Exhibition at Techfair was a great time. I had a lot of fun explaining my inspirations and process, but it was a bit of a bummer having to say that it was still a work in progress. I went onto Mcmaster and ordered some PETG to thermoform the visor, before it became too late. The helpful guys at the Pappalardo laboratory (Super shout out to Professor Braunstein for dealing with my constant pestering) were kind enough to let me use their thermoforming machine in the middle of the 2.007 class. I caught them during the tail end of spring break.
I spent some time prior to my appointment re-Bondoing the visor, trying to make it as smooth and nice as possible. Layers and layers, sanding and resanding and ever finer sandpaper.
We put it up on a block of carved foam so that we could ensure it didn't flatten out due to the thermoforming vacuum pressure.
A shot from the underside of the foam block/visor amalgam. The yellow bits are spray adhesive to keep things in place.
We used the step shear to cut the enormous 48" square PETG into the incredibly obnoxious 27" square size that the thermoformer required. You can see the roll of window tint film sticking out of my backpack.
Here's the plastic, thermoformed around the visor! Ah ah ah I was so excited to see it suck up over the shape and do the thing it was supposed to do omggggg.
More glamour shots. The visor warped a tiny bit by its sides compressing inwards, and the plastic got sucked slightly into the undercuts, but I managed to free the visor and bend it outwards before attaching it to the helmet.
I made two copies of the visor, in case I did something wrong and screwed one up. And boy, was it a good thing I had a backup.
I used a Dremel tool to cut out the visors based on the outlines, and tried fitting them into the helmet. Such a good feeling.
I started trying to tint one by boiling it in water with powdered RIT Dye, which is a method documented many a place on the internet as a method of tinting the visors. But I both got impatient (3 packets of dye, two hours, and no tint!) and overzealous, and before I knew it, the top part of the visor had gotten too heated and started to deform! And it stuck to the bottom of the stock pot, which upset me briefly until it got unstuck.
Gross. So I turned back to my window tint film, as well as a can of auto taillight spray tint that I bought. Because the spray tint is meant for allowing light to pass through from behind it, it was a little too blurry to use over the portion I was going to look through for the visor, but it was perfect for the section where the visualizer was going to sit. I split the visor into three portions: The clear tint film in the middle at eye level, the tint spray on the bottom, and the top bit up until the helmet rim was spray painted black from the inside to keep the glossiness of the plastic.
And a view from inside the helmet! You can see the huge difference in visibility between the tint film and the tint spray on the lower level.
The tint film didn't wrap very well over the complex curves, and my visor wasn't completely smooth, so the texture left things to be desired. But from far enough away, or in the dark, it looks fine. Eh. *shrug*
To attach the visor to the helmet, I used hot glue. Lots and lots of hot glue. Since it dries weirdly semi-transparent white, I used small strips of black duct tape to line the rim where the glue met with the visor and the helmet, as seen below. I also used black electric tape to clean up the contours of the EL wire to give the illusion that it was distinct stripes, not just one continuous piece of EL wire.
So close to being done! The next post will be the final parts of the process: the remaining electronics, the gloves, and of course, the famous Daft Punk jacket.
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