Category: Helmet v3

Mail Call:

Helmet pads arrived today from amazon.com.

Cost: $10.99

Another Use For A Casio Calculator…

This piece gets installed in the rear part of the helmet, and is visible through the keyholes. Originally, a Casio MQ-1 Calculator’s circuit board was used for this. I will be 3D printing it…

The beginning of the printing of the MQ-1 circuit board.

Well, something isn’t right here…

Let’s try that again…

MUCH better this time…

More Wiring Mods

Continuing to make some room to run the rangefinder wiring…

The rear part of the helmet needs a little bit removed…

Area to be removed has been marked.

I used my dremel to grind down that area…

A little bit of the plastic on the dome needs to be removed, as well…

I used my dremel to remove that, too.

Mounted the servo to check the clearance. Wires come through, just fine now.

Wiring Mods

Need to make some room to run the rangefinder wiring…

The back of the rangefinder housing before modification.

Carved out a bit of the bondo.

View from the other side. Hopefully, this is enough to allow the wire through with the servo installed.

Installing A Connection

Because I want the rangefinder to be easily removable, I need to add in a plug…

As of right now, the wiring coming out of the rangefinder goes directly to the battery pack.

The is the mini-plug that I will install into the system.

I cut the wire coming out of the rangefinder. Then, trimmed the wire on the male part of the min-plug. And, prepped the heat shrink tubing.

Applied the shrink tubing to the wires where it will need to go.

Stripped the wires in the mini-plug.

Then, stripped the wires on the rangefinder.

Soldered the black wire…

Slid the heat shrink tube down into position, and then soldered the red wire…

Slide the other heat shrink tube down into position…

I then used my soldering iron to heat the tubing so it shrinks over the connections.

Then, the larger heat shrink tube was slid down to cover the other two, and shrunk using my soldering iron. This makes a nice, solid connection, protecting the solder joints.

Mail Call:

New t-visor from t-visor.com

Cost: $17.25

I decided to create a cardboard template of the new visor.

In order to get the template to be an exact duplicate, I taped the cardboard to the visor as I cut it out.

All cut & taped…

Coca Fett

Template completed.

One Connection, Coming Right Up…

Work continues on the shaft reconfiguration…

I plan to make the pieces “lock” together with a small notch…

So, this much will need to be removed from most of the actual shaft piece.

And, the cut completed, with the part that will fit the notch still remaining.

The notch area removed from the part that attaches to the servo.

The two parts…

We have a connection!

Can I Get A Connection?

Work continues on the shaft reconfiguration…

With the shaft assembled into the stalk, I need to figure out how much needs to be cut off…

I first needed to get a nice, flat cut on the part that attaches to the servo…

That piece attaches here.

A Connection That Makes Sense

I want the rangefinder to be easily removable from the helmet. So, I’ve come up with an idea to modify the shaft. Let’s see if I can make this work…

Since this will require some precision fitting, I need to make sure all of the parts are connecting correctly. The screw needs to be counter-sunk into the plastic plug.

I used a curved blade in my exacto knife to create the angled edge…

That should work.

While I’m working on this piece, I may as well remove those square corners. They no longer server any purpose.

I used my dremel to remove the corners, and also rounded the main edge a bit.

Will It Work?

Did a little modding to one of the fiber-optic clusters…

I’m thinking I need to reduce the number of fiber-optic strands, so I cut a bunch of them off…