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Helmet interior finally done
Topic Started: Jun 24 2008, 06:30 PM (2,056 Views)
blinki
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TX 1531
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Just wanted to share with you guys and girls. As I've said before I have to much free time sometimes. Even with all this crap in there my big fat head still fits in :P !

Front :

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Rear:

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Sides:

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Most everythings plastic just painted to look like metal. The only actual metal parts are the side fan housings,the battery boxes and the pieces on the cheek tears and their all aluminum. The whole thing weighs in a little over 4 lbs with the 6 9v batts. The fans in the mouth (Green housing) are mounted to blow out and work suprisingly well. They can be unbolted to be changed if need be. The two side ones pull air from the areators that had thier insides gutted. Need to put something behind the screens in the battery boxes so the 9vs are out of sight.

Inside was shot with black plasti dip spray rubber coating. The red cog and lettering is also plasti dip not decals.

I cut off about a 1/4'' from the dome and the front and back pieces to shrink it down a bit. Also to get rid of the seam above the ears at the dome. My face plate is mounted behind the dome since there was really nothing left of the indent. That and needed a way to mount the brow trim.

Replaced all of the supplied trim with new stuff from Seals Direct in the UK. Used some of the original brow trim as a noise damper for the frown fans. Also used the orig neck trim to seal the switch plate at the base.

Shows the new brow trim, where the seam used to be at the top of the ear and the painted trapazoid:

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*Also shows my hand and camera as well

I hand painted all the markings on the helmet exterior. Flat black base with Semi-flat black/Satin black for the lines and borders. A dark blue for the tube stripes that Im thinking I might change to black undecided at the moment.

Lots more but Im not trying to write a book :P ! So all in all Im happy with it....for now :D
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Gonk
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Ill be the first to comment. WOW I WANT!!!!
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TheLoneKnight
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Very nice work! There should be plenty of air flow it that bucket.
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kaijukilla
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Nice Job man!!! Im jealous ;)
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COS_Vader
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That's pretty darned impressive! Is that an MR CE helm?
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DarthAgnon
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That's one sick helmet. Nice job!
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blinki
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Thanks for the complements all. Yes, it can get pretty breezy in there. Its the stock kit helmet that has a lot of extra plastic chopped out of the dome, face and rear. That was done to try to kinda shrink it down a bit.

You can really see the difference here. Stock white FX vs Mod TX
Posted Image

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Darth Emphatic
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Most Impressive. I would love to see a little more description on your actually fan system and the tubing used, What model fans did you use, Where did you get them, etc etc. It looks so very clean, I would love to get my bucket looking that way. And, can you post a closeup of your aerator from the outside?
Edited by Darth Emphatic, Jul 9 2008, 03:56 PM.
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blinki
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Ill see what I can come up with in the next couple of days. My garrison mates wanted the same. I have a couple of the aerator but they just never seem to come out to well. Ill try again though.
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Darth Emphatic
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blinki
Jul 9 2008, 06:47 PM
Ill see what I can come up with in the next couple of days. My garrison mates wanted the same. I have a couple of the aerator but they just never seem to come out to well. Ill try again though.
Thanks! It is all much appreciated.
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DarthAgnon
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also, if you don't mind...What did you use for the liner around the bottom opening of your bucket? Looks like it would be more comfortable on the neck.
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blinki
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The neck and brow trim are both from Seals Direct in the UK. I belive the neck is SWR150 and the brow is US 52. I could be wrong on the brow so double check with the FISD. They might also have a US supplier now.
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blinki
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Aerator pic:

Hope its what you're looking for
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Try not to notice the dust. Also the weirdness that looks like glue at the base of the aerator is just a reflection onto the helmet they bolt on.
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crazas
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Hey Blinki, that's IMPRESSIVE !!!!
I just have 2 fans in my bucket but now you just pushed me to do something better!!!

GREAT JOB!!!
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blinki
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I'm not the best at taking pictures so bear that in mind.

The first thing I discovered after doing my application pics in the sun was "Dear God my head is hot!" So I set out to see what could be done about it.

After looking around at various styles of fan set ups I began to notice that most bring air in but have no way to get rid of the hot air inside the helmet itself. The only design that addressed this problem that I found is by mounting 2 fans in the back of the dome and very carefully cutting out the vertical lines on the back trapezoids. Not something I was willing to do because of a concern for looks and skill. Having never seen this Mod in person I declined to take on the challenge. It just seemed to me at the time to be a little to hairy to do. Cutting up a helmet and messing it up was an overriding fear. Little did I know the journey I was about to embark on.

In looking at helmet systems you will come across the "Star Wars Visual Dictionary" showing a cut away "Stormtrooper helmet". After seeing this I thought of building something along these lines. Something to show the kiddies when your asked "Can I see your helmet, please". (Yes I added the please most kids now days don't say it but hey its my story). My thinking "Better then handing them a blank shell of ABS with some hot glued lenses in it". Before you get out the pitch forks and torches this is just my reasoning I use to convince myself into doing this. Whatever interior you have in your bucket if it works for you and your happy with it great. They are just as cool stock as they are modified. And yes nobody can see any of this crap from the outside. Now the story of how I modified my helmet or as some would say "My journey into madness"

First off I wanted to get rid of the creaky plastic sound. Very difficult to be stealthy with a creaky helmet. So I shot the interior black with "PlastiDip" a spray rubber coating from Lowe's. After a couple of coats it no longer had the creaky sound. I was happy. Then I noticed there were some places I couldn't get to so I tore the helmet apart to get at those places. Done? Nope. Now for some reason I thought “Imperial cog on the top of the dome”. This is where I found out stickers don’t really like “PlastiDip”. So I re-shot the interior with red "Plasti Dip" and used the large cog decal I had as a stencil. I stuck it down after the red had fully dried and then overshot it with a couple coats of black. Then just peeled up the sticker before the black had fully dried. Also did my name in Galactic basic on the back as well with a stencil cut from Blue Painters tape. The Duct tape of the masking tape world.

If you use the “PlastiDip” do it after you have put it together since glue doesn’t really get along with the rubber coating.

FROWN SCREEN:
Since the 3 frown teeth were already cut out I decided to add the 4th tooth which meant pulling and replacing the mouth screen I had already installed. For the mouth screen I replaced the window screen I had originally used with a grease splatter shield from the grocery store. The doubled up window screen just never looked good to me.
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LINER:
In trying various liners/padding I decided to stick with the hard hat liner. This was based on thinking I could get more air circulating around my melon with the hard hat liner vs. a padded/foam one. Not saying one is better then another just my reasoning. I moved it all the way to the back of the helmet by chopping off the ginormous ratchet gizmo adjustment knob since it only needs to fit my big grape anyway. Then pop riveted the straps together and made a cover that slips over it so it wouldn’t scratch my dainty head out of some extra grey truck headliner material I had laying around. I replaced the front forehead piece as well.

CHIN/EAR CAPS
Next I filled the chin and ears with epoxy and sank a bolt in them so they bolt on and didn't depend on glue to hold them on. Yes I'm paranoid about losing stuff. Turns out later this was handy in that the chin bolt (Vocoder) was the same thread as a dbl threaded stud I had laying in my junk box. This now became the mounting point for the "red" plate.

AERATORS:
The aerators were gutted to replace the faucet screen of the FX ones. Since I was going to use them as part of the ventilation system they needed to be hollow. The black decals that came with the kit I didn't use. I just sanded them and painted them black.

Got rid of the crappy plastic “screens” the come with the kit by pressing in new ones. The easiest way to do this I found was to place the aerator thread side up on the workbench and place a piece of screen on top. Then line up the threaded ring, thread side down and tap it with a hammer. It will push the screen into the aerator like a die. You can then use a snug fitting dowel to push it the remainder of the way. This way it stays flat and tight along the sides of the aerator body. Then they were epoxied in place and the insides were painted white. Metal window screen was used since its the closest match to a Hovi-mix screen that I could come up with.
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The aerators are mounted to the helmet by the drilling out the helmet and using the threaded ring to mount them. All of this is done to try to mimic not duplicate the look of the "Hovi-mix pa" tips used on the original helmets.

CUTTING DOWN THE BOBBLE HEAD:
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Once again I sat looking at a somewhat completed helmet and noticed how friggin’ big it is. I also did not like the spot right above the ears where all the panels meet. Posted Image
The stock FX Third World Dictator eyebrow trim didn't help matters much. So with the help of FISD and an order to Seals Direct in the UK , replacements were on the way.

I decided to take out some of the height and width of the helmet. By trimming sides of the face plate and the rear panel I was able to narrow the width. I only ended up trimming a little from each side maybe a 2 to 3 mm for a total of 4 to 6 mm per side. The bottom edge indent on the front half of the dome was also trimmed down a little. This was done because at this point I was sill assembling the helmet as per the FX instructions. I trimmed a little off the top of the face plate and rear panel. The amount I trimmed for the top of the faceplate and the rear section is the measurement above the ear where all the panels meet. Basically how much lower it would have to be to be hidden behind the ear. I then put it back together the way FX recommends.

Since I now had the new rubber brow and neck trim on the way I realized there was going to be a problem in mounting the brow trim. Being that it is a U channel it that would need to slip under the dome and the face plate would have to mount from behind the dome. I would need to pull the face plate again.

Argh..Hate doing the same job 50 times over.

Ended up leaving the dome and the rear section as one piece. I cut the dome again at this point so that the indent is gone.
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The face plate would now mount behind the dome being held by just the side bolts at the ear, the neck opening trim, the bottom ear screws and the pressure of being forced against the inside of the dome itself. I was a little unsure about this arrangement. Oh well, to late to turn back now. Then thinking about it realized the original helmet is only 2 pieces put basically together the same way. It turned out to be pretty rock solid and allowed the brow trim to mount to the dome without glue. Sadly I have no pics of this process. Was to busy thinking" Oh crap what if this doesn't work"

SIDE FANS:
Now the problem of how to suck air in and move it around. While looking at the "Star Wars Visual Dictionary" pics I noticed the parts by the "ears" looked a lot like a laptop CPU fan. So on to "Flea-Bay" in search of fans. Found a pair that would work: total price about 10 bucks shipped. Had to modify them and cut them down. No surprise there. When I tested them I noticed they moved about 3 or 4 times the air of the frown pair as well as half the noise running on a single 9v a piece. They are mounted with bolts behind the ears and from the bottom ear screw.
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Now I just needed to solve the duct problem of how to get air from the aerator to the fans. Lots of ideas were tried with varying degrees of success. I finally settled on using 2 tubes per side trying to stay cheap..Ah.. economical that is. They needed to be a really thin wall light tube. I ended up using some fish tank tubes from the pet store cut at some really crazy angles on a miter saw. Lots of trial and error here. Shot them black and covered them with some screen, made some plastic fittings for the ends for the fan side and they were good to go. Posted Image The fittings are plastic made from a "No Parking" sign from Lowe's that I heated up with a propane torch over 2 pieces of electrical conduit until they took the shape of the pipes. Then cut to the contour of the squirrel cage fan housing just to clean up that edge. Purely cosmetic.

The squirrel cage fans are butted up against some foam padding in the tube which creates a sort of 3 sided box at the base. Done to limit the amount of air sucked up from inside of the helmet. The foam is just a cheap camping sleeping pad from Wal-Mart.

FRONT FANS:
Now that I had an idea of how to get air in I needed a way to get it out. After thinking about this for a while and kicking around the idea of the back trapezoid venting I decided to reverse the fans at the mouth instead so they would blow out as exhaust. I would need some sort of housing to mount them. After trying various ideas and numerous prototypes -none really fitting the bill- I decided it was time to scratch build my own.

At this point I realized I would need to build a super low budget Vac-Former to get what I needed. Going overboard you say? Maybe, but...that's kind of this whole project. It was built and some MDF bucks were made for the prototype frown fan housing. I had never done anything like this before so there was a serious learning curve. The best way to learn is truly by just doing it. Worst case you waste some plastic. After the third pull I had something I could use.
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On a side note if you use the signs to do this make sure the writing stays on your finished side. If you don’t it will come through as high spots to the finished side if you have the writing towards the mold.

I trimmed up the housing and now needed a way to mount it. Obviously drilling through the face plat was out. SO I constructed a mount by using scrap ABS stacked together with a nut inside. This way I’m able to remove the panel if need be. Posted Image

The fans were also cut down as far as they could be so they would be compact. By cut down I mean just a ring around the fan blades. Krazy glued them to the housing and yes, the will come back off.

The little bars in front of the fans are just straightened out paper clips.

When the fan assembly was mounted in the helmet I immediately noticed the lovely buzzing sound from plastic on plastic. So I used the original FX brow trim (weather-stripping) cut down to form a gasket that insulate one from another. The Allen bolts secure the assembly to the face plate so it is removable if a fan goes down.
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The fan batteries mount with Velcro below the Red panel.

REAR BOXES

With the 2 9V batteries and fans in the nose I needed to balance out the helmet from being front heavy. So then I constructed 2 boxes to hold the 2 side fans' batteries. The 2 battery boxes in the back of the helmet owe there design to SW VD.
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They were made of some junk aluminum siding sanded down and polished on a buffing wheel. The rear of the boxes were made by just bending the metal in a vise. With the sides pop riveted on. They also use the Grease splatter screen. The Allen head bolts are functional and allow the covers to be removed to get at the batteries. They hold 2 9V batteries apiece, 2 for fans, 2 for spares/ballast.

SWITCH PANEL

The switch panel is made from the same "No Parking" sign as the tube fittings. Just heated it up and bent what I needed to with a small butane torch . It mounted to the chin bolt which was a total fluke on my part. Didn't plan that, it just kind of worked out that way. The hole is where a speaker was going to go but feedback proved to be to much of an issue at the time so its out for now. Another project for later I guess. The original neck opening trim was used to seal off the edge of the plate near the new rubber neck trim. Wanted to use some more spacey type switches but these can be turned on and off by easily reaching up with your finger. And they were free from the junk box. Always a bonus.

When making the switch panel it became really apparent that the face plate is not symmetrical which was a joy to work with. The panel was constructed in 3 pieces. The base and the two front pieces. For the front pieces I used the small butane torch to heat up the plastic sheet and put a return (90 degree angle) on 1 edge then I cut the shape I needed.
Posted Image Posted Image
They looked rather plain and boring so I cut out a grid pattern and backed it with some sheet aluminum flashing. It’s very thin think paper or a razor blade. Epoxy them in place then joined the 2 front pieces to the base plate by melting them together using an old crappy soldering iron. This was my only option I could come up with since all the adhesives I had had failed.

WIRING

I soldered and used heat shrink for all the wiring connections. The front exhaust fans are run in series which puts the voltage above spec for them but they seem to be running fine.

The side fans I didn’t want to risk pumping a ton of power to since I had no spec on them. So I Figured better to be safe than sorry and stuck with a single 9V battery per fan.

All the wiring is run through steel braid. No real reason for it, I just happen to like the look of it. Thought about getting one of those "Pimp My Ride" engine hose kits from the Auto parts store but this was being done on the cheap. So I found some coax cable with a stainless steel ground shield and stripped the jacket off, separated the cable from the core, and Presto... instant braid. Best part, it was free! Posted Image

LENS:

On to the lenses. I used a single piece set up cut from a face shield available from Star Saftey. SKU # 290877. The face shield runs about $32 + a $10 under $75 fee. I had a bad experience with gluing the 2 piece lenses in. The lens is held in with 2 cubicle clips from Staples. Posted Image These were ground down, painted, and glued into the helmet. If you add a small piece of rubbuer to the jaws of the clip it really helps the clip hold the lens better. I need to heat up the lens to get a better curve/fit. The only problem is its not coated, so they tend to scratch easily. But for the price I can get about 5 lens strips out of 1 face shield so I can always pop in a new one when one gets to bad. That and can always change to No.5 green which looks good to.

PAINTING:

I didn't want to use any of the decals that come with the kit. I liked the detail-concept of the stickers just not the colors. Originally I was going to go the all black no decal route then I saw the full size MR CE helmet. Granted the MR CE helmet uses just flat/semi-flat traps with no detail from what I could tell. So then I decided to hand paint all the markings on the helmet. I used flat black as a base and a semi-flat black for the lines and borders of the traps. Which look to be just solid black. Most times you can't tell that the lines are there until the light hits it.. The blue tube stripes are also painted on. I'm thinking of changing these to black at some point.

I tried various paint schemes/colors on the fan housing and switch panel. Then while watching one of the Star Wars bonus DVD’s in an interview they talked about the “lived in look to Star Wars”. So I decided to repaint it and weather them this time. Posted Image Posted Image

Painted the panels using the standard modeling trick from ages ago for getting scratches and such. The base was painted with a color “Worn Steel” where I wanted it to look like paint had been scratched or flaked off. When dry was coated with rubber cement and when it was dry shot with the top color. Then just rub off the rubber cement and instant scratches.
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The Tube fittings were painted a bronze color.

BOTTOM LINE:
So that's it. Now "how much does this thing weigh?” you ask. An empty, no fans, no batteries, non-modified FX is weighing in at 1.6 to 1.8lbs. Mine is coming in at just over 4lbs with batteries. So not to bad when you figure there are 4 fans and six 9V batteries. Without the six 9vs it comes in at 3.4lbs. The six 9V batteries add about a pound of weight.

I'm sure I will tinker around with it some more clean up some stuff and so on.


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