nathanwhite

As a time filler for those rainy nights when I can't go riding I have decided to mod my helmet to look like the lid of master cheif from halo.

My aims are thus:
1) my helmet remains safe to use on the road.
2) it looks realistic.
3) it is as inexpensive as possible owing to me being a poor student.
4) it can be removed from the actual helmet at will.

And the plan was to:
1) print and cut the pieces on/out of 250gsm card
2) assemble it with hot glue
3) install the electronics
4) fill all the sticky outey bits and excess space with expanding foam
5) paint and weatherproof it.

I'll use a gold iridium visor on it as it's the closest to the how the visor looks that will not sacrifice visibility.
Also the cosmetic shell will attach to the helmet itself by Velcro, and have several white superbright LEDs attached to it.

So with fire in my heart amd an energy drink down the hatch I proceeded to make the exterior shell. Thanks to the people at 405th.com there is a lot of tutorials and premade resources for exactly this. Downloaded pepakura and the pre modelled helmet, fiddled with the scale so it (hopefully) fits over my helmet and printed it on the card.

16 hours of cutting.
Then 15 of gluing.

I finally have finished the exterior shell, only to realize that I screwed up the size. It fitted over my head fine, but nowhere close fitting my helmet. Damnit.

However after looking at them both for a while and taking accurate measurements by spacing my hands so far apart, I managed to work out that for the cardboard shell to fit over my helmet, it would end up almost half a meter long. Now I have been told I have a big head, but that is a little ridiculous.

So, time for a new plan.

After some more research I found this site of a dude in thailand who did the same thing. Although his doesn't look very real, his build method seems pretty good. So I'll build it directly on the helmet with high density foam (camping mats) with a small amount of rigid plastic as reinforcement where needed, the whole thing covered in duct tape to provide a better painting surface and attached to the helmet with a lot of velco.