I've had a 3d printer for a while now (the FLSUN QQS). Ever since I got it I've wanted to make something big and useful. So I decided to try to print the helmet of a Scout Trooper from Star Wars ep 6.
I of course did a few test prints to work dial in the settings. I was using Cura and doing these tests on a new full roll of white PLA. The manufacturer was Overture and boy oh boy, it sucked! Under extrusion galore. I went looking around online to find out why and I came across an old reddit thread explaining that the user was also experiencing under extrusion with Overture PLA. The user decided to weigh the Overture PLA against a higher quality PLA brand and found out that the Overture stuff weighed less! Apparently this stuff is less dense than other PLA brands. Yuck!
I also tried printing it at .4 mm layer height but it never seems to work. I ended up printing the whole thing at .3 mm layer height and just doing that immediately helped. I turned up the Flow rate to 110% and the extruder temp to 220 C for good measure (the upper rating for overture pla).
After doing the test prints I was ready to print all the parts. I decided to try to print the thing in 4 sections. The Top half of the helmet, the bottom half, the mask and the visor. I cut the helmet in half using blender and removed the built in water marks (the link to the guy who made the model down below). I also cut a small concave area for my ears using the boolean modifier.
Each of these 4 pieces took more than 8 hours to print. The mask was the fastest at 8 & 1/2. The visor took 9 hours, and the two halves of the helmet took 11 hours each! I had the speed at 60 mm per second for inner walls and infill, 30 mm for outer walls, and the infill as cubic and 12% density. I even scaled the models down by 5% to fit my head better. I knew it was gonna be a long print time but I guess I wasn't expecting 10 hours average per part!
At this point all the big stuff has been printed and I only need to print the details. I'm in the process of sanding and painting all the big stuff right now. Enjoy some pictures!
Yoink this guys Loink: Biker Scout Helmet (Scout Trooper) By SurfinBird132
