The printed right-angle pipe fitting seems to have worked out pretty well, all things considered!
I need to sand it a bit, glue the parts together, then XTC-3D the whole thing to give it a better finish, make it a little stronger, and maybe make sure it’s properly airtight… but I’m quite happy with how this turned out. The flared end is just right for me to stretch the black rubber gas mask hose over, and air flows cleanly through the curve.
In other news…
My armor problem is solved. I got a bunch of 1/16″ PETG sheets, went to the local university, and used their workshop and vacuum forming table to get a lot of production out of the way. I won’t lie, we did not do a great job at first with the pulls, as we had to learn the foibles of the machine we were working with. If you get the pull just right you can make it release the part without too much fighting, but if you heat the plastic up too much it starts hugging the buck really snugly and forms a vacuum that can be a colossal pain to remove. We actually broke one of the first pulls by trying to pull it off the buck too hard, causing the plastic to tear. By the end of the day, though, we had the process down pat and were popping out some great pulls.
In fairness, we did end up cracking one piece as we tried to get it off the plaster buck. Woops!
I’m thrilled with this process and think the results are dynamite. I’m going to be trimming these down, and I think the scraps I have from the 24×24″ pieces from before molding are going to be big enough to do the biceps with, since the biceps seem to be simple curves without any musculature on them. It’s a shame the vacuum former doesn’t have a big enough bed to do the torso, or I’d honestly be considering redoing my breastplate to be more screen-accurate right now.
