Making wearable star wars armor 3D printer

We are looking at purchasing the 3D print files for this old republic trooper costume: https://www.etsy.com/listing/944601844/old-republic-trooper-wearable-armor?ref=shop_home_recs_1

I’ll need to do the 3D printer class but I’m hoping someone can tell me what size the bed is for our 3D printers and which one would be best to use for this kind of project. Any advice is appreciated!

To begin to answer either of your questions, the first thing that needs to be determined is what material you plan to use to print the files with? From that, I’ll be better positioned to assist you in which printer would be the best as well as its specifications.

I can give you some advise on this.

A while back, I ventured in to printing a full Iron Man Suit. I never ended up completing it, but printed about 20% of the suit. From my experience, there are a few basics to consider when embarking on this journey.
The printing from what I experienced ended up being the least effort of the whole process. Getting ready for printing and post production work was the more involved process. Even with great files, you still have things to consider. Most models are going to have to be scaled to your individual needs. Seemed easy enough at first, followed directions and scaled the model by the percentage I calculated. Problems that came from that. My dimensions were proportionately different from the person the model was scaled to. I would scale the head piece, finally get a piece that fit, but that scale wouldn’t work for other parts. The same scale factor would give me incorrect fit on the hands, or legs. The best solution I found was to take a 3d scan of myself, and use a program to scale the model to fit that. I used a xbox kinectt scanner and some software I found online to do the scan. This seemed to be the most accurate way to scale the model, but was time consuming.
Also, most pieces after being scaled then have to be sliced to fit the printer you are using. This isn’t the hardest thing to do, but takes time and effort to ensure easier and stronger glue ups of the pieces. That brings me to the post production part. The gluing, sanding, body working and painting of the printed parts will likely take more hands on printing than the actual printing time. Some people love that part of the project, some don’t.
The files I purchased came from a website that offers a ton of “suits” files. They also have a lot of great info about the process and expectations of taking on a project like this. I would highly suggest giving it a read.
https://all3dp.com/2/3d-printed-iron-man-suit/
None of this is meant to discourage anyone from this idea, just my own personal experience with the subject. In my prime of it, I had 3 printers running almost 24 hours a day printing parts. I would usually get heavy into it for a few weeks, then slowly taper off as I tried to catch up on all of the post production work. I used printers with a 310mmx 310mm bed, with 410mm print height, which I believe is on the larger side of “hobby” grade printers. The printers I used were Adminlab printers from Amazon.


If you have any questions, or want to discuss it more, I’d be happy to help.

Assuming ABS but totally open to ideas there too. Something sturdier would be preferred. And something that looks like ceramic, smooth, shiny, white color.

Thanks for the insight James! Luckily the person we’re looking at buying from is willing to scale to our size and splice the file to fit our 3D printer for a pretty reasonable extra fee. I’m hoping one of the printers at the space is large enough to do a few pieces whole.

Below is a guide describing the different attributes of different filaments. Might I suggest possibly polycarbonate or nylon. ABS is brittle and breaks easily. It is very prone to warping. Nylon and PC are prone to warping as well but for different reasons which are more easily manageable than ABS. Both Nylon and PC will require hotends that can reach pretty high temperatures, and ABS needs an environment to be heated. Making just controlling one factor, the hotends, much easier to deal with. Also, PC and Nylon have some flexibility in them once printed whereas ABS is more brittle and not as strong.

We only have 2 printers that would be able to do those materials and the better of the 2 would be the Qidi X Max. The Qidi’s build area is 300x250x300 mm.

The other printer would be the TAZ and its build area is 298x275x250 mm. The TAZ does have the ability to print 2 filaments into one print. This can come in handy should you have a file that may need supports in an area that you would be unable to remove them from. You would just use a filament called HIPS or ASA. These two filaments are able to be dissolved in water so there would be no need to physically remove the supports making post-processing that much easier.

If you need a larger build area to print to. Our printer with the largest build area is the CR-10s. The one that was housed in the wooden laser cut enclosure before the renovation. Its build area is 300x300x400 mm. However, it has the stock hotend on it and would need to be upgraded to print at higher temps.

I may have an all-metal hotend here or there may be a way to upgrade it from the parts that are at the shop. I didn’t really look that much into it.

Hope this helps you out some. Feel free to continue bouncing questions off me if you have more. As promised here’s the link to the filament guide.

http://www.simplify3d.com/support/materials-guide/

How do you feel about pla or pla+?

I mean it’s the basic building block of 3D printing. It is the easiest to print with and requires the lowest amount of babysitting as long as the settings in the slicer are proper for the printer in question.

Thanks so much @dash3811 !! That was super helpful.

Derailing, but any ETA on when the CR-10 will be back in the shop? No rush, but I’ve got a print that I’m going to start soon and trying to figure out if I should print it in two sections on the Poly or wait until I can knock it out on the larger bed.

@lretzer yeah its almost done. once finished ill place it on the file cabinet where the qidi was at until the case is complete

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