3-D Printed Clone Helmet (Work-in-Progress)

Hello All-

I’m working on a fun new project and wanted to share what I am doing. I’m trying to create a lighter phase 2 animated clone helmet. My current helmet from KW Designs is beautiful, but painful to wear. I have to limit my trooping time to avoid headaches from the weight of the helmet putting pressure on my neck. My goal is to create a helmet that looks as good as my current helmet, but with a finished weight closer to a TK helmet.

I found one person on the clone detachment who successfully completed a Phase 2 animated 3-D print. He was very helpful in sharing what he knew, and sending me a link to the file he had used. But, a friend had done all of the print work for him. His friend has since passed away, so obviously couldn’t help with the specifics of how he did the print, (actual print settings.)

This basically meant figuring out the project from scratch, but at least I knew it could be done.

I have a strong ally in my teenage son who wants to go into Materials Engineering for a career. He is obsessed with all things 3-D printing, so I tasked him with figuring out the perfect print settings for the project. In return, I purchased him the best software out there and all the filament he wanted.

We started out by printing three “mini models” of the clone helmet, scaling each one up larger in size. The mini models all printed perfectly, so we figured it was time to dive into “the big print.”

I asked a lot of questions from the makers within our garrison, and they provided guidance on slicing up the print into more manageable chunks. We opted to divide up the print into a front half and the back half. If this failed, our plan was to divide it into smaller pieces. We’ve had issues in the past with “phase shift” issues on longer 3-D prints. They would fail about 80% of the way through with either stringing issues, (the print looks like spaghetti), or pieces printing with pieces improperly aligned. Each of the two halves would take 40 – 50 hours each to print. Could we get through such long prints without phase shift issues?

We were about to find out. I was prepared for this project to be a failure, or at least for our first few attempts to look like a molten plastic mess.

We started the first half, (the back of the helmet), on Monday, February 18th. The print had excellent first layer adhesion. I was so excited! Maybe the print could make it through to completion.

We are two days into the first print and here are some images of the results so far.

Images below show:
– first layer adhesion
– two hours into first print. Simplify 3D put in some extra support structures up top. Not sure why?
– the extra support structures fail with some impressive stringing and a screw falls off the printer! But, the print keeps going. We’re going to let this one play out.
– the print at 33 hours
– the print at 46 hours
– the “mini model” next to my existing helmet from KW Designs

• This topic was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Jeremy Dizon.
• This topic was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Jeremy Dizon.