The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

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  • Helmet Mirror Mount: First Light

    Printing went smoothly after two preliminary passes to work out the sizes and alignments; this is the second pass, which you can tell because the mirror shoulder has three supports instead of the two shown in the solid model:

    Mirror mount parts on build plate
    Mirror mount parts on build plate

    One view of the parts, with the mirror shaft in place:

    Mirror mount partial assembly - top
    Mirror mount partial assembly – top

    Another view, showing the bottom of the Elevation Plate with the recessed nut:

    Mirror mount parts partial assembly - bottom
    Mirror mount parts partial assembly – bottom

    Assembling the two glue joints required an overnight clamping:

    Mirror mount - glued and clamped
    Mirror mount – glued and clamped

    Then a layer of double-stick foam tape affixes it firmly to the helmet:

    Mirror mount - on helmet
    Mirror mount – on helmet

    It’s a bit too big and way ugly, but works pretty much as expected.

    Two lengths of heatshrink tubing now lock the mirror shaft sections in place; they tended to rotate slightly under normal vibration.

    The OpenSCAD code and model have a few modifications from this object. The next one won’t have the third section of mirror shaft, which makes the shoulder and Az Mount smaller, and the Az Mount is 1 mm closer to the El Body. That shaves a few millimeters off the whole thing.

    The mirror clamp out there on the end is much too large and has too many fiddly parts. I think a little printed doodad would work, but that’s in the nature of fine tuning.