Stormtrooper helmet for my daughter

One of the first prints I did, when I got my Creality K1 Max 3d printer, was a Stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars. But I scaled it down for my then 1,5 year old daughter. It was also a test print for using ABS filament. The first print was unfortunately to small even for such a small kid. So I had to reprint the helmet another time. Which wasn‘t too bad, as I now had a test object for all the processes, I had to go through to finish it up. I tried doing as less sanding as possible with the first one, and just used some ABS goop (ABS melted in Acetone) to smooth out the top of the helmet and mostly filler-primer from a rattle can. After the experience with that approach, I decided to invest a little more time into preliminary sanding of the second helmet. If you want a good surface, I fear nothing ever will beat investing time in a thourough sanding.

I did this project on and off, since I got pretty demotivated by all the sanding and filler-priming again and again. So it took quite some months. And last year I tackled finishing them up. I started painting and airbrushing the helmets to give them the right look. Again, the smaller one was my test piece, before doing the steps on the “production piece”. I used a cheap gloss white from a rattle can for the base color. All the details were done with an airbrush, like the black brow and the sky blue stripes on the sides of the helmets and the grey and black in the indents and „vents“ on the „mouth“. Some silver paint with a brush was used for the fronts of the comm greeblies in the front and some „chipping“ on the chin.

I will still have to do lenses and padding for the helmet and some weathering. Since I will have to do that for my own stormtrooper helmet too, I guess I will add that in another post here on a later time.

So far my daughter has some fun with the helmet and I can‘t wait to dress us both up for a con or something in the future. 😀