Full Scale Storm Trooper Mask

[curious aardvark]

what's a kerbal ?

Helmet is amazing :-)

[Marm]

I've used your ring pack... well tried to, never figured out how to get them out of the VAB :P.

CA: www.kerbalspaceprogram.com

It's just pure joy. And quite educational too.

[Marm]

Well that wasted 3 hours of my day. Sat down to watch the video of your RCS wheels (very very cool by the way), and ended up on a Scott Manley Marathon.

Sometimes I hate YouTube. You stop to watch a 2 minutes video of how to change an oil filter, and 8 hours later you realize you're watching a animated documentary on the mating habits of the Northern Saharan Giraffe.

[Serena]

Geoff this is really first rate modeling. I am going to work on getting these plated and on my sd card so I can start prints whenever I have time. It always impresses me that people share their work like this. It's one of the best things about this industry.

[Geoff]

Geoff this is really first rate modeling. I am going to work on getting these plated and on my sd card so I can start prints whenever I have time. It always impresses me that people share their work like this. It's one of the best things about this industry.

I often release things before I have printed them (because let's face it.. you can only print so many things per day! and my list of 'things-to-print' fills an entire A4 notepad!

So when someone prints one of your models out and then actually does the finishing on it, and does it so well to the point of it looking pretty much like you imagined the end product when you are modelling it... it gives me a great buzz. I just wish I had more physical time to do it, since I started selling printers all my time has been taken up printing parts been a bit sick lately and also as of tomorrow back to another full time job so will have even less time to do the fun stuff - but it might work out for the better. Sometimes having too much free time can be a bad thing instead of getting focused on one thing, I get scattered across 20 projects and nothing gets done! at least now the time I have I should spend a bit more wisely. I have more helmets coming out, mainly the Robocop helmet (taken me 6 months almost to do... so many test prints.. hundreds... ) Scout trooper helmet, Darth Vader , Boba Fett and was going to attempt a Yoda Mask.

[Serena]

I am with you on the scattering across too many projects thing. I tend to be ridiculously ambitious with my to-do lists anyway, and there is something about these printers that is addictive. It's all I want to do.

Good luck on the new job- hope it goes well! If I print the helmet I will post pictures for sure.

[Serena]

Progress so far.... I have 5 or so parts to go. A little bit of cracking in the ABS on the front face plates but should be able to fill them. I love how its turning out. The pieces fit together perfectly. I haven't ever finished something like this before. I'm doing some overall sanding to smooth it all out on each piece. Wondering what order to do this though- should I glue together before I prime, sand, fill? Or sand, fill, prime, etc...then glue together?


Will update new pictures once I get all the pieces done.


Photo Nov 23, 11 33 21 AM.jpg

[Geoff]

AWESOME!!

In all my multi-piece prints, I always do all the Gluing first.

I glue them all together, then I fill all the holes with whatever I can find... Wood putty, plastic putty... basically anything that can be sanded easily - I find just about all of them stick to plastic fairly well.

Once that's done then I sand it all off, get it super smooth... fix any holes I missed and then finally get it ready to primer spray.

I use a black or grey Matte undercoat (acrylic) then work on top of that. Since I dry brush nearly all my models by hand, I do alot of layers but for a storm trooper helmet, a nice white gloss and black gloss spray would do nicely.

[Serena]

AWESOME!!

In all my multi-piece prints, I always do all the Gluing first.

I glue them all together, then I fill all the holes with whatever I can find... Wood putty, plastic putty... basically anything that can be sanded easily - I find just about all of them stick to plastic fairly well.

Once that's done then I sand it all off, get it super smooth... fix any holes I missed and then finally get it ready to primer spray.

I use a black or grey Matte undercoat (acrylic) then work on top of that. Since I dry brush nearly all my models by hand, I do alot of layers but for a storm trooper helmet, a nice white gloss and black gloss spray would do nicely.

Great! That helps a lot. Printing number 13 now. Excited to put it together. My son and his friends are super excited about this project- they have me giving updates to them as well. So this will definitely earn me some cool mom points from the teenagers. ;-)

[Geoff]

Looking forward to seeing the finished result!

Don't worry about cracks in the print. I got a few in mine too, mainly because I was printing at super speeds and some of the parts are rather tall and tended to split on me during the printing process (I imagine the wafts of air or anything else causing the plastic to cool prematurely and buckle caused most of it) But I left them as is, glued all the parts and filled those cracks with the putty before I sanded. Since the whole helmet is going to get coated I figure you shouldn't notice the repair lines.