Leaderboard

I am slowly making progress on painting and priming. I might have to let go of perfection and decide what is 'good enough' or I may never finish the build. :) Besides the painting, though, I learned a new skill today - vacuum forming! I could definitely have just pasted a curved face shield piece inside of the helmet for lenses but I thought it'd be fun to try my hand at vacuum forming. I considered making my own, but I found this one from Etsy that was very inexpensive, even with shipping from Spain. https://www.etsy.com/listing/4452485131/vacuum-forming-machine-a4-vacuum-former The files I have come with a flat lens stencil as well as a 3D vacuum forming shape. However, it's not really designed for vacuumforming since it's the exact shape of the lens. So I first copied and pasted the lens shape a bunch of times in tinkercad and cut the bottom flat to fill out the inside of the lens, and printed it. I printed the lens itself upright for better quality: It still wasn't exactly what I wanted for vacuum forming, though, because there wasn't really going to be a way to attach the lens to the helmet itself since there's no flashing. So I used some EVA foam to build out the buck and made it slightly shorter than the lens so that when I pulled it, I'd have an edge that was inset that I could use to attach the lens to the helmet. I went to Goodwill this morning and found a cheap toaster oven which thankfully still worked, and coincidentally exactly fit the frame for the plastic that came with the vacuum former. The plastic itself I ordered from McMaster-Carr. Here is the video from my first ever pull, which worked surprisingly well: https://photos.app.goo.gl/BhXqtgQBVicZDv7eA However, the protective plastic melted against the EVA foam, so I pulled it again. The second time I removed the bottom plastic so it didn't stick to the buck, but the wrinkle pattern from the top layer of protected plastic caused defects on the lens, so I pulled it a third time, this time with both sides of the protective plastic removed. Third time's a charm! I am planning on dying the lens to darken it.

Look who’s back. @TKNick8350, @jsilvius is correct. I retired last year due to a myriad of issues and my increasingly busy life, but a sudden resurgence of interest in New Generation Armor has brought me back from the dead. There’s some incredible things going on right now and I’m excited to see what pans out. Regardless of my current status, I’ve still been helping people with their builds and frequently respond to DMs. If you want some assistance, please reach out and I’ll be happy to help.

Yeah before I got the toaster oven I tried to use a heat gun. It was difficult to heat it evenly but worked surprisingly well to just heat the plastic then stretch it over the mold with my hands.