I was supposed to wear Dark Helmet for 2016's Halloween costume, but unfortunately, only adults would know it and laugh. Kids don't get it. I was always batting around the idea of doing a Buzz Lightyear costume. I had planned for about half a month and worked a lot with Blender to get to the end product.
The planning:
My first step with any armor is I need to have a model of myself or someone basically my size to start. I found A file to start with and then re-sized him to my measurements(i.e. height, arm size, leg size, etc.). As a base line to test the accuracy, I exported the files from Pepakura that I used for Halo Armor and matched it up to my 3d scan to determine the accuracy.
Moving on, I need Buzz Lightyear. I found this file by a very talented designer.
I started placing pieces of armor onto my 3d body scan. Buzz Lightyear does not fit a normal human's body type. Some modifications were made:
Since these pieces of armor are way bigger than my print bed, I needed to cut up each item to smaller pieces. The chest alone was about 33 pieces:
Each spool of 1.75mm filament can print roughly 400,000mm safely. Overall, with 64 pieces to print, I needed to make a schedule so I could better plan out the print by spool. This printer was going day and night starting on August 22nd and ending on September 12th with very little brakes in-between. I am so happy with this printer. 10 Spools later and I had a bin of pieces to assemble.
Time to assemble.
Since it's ABS plastic, I used an ABS glue that has acetone in it. This stuff works great. I had tested several glues and I found that this was the best for my application. I also used an acetone abs slurry mixture to fill the gaps on some spots. For large gaps and transitions, I used ready patch. A little bit stronger than drywall patch and just as easy to work with.
I also didn't want my phone on my side so I decided to incorporate it into the suit forearm:
The forearm is split and held together with elastic so that the phone can slide in with ease.
The shoes had to be constructed using wood, foam mats, 3D prints, and an old pair of sneakers.
Sorry for blurry picture
A lot of painting:
Print out a set of stickers onto a sticker sheet and laminate the top layer of each sticker with Avery self adhesive laminate sheets. Cut and apply.
The dome was probably the hardest part of the outfit. I started with an acrylic dome:
Cut it with a dremel, and dressed up the exposed parts with Boka Car Door Edge Guards. I needed a strip of metal to better support the open and close function of the dome. The Dome is riveted to the metel and the metel is screwed into the suit.
I also added a laser in my right forearm that turns on with a push of a button.
All things assembled and here are the final results.
The phone in my forearm is connected to the speaker attached to my waist and it'll be playing "You've got a friend in me". I also got some soundbites of Buzz from Toy Story that I uploaded to the phone to play through the speaker at a push of a button as well. The kids loved it.
Thanks for looking.
