3d printed Chewbacca Bowcaster

 

Catching up on my posting - last year I printed myself a Bowcaster for my Chewbacca costume.

The costume was pretty simple.  It started with a onesie I bought at target a while back on a whim.  I added the talking Chewbacca mask and it was pretty much done.  All I needed was the bowcaster.

I found some STLs on Etsy Designed by MysteryMakersStudio - Custom digital DIY Bowcaster with stand stl file(digital download) and I was off and running.   As an aside, Marko Makaj, the designer has a reasonably well priced patreon  as well if you want more than just one model.  It's important to note it's makers plural.

Anyway was off and printing on my new Ender-3 Max Neo 3D Printer.  I don't think I mentioned that yet - should probably post about it too.   I bought it because I wanted the large build area 300x300 and the NEO line with the SonicPad was supposed to be a game changer.  Meh. It prints.

The parts all came out pretty good.

Next came all the gluing.  So. Much. Gluing.   It went together pretty well.  The polarizers (the balls on the end) are a bit heavy for how thick the actual bows are.  I managed drop it and break them off more than once.

One of the tricks I tried in this build was to use UV Resin from my resin printer to fill in the layer lines.  It's very effective but smells pretty bad when you cure it with the UV flashlight. 

fully assembled! (It did drive me to drink.  A little Smith and Cross rum there on the table).

One of the resin printed lenses cracked when I took it off the plate.  I left it as is for "authentic battle damage!"

Primed.  I later used rattle-can gloss black and then some Rub and Buff silver to to make it look metalic.  Came out good enough for me.  

Lots of lessons learned, could do a lot better if I did it all over again.  Now I just need a place to store this bad boy.

Renee's Darth Vader Tie fighter costume 2015.

Decided to write up this year's halloween costume builds.  Before I do that, I want to post about some of the previous costume builds.  I didn't document them as well as I hope to document this year's builds.  

So here's Renee's Darth Vader Tie fighter (Tie Advanced X1).

It's the same idea as Julia's X-wing costume.  It has suspenders for around the neck to have the ship from.  The cape is from my costume and the mask and chest box are from a hasbro toy from e-bay.  The chest box has a lot sound effects - breathing sound and clips from the movies.

I don't have too many intermediate pictures of the Tie.  It had to come together quickly because I was running out of time.  I painted the strip section black then taped over it and the rattle-can sprayed the rest of it gray.  The raised relief of the pilot window was also made free hand.  I cut 8 trapezoids and then angled them up to a circle.  I had to trim a bit here and there to get them to align.

The grey bars are foam tubing you'd use to insulate a door or window frame with, you by like 30' coiled up in a bag at Home Depot for like $4.

The last bit was to take gray pipe insulating foam and stick it to the leading edge.  Originally I was going to make it go all the way around but I had a hard time getting it to stick without straightening out.

Lord Vader is ready to smite the rebelion and get some tasty candy while (s)he's at it.

Julia's Star Wars X-Wing costume, Halloween 2015

Decided to write up this year's halloween costume builds.  Before I do that, I want to post about some of the previous costume builds.  I didn't document them as well as I hope to document this year's builds.  

In 2015 the girls let me make them Star Wars themed costumes.  This was Julia's x-wing costume, complete with an R2D2 droid in the back of the x-wing.

We basically ran out of time to add more details.  I feel like I could have done a bit better but at night out trick or treating it looked pretty good.  Lots of complements.  I scratch built the ship, helmet and vest.  R2D2 was a toy I have (he makes cool sounds and is voice activated).

The x-wing came along pretty good.  I found some large moving boxes in our complexes recycling collection.

So I free-hand cut the pieces out and hot glued them together.  Then I taped the seams with white duct tape.  Next I put some wings on.  I took some mailing tubes and cut them in half to be the engines and started painting the base white coat.

Oh yeah, forgot about the sticks for the guns on the end of the s-foils.  After painting white I masked off and painted a red stripe.  Lastly I put some straps on so she could wear it like suspenders and that was basically it.

Next up the helmet.   I friend, Kevin, had an extra hockey helmet to donate to the cause.  Painted it white and glued craft foam to the side to make it cover the ears.  I also made the ridge down the middle to make it look more like the movie.

Then I took colored electrical tape and sharpie to detail it up, and printed some rebel logos on paper and glued them on.  The visor is a cut up piece of plastic from a paint roller tray liner.

She's already wearing the orange t-shirt we borrowed for the flight suit.  Next we took a white t-shirt and cut the sleeves and neck to look like a vest.  Then we fabric-glued some craft foam to it and drew some flight-suit looking details on with sharpie.

Turned out pretty good all things considered.  The flap hides her candy bucket for trick or treating.

Julia's Costume halloween 2014

Decided to write up this year's halloween costume builds.  Before I do that, I want to post about some of the previous costume builds.  I didn't document them as well as I hope to document this year's builds.

Julia decided she wanted to be a viking, which is pretty simple, we build a shield, Axe and helmet.  Then we buy some fake fur cloth to make a cloak and we're done.  So the helmet was made from a Costco goldfish crackers box with a hot glue gun and Rub-n-Buff paint.

Spray painted it black first, the silver and bronze rub.

The cracking and gaps that let the black show through turned out pretty good.  The 'rivets' are pieces of the hot glue gun sticks.  They didn't stick too well, next time I'll find something better to simulate rivets.

Helmet done, next came a round shield and an axe.  The shield came out great, the axe was a disaster.   Way over sized and the proportions are awful.  Oh well, lesson learned.

The finished costume, complete with fur cloak and boots:

Renee was a storm trooper (we bought the costume) and I was Vader.

A very successful halloween.