WTC's Customs & Mods: ESB - FETT HELMET

[agonistes86]

Awesome! This will be a masterpiece.

View attachment 549892

Great idea printing out the colour guide in 1:6 scale. When painting the armor, I had the references up on my screen, but having it physically next to the parts should really help as well.

 

[D.R.37]

^^^I’m hoping it will be a mini stencil transfer for each of the steps

 

[Danepaul]

great work

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

Hey folks. I wanted to give a status update on the helmet progress.

To save me some time I reached out to a local laser cutting service to precisely and accurately cut the “T” visors out of the welding shield for me, and I just found out that all the “T” visors are done and I should be receiving them in the mail this week.

I’m running into some issues with getting a rangefinder stalk cut out of metal. The companies that have the lasers to do it, don’t seem to be interested in a small project like this, and the ones that want to work with me, don’t have powerful enough lasers to cut metal. I’m going to look into the accuracy and cost of water jet cutting. I’ve also bought some clear tough resin for the rangefinder itself. If a metal stalk isn’t feasible, then I can use the clear tough resin for the stalk too. I don’t think the real one is made of metal, just painted metal, but I’m not giving up on metal just yet.

speaking of the tough clear resin. I got it primarily to make the rangefinder clear, but since it’s tough, I wanted to see how it preformed on the helmet itself. I also printed out the microscopic circuit board, and the chin cup. The resin is very tricky to work with. It needs to be kept at 85° the whole time, and other little annoying things. Because it’s clear it’s hard to see any details on the helmet either, and after removing all the supports it gets all scratched up on the inside, making it impossible to assess the quality of the print, it just looks like a Fett shaped ice cube. I wouldn’t have any idea if the print is garbage or perfect until I prime it for paint, and that's a long way to go just to check print quality. So I’m going to stick with my original gray two part formulation, and use the clear resin for the small parts.

Pics below!

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

Here’s a few pics of the Casio circuit board. I printed the thicker, low detail originals along with the high detail, thin versions, and ironically the thin, high detail versions consistently came out better. You can see the little circuit board details even now with the part being transparent. The scale looks perfect as well. I can’t wait to se how these look all painted up and peeking through the “keyholes.”

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

I had to rethink my approach to the "T" visor. The outline of the shape I cut out of the replacement welding face shield was satisfactory, but after heating the visor into shape, the shape wasn't right precisely. There's a specific contour to the arc of the visor at the top, and there's also some subtlety to the flat vertical portion of the visor, that can't be achieved by simply heating it up and bending it to shape.

I decided to make another helmet, but just the visor and the flat area that surrounds it and do a ton of sanding and filling to get the actual visor shape to emerge. I'm going to make a metal template out of the master, and use that to place the flat visors on, so that when I heat them, they'll soften up and with a little help from gravity they will rest flat on the template and into the perfect shape. That's the plan at least.

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

The chin cups are turning out great. I can’t get a decent reference image for scaling. These look slightly over scaled, but real chin cups always look a little too big to me, so I’m still figuring out the scale. Let me know what you think.

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

The clear resin is looking great for the Rangefinder. I just can't get the bottom to print correctly. The whole piece is nothing but right angles, which need supports, which leads to the supports fusing together on the supports side. I'm experimenting with a new orientation on the build plate as well as updating the supports. I'm going to clear coat these with a UV protecting clear coat so that they don't become transparent amber after years of UV light hitting the clear resin. You can just mask the parts that remain clear when you paint the rest of the rangefinder. But I'm very pleased with the scale, and the character of the translucence.

I'm also researching how to get the tiny red lights to light up. No promises yet, but I do have some promising ideas utilizing magnetic induction. They likely won't blink though. If lights don't work, then I'm just going to paint them translucent red, which may result in some light piping from the translucent areas of the part.

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

Lastly is the rangefinder stalk. I still want this to be metal, but it's getting hard to find someone who has a laser that can do it. I need a fiber laser for the accuracy, and it needs to be 500-1000 watt. If that is something that can't happen, then I will use the clear resin for the stalks. The resin is very tough. The only issue I have found at all with the resin printed stalks are that when it's cured it wants to warp a bit, likely due to one side getting cured faster than the other. The good news is that this resin can be heated in water and re-shaped. I had the guy cutting my "T" visors for me try to cut the stalks with his plasma cutter, but it just looked like a melted toothpick. He tried a second time with a 50 watt fiber laser but it takes a very long time as it's basically engraving over the same lines repeatedly until it burns all the way through. He's sending me two test cuts using this method. I'll post pics if they look good (the pic. below is the plasma cut). I'm also looking into how to potentially electroplate resin prints with nickel. It will double tensile strength, and give it an actual metal "skin," a few microns thick.

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

I’m also toying with making the alternate hand plate that the Sandtrooper with the black pauldron wears.

 

[agonistes86]

That is some awesome stuff, Kris! Amazing attention to detail.

I just got my new desks today and plan on setting them up next weekend, so I can continue on my Fett as well soon. Very eager to get started again, especially after seeing all this fabulous work!

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

I've found a way to plate the 3d prints in real metal, probably zinc or nickel. It will double the tensile strength, and provide an actual metal base layer for the chipped paint effect, and increase the awesome by 1000%! If this works I'm going to have to revisit my Mando figures.

This may take a week or two to figure out. Stay tuned....

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

In other news.

the test cut aluminum rangefinder stalks arrived today with the “T” visors.

Everything looks great, the only issue is the rangefinder stalk is too thin, so I'm addressing that.

 

[LoveMinusZero]

Good Lord, this thread!

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

The laser cut rangefinder stalk seats almost perfectly in the ear covering mechanism. I really hope these can be cut thicker for me. It fits so perfectly shape-wise, and it was basically cut from a tracing/illustration I made of the real thing. The only missing detail is another tiny hole right at the base of the stalk, where it meets the “O.” That hole makes the stalk super weak structurally, right where it needs to be it’s strongest. This detail is completely obstructed once the ear covering is assembled, so I eliminated it to make the piece stronger.

 

[TaliBane]

I'm always astounded by what goes on in this thread. I know a ton about this stuff yet learn so much every time I tune in. And I so admire the ability and desire to always take it to the next level.

 

[Cagoda]

Wow this is incredible!

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

I'm always astounded by what goes on in this thread. I know a ton about this stuff yet learn so much every time I tune in. And I so admire the ability and desire to always take it to the next level.

Dude, that means a lot coming from your sharp eyes. I have to put in the extra effort now. If I can pass the Talibane test then I can fool anyone.

 

[D.R.37]

The Ultimate Fett helmet.

 

[Waste Time Continuum]

Progress update.

I’ve been educating myself on electroplating. Which is a method of bonding a layer of metal on a conducive surface. I’ll spare the long boring explanation, and just say there’s a very good chance I will be offering a metal option for this helmet. It will at least double the tensile strength of the underlying resin print with no detail loss as the layers of metal are bonded to the object in microscopic layers. Which will help me to replicate the accurate thinness of the helmet while keeping it structurally sound (and light).

Heres a pic of all the gear I have so far for that process. My neighbors are going to think I’m making some Breaking Bad stuff in here!

I’ve also been working on designing a metal template for accurately shaping the heated visors.