I am ODST
- Thread starter Katsu
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onmi shift
Active Member
actually its more like padding than armor at that point. kinda like a motorcycle helmet. so it conforms to your head
Haha, old thread... I am aware of the function of the lip now at least, it still needs to be cut out in order to stick your head in, and either made into a breakaway piece or redone in leather/vinyl so you can squeeze through.
The crack happened because I was holding the helmet down to keep it from moving while I sanded, and apparently put too much pressure on it. Which sucks because I am not particularly strong. It turned out to be a cancerous crack, I couldn't patch it without it just reopening, so the helmet has been junked. I've been working a lot lately, so I haven't had much time to redo the helmet, or work on my MkV, but hopefully I will be able to soon!
The crack happened because I was holding the helmet down to keep it from moving while I sanded, and apparently put too much pressure on it. Which sucks because I am not particularly strong. It turned out to be a cancerous crack, I couldn't patch it without it just reopening, so the helmet has been junked. I've been working a lot lately, so I haven't had much time to redo the helmet, or work on my MkV, but hopefully I will be able to soon!
Well, it's been over a year since I touched this thread or the helmet! We were all noobs once, and it's nice to revisit your old work.
I had incentive to resurrect my very first original ODST helmet, and it was interesting seeing it after so much time sitting in my car trunk.
Here are some of the "before" shots.
These show some of the areas I especially wasn't happy with. The underside of the "bill" of the visor was pretty bad but I didn't remember to snap a good picture of it. The back is particularly embarrassing, and the cheek tab vents are pretty blowful.
I also wanted to make a visor buck for the thing. Here are the buck pictures!
I cut the darn thing out by cheating with a hugemongous shopbot.
RISE, VISOR BUCK!
Test pulls
It actually turned out that somewhere between pepakura -> 3ds max -> Vectric cut3d -> shopbot, there was a scaling of the model, and it ended up being about 90% the size it was supposed to be
So instead of recutting the thing and resmoothing it (Which I'll eventually do for a second draft visor, but preparing the wood is too much of a time waster right now), I am going to extend the existing visor. There is not a substantial amount of detail in the visor anyways, so just bulk out the top, bottom, and "tips" of the visor to make it fit in a standard sized Kirrou helmet.
I had incentive to resurrect my very first original ODST helmet, and it was interesting seeing it after so much time sitting in my car trunk.
Here are some of the "before" shots.
These show some of the areas I especially wasn't happy with. The underside of the "bill" of the visor was pretty bad but I didn't remember to snap a good picture of it. The back is particularly embarrassing, and the cheek tab vents are pretty blowful.
I also wanted to make a visor buck for the thing. Here are the buck pictures!
I cut the darn thing out by cheating with a hugemongous shopbot.
RISE, VISOR BUCK!
Test pulls
It actually turned out that somewhere between pepakura -> 3ds max -> Vectric cut3d -> shopbot, there was a scaling of the model, and it ended up being about 90% the size it was supposed to be
So instead of recutting the thing and resmoothing it (Which I'll eventually do for a second draft visor, but preparing the wood is too much of a time waster right now), I am going to extend the existing visor. There is not a substantial amount of detail in the visor anyways, so just bulk out the top, bottom, and "tips" of the visor to make it fit in a standard sized Kirrou helmet.
Continuing on, here are some shots after I've done a lot of work cleaning up the helmet. I still have some rough spots to smooth, but it's looking a lot better than before.
I chose a red primer because it shows the still to be fixed marring on the helmet a lot better than black.
The original pep was fairly sloppy, and my original bondo job was terrible. I glopped huge amounts on (a common mistake), and had NEVER used a dremel before, so the cuts were fairly erratic. I actually cut the bridge of the nose off (Where the black part of the official model meets the gray "mouth" area) and had to reattach it. When it was black, it was very hard to see a lot of the blemishes that are glaring in the red coloring. Considering the mediocre state of what I had to work with, I am fairly happy with my progress so far. It's not complete, as you can tell there are still some areas to patch and sand, and I need to figure out a good way to smooth the deep vertical grooves on the cheek tabs.
When I have it finished up, I will put up more pictures. Noob powers activate!
I chose a red primer because it shows the still to be fixed marring on the helmet a lot better than black.
The original pep was fairly sloppy, and my original bondo job was terrible. I glopped huge amounts on (a common mistake), and had NEVER used a dremel before, so the cuts were fairly erratic. I actually cut the bridge of the nose off (Where the black part of the official model meets the gray "mouth" area) and had to reattach it. When it was black, it was very hard to see a lot of the blemishes that are glaring in the red coloring. Considering the mediocre state of what I had to work with, I am fairly happy with my progress so far. It's not complete, as you can tell there are still some areas to patch and sand, and I need to figure out a good way to smooth the deep vertical grooves on the cheek tabs.
When I have it finished up, I will put up more pictures. Noob powers activate!
- Member DIN
- S613
looking really good keep up the good work.
When last we left, I had this crummy buck:
Which had bad draft angles, and was painfully too small.
So I cut out a new one (This is before gluing or smoothing):
Test pull before smoothing to make sure it would fit:
Test fit:
PETG pull:
PETG fit:
I tried mirroring it with Mylar. It didn't go so well. The ODST visor is too complicated of a shape for it to lay down mylar evenly as you can see in the picture. If I colored the visor it might hide the Mylar's seams and bubble a bit more. Visibility was Okay, it was like looking through a prison as the overlapping parts of the mylar created bars. I will have to try a spray tint instead.
Which had bad draft angles, and was painfully too small.
So I cut out a new one (This is before gluing or smoothing):
Test pull before smoothing to make sure it would fit:
Test fit:
PETG pull:
PETG fit:
I tried mirroring it with Mylar. It didn't go so well. The ODST visor is too complicated of a shape for it to lay down mylar evenly as you can see in the picture. If I colored the visor it might hide the Mylar's seams and bubble a bit more. Visibility was Okay, it was like looking through a prison as the overlapping parts of the mylar created bars. I will have to try a spray tint instead.
Thanks guys.
Today I have a fun demonstration to show! I always talk about the risks with vacuforming acrylic. It is hydroscopic so it picks water out of the air, and when you go to heat it, it will start to boil the water which causes this nastiness:
Not only does it render the visor useless visibly, it also leaves it severely compromised because the acrylic essentially has a bunch of holes throughout it. The frayed cracked edges were the acrylic sharding and splintering while we cut it with a rotary tool which usually gives clean cuts.
This next one I cooked at 100 degrees Fahrenheit for just over an hour. We have a powder coating oven, but a cooking oven works if you can keep the acrylic from resting ON the bars.. Also you may not want to use the oven for food after that, I don't know specifically, but I don't generally trust non-food-grade cooked plastics and cooking areas.
Anyways, this is the pull on a sheet of pre-cooked acrylic:
Installed:
The visibility on this visor is "okay". You can see a bit of flutter in visor in the last picture. It definitely picked up more flaws in the vacuform buck than I was expecting, so the inside is textured. I may give it a go with a polishing tool, and I am going to be coating my buck with a finishing epoxy to get it super smooth.
I still haven't figured out a good mirroring technique. Money is a bit tight so I am not sure if I will spring for a bottle of Mirrachrome. The next step may be to try a sheet of mirrored acrylic and hope the metal doesn't burn the plastic (like it did when I tried mylar coated PETG).
Today I have a fun demonstration to show! I always talk about the risks with vacuforming acrylic. It is hydroscopic so it picks water out of the air, and when you go to heat it, it will start to boil the water which causes this nastiness:
Not only does it render the visor useless visibly, it also leaves it severely compromised because the acrylic essentially has a bunch of holes throughout it. The frayed cracked edges were the acrylic sharding and splintering while we cut it with a rotary tool which usually gives clean cuts.
This next one I cooked at 100 degrees Fahrenheit for just over an hour. We have a powder coating oven, but a cooking oven works if you can keep the acrylic from resting ON the bars.. Also you may not want to use the oven for food after that, I don't know specifically, but I don't generally trust non-food-grade cooked plastics and cooking areas.
Anyways, this is the pull on a sheet of pre-cooked acrylic:
Installed:
The visibility on this visor is "okay". You can see a bit of flutter in visor in the last picture. It definitely picked up more flaws in the vacuform buck than I was expecting, so the inside is textured. I may give it a go with a polishing tool, and I am going to be coating my buck with a finishing epoxy to get it super smooth.
I still haven't figured out a good mirroring technique. Money is a bit tight so I am not sure if I will spring for a bottle of Mirrachrome. The next step may be to try a sheet of mirrored acrylic and hope the metal doesn't burn the plastic (like it did when I tried mylar coated PETG).
sarlume
Member
That is such a sharp helmet already. I'm loving the black visor rather than the mirror, myself.
Okay, I'm going to ask a noob question since I hope to try this at some point in the future, so I apologize in advance. ^^; Do you vacuform directly after pre-cooking at 100 degrees for a little more than an hour, or do you just cook it while it's over the buck?
Okay, I'm going to ask a noob question since I hope to try this at some point in the future, so I apologize in advance. ^^; Do you vacuform directly after pre-cooking at 100 degrees for a little more than an hour, or do you just cook it while it's over the buck?
No worries about questions. Most of why I post so many pictures is to offer reference for other people to learn from.
Most vacuum forming machines I've seen don't have very reliable temperature controls. I cooked it in a powder coating oven separately for an hour, and then moved it to the vacuform machine to be heated to a higher temperature for actual pulling. I moved it to the vacuform machine fairly quickly, because I wanted to make sure it didn't have time to reabsorb much more water.
The powder coating oven I have is designed for long time cooks. The vacuform machine isn't meant to be used for more than 300 seconds at a time, not hours straight, so not only is it misusing the machine, but the machine starts beeping after 300 seconds, which gets annoying fast. I'd have to keep restarting the heat cycle every 300 seconds, or I could just leave it in the powder coat oven and forget about it for an hour!
Hope that answered the question.
Most vacuum forming machines I've seen don't have very reliable temperature controls. I cooked it in a powder coating oven separately for an hour, and then moved it to the vacuform machine to be heated to a higher temperature for actual pulling. I moved it to the vacuform machine fairly quickly, because I wanted to make sure it didn't have time to reabsorb much more water.
The powder coating oven I have is designed for long time cooks. The vacuform machine isn't meant to be used for more than 300 seconds at a time, not hours straight, so not only is it misusing the machine, but the machine starts beeping after 300 seconds, which gets annoying fast. I'd have to keep restarting the heat cycle every 300 seconds, or I could just leave it in the powder coat oven and forget about it for an hour!
Hope that answered the question.
I have tried. It will actually cook the PETG/Acrylic because the mylar just reflects the heat onto the plastic. I ended up burning the plastic and tried pulling anyways and the mylar just tore and the plastic melted! It was cool, but not very useful. I have a few ideas I'm going to experiment with soon.
monkeyfuj
Member
Pre cooking evaperates all the moisture out of the sheet without heating it to a point where it boils and causes orange peel( the bubbly texture) though there are vacuformers that do allow you to preheat and cook right over the buck
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