieces and the only place for it to go is through the back channel and into the interior ducts. Hence the cutouts at the very back of the helmet.

I will keep this thread up to date as I progress and hopefully this works!

 

[PillarofAutumn]

Sounds like a really comfortable option! Is there a way it could be adapted to a helmet like the Mjolnir Helljumper that doesn’t have the built-in vent mounts at the cheeks?

 

[Elcorio]

Sounds like a really comfortable option! Is there a way it could be adapted to a helmet like the Mjolnir Helljumper that doesn’t have the built-in vent mounts at the cheeks?

As long as you "create" some type of intake for the air, I think it could be done. Looking at the helmet and side pieces, I would probably take the bottom part of the conical pieces out and create a hidden intake on the bottom so as not ruin the conical effect. Cover the intake with some computer mesh and paint to match the helmet. I doubt anyone would even notice.

At least that is what I would do.

 

[Callianis]

praetorianfab (Instagram) cut sections out of the back of his helmet for ventilation I was thinking of doing the same, but now I'll reconsider my options