An intro to 3d printed armor.
“Cosplay armor” is a broad topic. It could be a few plates like The Mandalorian wears, or a form-fitting Ironman or a massive Warhammer. In this introduction we’re going to keep things kinda generic and cover specific cases individually.
Making it fit
Armor is not simply a case of “You’re 5’10 so that’s 90% scaling”. Everyone is different. You might be 90% scaling in the chest and 93% for the legs, etc. The length of your leg bones isn’t the same as someone else even if they’re the same overall height. Some armors have lots of open space at the joints so this isn’t as critical. Others its more important so you don’t have parts colliding at the joints and locking up your range of motion.
When Starbase3d builds a suit for you we are going to be with you starting at the very beginning by developing a digital avatar that matches your body. We’re there with you discussing what you want and what you need and what your long- and short-term goals are so your suit meets your needs now, and your wants 6 months down the line.
Material selection
PLA/PLA+ has a “glass transition temperature” (the temp at which it will start to soften and warp) in the 115°f/45°c range. This is well within summer highs around the world from Las Vegas to Sydney. Car trunks in the sun get much hotter in a short time and the airport tarmac while waiting to load on a plane is even higher and we don’t want your armor to deform on the way to the convention. Unless you insist on some flavor of PLA/PLA+ we do all our body parts in PETG or ASA for the better heat tolerance and impact resistance.
Helmets, intricate parts and high detail items we like to do on our resin printers. Yes, we have resin machines big enough for helmets
To print parts for a person you need a printer big enough to, well… print a person.
And then a room to dedicate to it and so on.
Size really does matter.
By now you’ve been around the internet and read a lot about making your own armor. You’ve probably read how you can do it with a small $200 home printer. I won’t lie to you - it can be done. You can also bail out a swimming pool with a cereal bowl; buts its really the tough way to go.
The issue with using a small printer to make large items is you have to glue, weld, seam and fill until all those seams disappear as if they never existed. That’s adding a LOT of work to your build. Not to mention that a chest plate in 6 pieces is 6 more points of failure. How much do you really trust that glue? So now you’re backing all those parts with fiberglass. There’s got to be a better way.
Wouldn’t you much rather have parts meant to be single pieces as actual single pieces? Single-print big parts requires large printers. Meaning those ‘big’ 400mm machines you see on Amazon are really just ‘mid-sized’ in the context of armor.
