Making a Remlok Space Helmet - Part 9
With my new supply of clear resin, I had printed the second half of the front visor. Now I needed to sand and polish the section before resin-welding the two halves together.
This involved a number of ever increasing grit sandpaper and a large bowl of water. Wet sanding has the added advantage of keeping the resin dust from killing me. Which is nice.
I then kicked off the second half of the rear dome printing, to run overnight.
While that was printing, I welded the front sections at last.
This is going to need more sanding before it's finished.
Next morning the rear dome had completed printing, so after removing all the supports and washing and curing the part, I then taped it to the other half to hold it in place while resin-welding. This time I sanded AFTER welding, for a cleaner finish.
The result so far is pretty good. I am now waiting for some drill sanding attachments with a range of sanding grits from 80 to 3000 (very very fine). I am going to test these on the rear dome and if successful, apply them to the front visor too.
Currently the helmet is all welded together, so I am now turning to the electronics. I plan to put blue LEDs in the ear muff and an LED strip under the cross piece.
Part 8 - Shiny
After a long break, I was in a position to purchase a volume of clear resin to resume printing the Remlock visor. In the interim I had managed to sand and polish the left half I had, to successfully make it optically clear. Not perfect, but good enough for cosplay.
Yesterday I set the right-front half printing and it ran overnight.
By the time I got up this morning, it had finished and unlike the last attempt that ran out of resin, this one was perfect.
I washed it in isopropanol alcohol and cured it under UV lamps after removing all the supports. Then I set it on the other parts to check the size was okay. One of my cat co-pilots (Charlie) approved.
You can see the difference between the polished section and the newly printed half. I now need to resin-weld the two halves together. This is done with a brush dipped in resin and a UV torch. I plan to do the sanding and polishing first, then weld the parts.
Since I obtained my 3D printer, I have periodically printed one or two Elite: Dangerous ships out. Sticking with the scale 1:1000 (1mm = 1m) it has made the size of the ships really stand out.
If you compare the Type-9 Heavy with the Sidewinder the size difference is astounding; what's more, the Sidewinder carries an SRV which is itself, the size of a Range Rover!
As my 3D fleet began to assemble, I gave some thought to where to store and/or display them. Glass cabinet with them all painted gold? Hung from the ceiling on fishing line? Big shelves? None of these options really appealed.
As part of the 3D printing process, the models are hollow and have a "drain hole" in the bottom to let excess resin drain out during the washing stage. My idea was to create a display stand that plugged into this hole. That idea didn't go so well, as a stand per model meant a pretty large shelf. As you can see in the photo above, even jammed together the ships I've printed already cover a 2m window ledge.
Then I thought "Why not mount them on a blueprint?", so I tiled (printed across multiple pages) an old CorelDRAW size chart out to see how it would look.
Not too shabby, but this poster was out of date. Also, I don't have room for too many A0 posters in my study. I was loath to glue my models to a poster as I might want to play with them after all!
Instead, I found what I hope is a better solution. Small Neodymium magnets that can be glued into the drain holes of the models, a poster printed at A3 with one poster per ship manufacturer, with an adhesive magnetic sheet stuck to the back.
I have hammered out a design I am happy with, which just leaves getting the posters all done, sent off to be printed, adding the magnetic backing and fixing magnets to the ships.
Then as I finish printing the remaining ships, I just need to add a magnet and stick them out.