Helmet v3.0 – Rangefinder Top Basic Prep

Back To Smoothing Things Out

I have been seeing a lot of talk about 3D printing, lately. After doing a bit of research, I found that there was a thedentedhelmet.com forum member (RafalFett) that rendered quite a few parts in 3D and had them up on shapeways.com. I decided to give a few of these parts a try and bought the rangefinder stalk, top, and polaroid lens piece. These parts are incredible, but they aren’t really very smooth. So, the will require some prep work.

Lots of “print” lines that will need to be smoothed out.

Most of the lines removed with just a bit of sanding with medium grit sandpaper.

Added some glazing putty over the problem areas.

While the glazing putty is drying, I decided to go ahead and work on connecting the rangefinder top to the stalk. I marked the area where it needs to go with masking tape. I then used a pencil to draw on the square hole of the stalk so that it would transfer the hole’s location to the rangefinder top. It’s faint, but it should be enough to work with.

I then drilled a hole in the middle of that square. It just needs to be big enough for 2 wires…

I placed a screw in the hole…

And, used it to align the top onto the stalk.

Using a tiny screwdriver, I marked the location of one of the holes in the stalk.

This is where the hole will need to be drilled.

First hole drilled.

Since there are no visible screws in this connection, the screw gets added from below…

Twisted the stalk onto the new screw, and put the placeholder screw back in.

Using the tiny screwdriver, again, to mark the location of the second screw.

And, we now have the location to drill the next hole…

Got the hole drilled, and sanded off the glazing putty.

I then sprayed the piece with light coat of filler primer.

Once the first coat of primer was dry, I sprayed it again.

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