Daft Punk Tron Cosplay Build 4

Wow, this is a long build sequence. But I was determined to make this pipe dream of mine work out.

I was under the impression that thermoforming would be easy. I had the visor set up on blocks, and I made a nice wooden frame using some plywood and nails that I had lying around. 

Here we see a cameo from the author of Paper Clip Automatoa, who graciously helped me build the frame and agreed to try and help me thermoform the visor. 

I had already placed window tint over the front part of the plastic, but we ran into several problems.

1. The frame didn't fit into the oven-- d'oh! So the door being open meant that it never got warm enough to warp the plastic, so we turned on the broiler. 
2. The broiler melted the plastic as well as the tint. Whoops. 
3. When we tried to pull the plastic over the visor, it pulled straight out of the frame. So much for that.

It was two nights before Techfair, and I was freaking out. And eventually, I decided that I'd worry about the visor later. In a last ditch save effort, I just spray painted the visor in glossy black and hoped for not too many questions during the fair. I waited for it to dry and then reattached it to the helmet using hot glue.

To prepare for attaching the EL wire, I used a Dremel tool and marked a groove outline where I wanted the wire to glue to, around the contours of the helmet.

A few pictures of the completed groove prep.

I drilled a small hole where I expected to route the wire out from. I wanted it to appear fairly seamless, so I tried wrapping it several times before figuring out where the ideal entry would be.

For glue, I used E6000, industrial strength, which is this gummy clear adhesive. I scratched up the length of the EL wire using some coarse sandpaper to increase the sticking power of the adhesive, since plastic doesn't really like to stick to plastic. And then I routed the wire and carefully applied glue in small lengths, taping down the section I had just glued firmly using painter's tape.

The painter's tape helped the EL wire stay flush and attached to the groove while the glue cured for some hours.

And after the day's activities, I finally came back and peeled off all the tape. Hnnng.

The wire had adhered fairly well. Other than a few gaps less than a centimeter long, most of it was sturdily attached to the helmet. I think the scoring helped a lot in this regard.

You can see a few places where the glue got a bit messy and started flowing under the tape. I used an exacto knife to trim these off as best as I could without scratching the epoxy.

And a shot of me trying it on with lights in the hallway! I felt like such a boss, even though I couldn't see through the visor.

I taped down the wire and also added a few pieces of foam onto the inside of the helmet using foam, to keep it settled on my head.

And then it was time for Techfair! If you recall the first teaser post, I've got a few photos now of the finished product next to the original concept art. I was so immensely pleased to make this happen; it wasn't the best thing ever, but it was the most complicated item I'd ever made, and for the time and money I spent on it, I was pretty proud of the results.

But there was still more work to do in the weeks to come; this was only part of a helmet, and I also needed the rest of my outfit for PAX East...