Riddle my autism this. I have a Creality Ender 3 and CR-X and I've been printing recently a suit of Death Trooper armor from Goy Wars for the sake of casting a mold from the pieces. As I went on I realized there was quite a bit I could do with these molds, from casting pieces in ABS, plexiglass from vacuum sealing and so on. I got the idea, why couldn't I do the molds from fiberglass and resin and make the pieces bullet resistant?
What's the practicality of this?
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You absoloutely could make fiberglass armor that way. I don't know of it ever being used for wearable armor, but fiberglass panels have been used for "light duty armoring" in all sorts of vehicles. I've seen a few youtubers shoot them in various videos. My thoughts are that it certainly could be done, but it won't be as effective as real "body armor".
You could improve it by incorporating other materials between the fiberglass layers. Don't forget you can also use carbon fiber, kevlar, etc too.
yeah you'd have to weave other materials into it, kevlar, carbonfiber, silicon carbide ceramic matrix, etc.
after making it bullet proof/resistant, the only concern would be weight and breathability for the wearer. You don't want them oper9ing in a sauna suit.
If he does it right it can be very good with just fiberglass and resin alone. A half-inch-thick layer of vacuum impregnated fiberglass is seriously strong on its own. Obviously it can only get better if he subs in superior materials for some or all of the 'glass.
youtube.com
As the video shows, it can stop up to a slug, but past that its ineffective. Still I always wanted to try this method out tho
I was always curious about 3D printing body armor
Now you can print you gun, magazines to feed it, pouches to hold them and potentially plates to put in the carrier that the plates are in
Nice, that's about what I expected.
I'm not sure why the creator thought that it wouldn't stop the slug though. Slugs have shit-tier armor penetration capability, the 9 is harder to stop than they are.
remember, if you want to penetrate armor you want speed, and you want high sectional density. The slug has neither.
I would be very curious to see how it would perform against other handgun rounds. If it stops 9 it will easily stop .45 ACP. But I'd like to see it tested against 357 mag, 44 mag, 10mm, and so on. OFC the AR will destroy it, but what about hotter pistol rounds?
OP here. Plan to use that too, found quite a bit on making fiberglass armor with kevlar tape and fiber you can buy use it between resin layers.
Agreed, peltier modules are something on my list, using heat differntial to power a fan to push the cold from the module over an area (say small of the back or near the armpits) for cooling. For the pieces I may just perforate problem areas, like the knees, calves and such. Full body armor is possible, TALOS company worked on it a while back and the project with Galac-Tac armor seemed to be going places. I always wondered why no one has tried a conventional full suit before.
Yup the video I watched, figured I could go with even more layers than what he used and better compression using a vacuum seal.
3D printing is amazing, I used this thing for to make a tow hitch connector with PETG, replacement sockets, magazine plates, and sight mounts. The filaments you can use and the things you can do are amazing, every home needs one.
What I plan to do is reinforce it and test, I figure from .22LR to 5.56, and use different methods of making the armor. Layering techniques, how foot pounds of force to interlock the cloth with resin and kevlar fiber and so on.
I have no idea if this would improve the armor or make it worse, but I've always thought about using pic related as a DIY armor component. These are ceramic tiles for bathrooms and kitchens and whatnot. They are not armor-grade ceramic, but they're fucking tile, so they are very very hard. I wonder if a layer of these on the "strike face" of the armor would help deform the bullets and therefore make them easier for the composite to catch? They come in square "sheets" with the individual tiles attached to a thin, flexible, backing.
Woah buddy, don’t go violating RMAs patents now
I'm going to have to take a look at this, I think the issue comes from it just taking so much blunt force it completely shatters under pressure and be rendered useless after the first shot? I've seen one guy used titanium sheet metal slits (roughly 1/8" thick) in between layers to help slow the bullet and it's done interesting things, you go from stopping a .357 Magnum with a 1/4" fiberglass panel, to stopping a .44 Magnum with the addition of a 1/8" titanium plate layered between.
I'll try it in my molds, frankly I'm going to go for the full kit. It might seem larpy or maybe I just don't give a flying fuck anymore but if the chest and helmet can get a rating up to around IIIA, then I'm happy considering I can tack a steel plate underneath the chest on top of that. Kevlar Twill is also a thing used in ceramic armor plates, and can double as trauma pads too, might have to run a few different molds. I'll definitely make a follow up thread next week with picture results of the armor composition types that get tested.
>I think the issue comes from it just taking so much blunt force it completely shatters under pressure and be rendered useless after the first shot?
Yes, I'm sure that any given tile would break under impact. But the tiles are small and separate, so it's not like the crack will "run" and affect other parts of the armor. Also, any sort of armor will be less effective if you shoot it again in the exact same spot. I'd bet money that if the youtube guy shot his armor with the 9mm again in the same spot it had already been hit then the armor would fail at that point.
>> to stopping a .44 Magnum with the addition of a 1/8" titanium plate layered between
that's actually not too impressive. We think of 44 mag as being a "big powerful round"--and it does have a lot of energy--but it's also a big fat bullet, and big fat bullets suck for piercing armor. It's still a good data point though.
It would be neat to see how the armor works with the exact same bullet, just increasing velocity more and more. Take the bullet-related factors like sectional density or different bullet types out of the equation. Stick with one bullet, just go faster and faster until you achieve penetration. This would be easy if you handload; if not it might take digging up a variety of guns with different barrel lengths. For example, start with 9mm out of a pistol length barrel. Step it up to the same projo in a 357, then a longer-barreled or really hot 357. Still stops it? 357 out of a rifle. Still stops? .357 supermagnum or .35 Remington. Etc. that would give you solid numbers to compare effectiveness for different changes to the armor construction.
>Tiles are small and separate
Yeah looking back I see that, I'm totally going to use it in a run I'm sure. I heard of people using bathroom tiles and duct tape to make armor and have seen it stop handgun rounds, seen some types with a honeycomb design that segments force applied pretty well..
Regards to the .44 Magnum, I guess as a starter point since I've seen people like to rate helmets off of the .44 Magnum itself, depending on the load and type it can be a good starter point in relation to velocity and fpf. What I planned to do was what you suggested, start with a 9mm round, and step up the velocity with each round, once I'm satisfied I'd move onto .40, then .45, and try to get into rifle cartridges. The idea with a rifle fired pistol caliber round is genius and I didn't think of that, I've got a Ruger PC9 and know I can borrow a Deer Slayer too. Might not be able to put my words into a sentence to describe exactly how in-depth I plan to go, but I want to make this usable, practical, and get the process down that it stops becoming a proof of concept and turns into something completely functional.
I can get someone do wild loads of 9mm and .357 Magnum, and see what I can do with 5.56 and 7.62x39. Common calibers is my mindset for protection rating.
>Half inch
Fuck that shit, commercial fiber rifle plates are 1.26".
If you care about "protection rating" then you'd want to test with a variety of different calibers.
If you care about optimizing your armor then you need consistent nerd data, and the only way you'll get that is to study only one variable at a time.
Armor is a totally different beast than other sorts of terminal effectiveness. For example, .45 ACP has higher energy than 9mm, higher Taylor KO factor, heavier bullets, and a better reputation as a "stopper". But it's decidedly *worse* for armor piercing than 9mm is, due to its lower velocity and lower sectional density.
I played around with some 1/2-inch thick polycarbonate (aka Lexan) a while back. This is what's used to make safety glasses, "bullet proof glass", and so on. 45 ACP would bounce right off leaving a shallow, round, dent. 9mm would barely penetrate (it would exit the plastic, but not the cardboard behind it)
My point was that half inch alone is pretty fucking effective, so it only gets better from there. Make it thicker, add stronger materials and it will surely be very successful. I wasn't saying stop at 1/2 inch, I was saying that if 1/2 inch is already good imagine how much better one can make it.
>nerd data
Yeah I'm going to have to go from each caliber, each type of mold made and see which one will perform the best. I work from home so at least I got something to do now. Also don't most ballistic armor manufactorers use something called the K50 scale? They take a steel projectile, like a rod and send it through a tube at higher and higher velocities, which is what helps them gage protection ratings?
Chest plans to be at 1.25" to 1.50", helmet is a different story, might do a mold inside of a mold for the upper area's of the head, I think I can get around 3/4" for just the "liner" area.
This right here, sky's the limit for me and what I want to do, or rather will try and attempt to do. There's no real fun in just buying something when you know might be able to make something extremely close and with different designs.
I'd think that the best way to do the helmet is to start with an existing helmet and then vacuum-form your armor over it. That way a lot of the work is already done for you. The helmet would already have padding inside, the chin strap, good ergonomics, etc. Then you build up your composite on the outside.
I had that idea at first, but even with a 3M high-cut helmet or FAST type helmet the design would bulk out and uh, you'd end up looking liking you are wearing a giant thicc bucket. The idea I had was taking a circular crown-style mold and putting inside of the helmet (the helmet itself is an ABS plastic and fiberglass mold mixed and cured). While the "design" of the outside of the helmet it would be impact resistant, the protection area inside would be bullet resistant (to the best of my ability). I'll probably try all manner of things, but keeping weight and bulkiness down is a priority.
I've thought of the vacuum sealing a design around a helmet, but there is no easy way to secure it around the helmet to begin with. Can't drill or tap into it because you'd compromise the integrity of it, and rolling around or even blunt force trauma has the risk of knocking the shell around and off the helmet itself. Chin straps, trauma padding are simple things to do, a headset like my MSA Sordin or my Leight's I'm still trying to figure how to incorporate in it. POC is one hell of thing.
>but there is no easy way to secure it around the helmet to begin with
Glue. No really. Glue. You've got a massive amount of surface area to bond with. Even shitty epoxy will hold 2000 psi and there's an awful lot area there.
8/10 would bang Allison still
I've thought of glue, the issue though is you go from a somewhat decent sized helmet with good room and not that large of a silhouette, to something that is just far to big and wide overall. Pic related the fast helmet sits at a pretty high level and covers a big surface area. Casting an entire shell, even if it's the 1/2" thickness I plan to use, would make that silhouette huge, width, diameter and so on. Working with a shell instead and putting the necessary protection in it seems a bit more realistic (uh, well how realistic this can get I guess..) and allows me to conserve room on the helmet itself.
That's a pretty badass idea, but you should make it some sort of Boba Fett looking shit so it still looks good even if it ends up looking funky and different. Maybe you could make wrist micro-rockets, too. There's some number like 200 grams of explosive you can put in without it being a destructive device. Or maybe 20, I don't know, some shit like that.
I think Galac-Tac did that before. It was an AR500 and HK thing they worked on together.
>micro rockets
Totally, nah man I'm going with sonic imploder grenades so blow people's eardrums out when room clearing and door kicking happens in the boogaloo. Gotta make sure them commies and blind, deaf and dumb.
Buy some kevlar tape and glue to surfaces on your armor. A few layers of this will stop pistol caliber rounds.
Getting that and Kevlar Carbon Fiber. I wonder how I can lay this into the suit too..
the ARL 3d prints ceramics for armor
Up to pistol and shotgun only, provided the thing is thick enough. Rifles are going to go through like it's nothing, plus the fiberglass dust going into the bullet wound.
The best bet for a homemade solution against rifles would be to use a really thick piece of laminated UHMWPE/HDPE and multiple layers of ceramic tile as a strike face.
With fiberglass it's not necessary since it's already IIa and the tile is not going to protect it against rifles. But if it's just a dictionary strapped to your chest then yes tile would help against the bigger pistol calibers.
Hello there folks.
My brother dabbles in composites; I've got some second-hand information to distribute.
>ABS
ABS is cool because it has decent impact / abrasion resistance. I don't know how well it would do as a ballistic plating, though. I believe it's a one special property is that it's a thermoplastic that'll generate a coherent structure after being reformed; my brother tried to make some stuff by melting down milk jugs. I forget how it turned out.
>Fiberglass.
I got some motorcycle fairings in laid-matte fiberglass. They're quite brittle. Issue here is, even if you get it working, your spalling effect is going to be fucking brutal.
>Carbon Fibre.
Skip it. CF is about absolute rigidity. It has fuck-all for flex, and fuck-all for impact resistance. Your spalling effect will also be brutal for the same reasons.
The one notable characteristic of CF is that, as a loose fabric, it will ground-out tasers.
>Kevlar.
Use this. Kevlar is all about abrasion resistance, and that's the property it uses to prevent bullet penetration. It's not just "a few sheets" though. I've handled a ballistic helmet and it's nearly a 1/4 inch thick, likely with some particulars about how the mattes are laid. You'll need to create an external coating if you do this; the fabric can technically handle scrapes, but the resin structure it's suspended in cannot, and will lose effectiveness with time and environmental exposure.
What were you planning to make your actual plates out of, OP?
My bad. Milk jugs are made of HDPE, and that's what my brother was working with.
ABS ~is~ a thermoplastic though, and you can make larger ABS pieces by consolidating.
Oh yeah rifle rounds will sail through, I plan to use a AR500 Steel plate underneath regardless. Everything is icing on top of the cake at this point, but if I can just make a chestpiece alone that's up to Level III I'd be happy.
Well I wouldn't say it's "plates".. per say. Pic related at the top and the .stl file picture gives you an idea. But Fiberglass, Kevlar/Kevlar Carbon Fiber, and Thi-Vex Plastic which is the outer-shell, pretty damn good impact resistant and shatter proof.
You can just lay up layers of kevlar and use resin like you would with fiberglass or carbonfiber I think. Multiple kevlar layers, foam core then carbonfiber followed a kevlar spall liner would probably stop almost any non-rifle round. High velocity rifle rounds and anything AP is purely a matter of putting enough high hardness material in it's path, options are limited to high hardness alloys and select ceramics such as boron nitride. Anything high hardness is usually brittle and needs to be supported with other materials.
I don't understand why you think working off an existing helmet would make yours too much bigger. The liner/padding/etc inside needs to be there no matter what, so the only added thickness you'd get from working off an existing helmet would be however thick the outer shell of that helmet is, and that doesn't seem like very much. An industrial "hard hat" is only a couple mm thick, barely 1/8-inch. I've seen "riot helmets" at a gun show that looked about the same. That's not much.
Why would you use both at the same time? Figure out which one is the best. Use 100% of that.
>Kevlar is all about abrasion resistance
No. A bullet impact has nothing to do with abrasion.
that's exactly what OP is talking about.
Casting a shell with a front and top that has to be a certain thickness is the issue. I've gone over it multiple times and it's just not something I can really do. When I said I'm building that armor I mean I'm really building it. Will I try a fast helmet as the base and out the DT helmet over it? Sure, but from pre-renders, length, height and depth it'll be damn big.
Planned to figure which one works best. Sole concern is chest and head, everything else sort of becomes a moot point if I can get some form of ballistic and impact resistant qualities from the other pieces.
>Casting a shell with a front and top that has to be a certain thickness is the issue.
Why cast a "shell"? Why not do this:
>acquire existing helmet
>sand the exterior surface to roughen & clean with solvent
>lay up your fiberglass (or whatever) directly on top, building it up layer-by-layer
>apply vacuum and cure
>trim excess material from around the edges
>sand edges smooth, detail.
See you might be missing what I'm doing here or there is some miscommunication. I plan to make this helmet (pic related), impact and bullet resistant (well just the head area, face not so much). If I were to take it as is, and put the helmet over a say a FAST Helmet, it would become extremely bulky and large. My entire project was to make that armor, (when I say armor I mean that suit of armor from Nu-Goy Wars) actually bullet resistant. From the ground up as a project since I've got the money and the time, similar to what AR500 and HK did with their armor project, just a bit more po-dunk and less refined until I get a process down.
I can yes, take the DT helmet and just glue or affix it to a fast helmet, sure. But it would be far to high up, and too large presenting a much larger silhouette. My entire idea at the start of the thread was making the pieces of the armor have ballistic resistant qualities similar or extremely close to Level III. The chest and the head would be the area I'd focus most in trying to get competent protection within the design of that helmet. Is it just easier to buy a plate and helmet and call it a day? Sure, but that's not my intention or want, it was to recreate this Death Trooper armor and make it something fully functioning. Not a cobbled together beta's cosplay but something worthwhile, practical and usable.
Oh, I had no idea you were trying to make a specific artistic design. I thought you were just trying to make an effective helmet.
I work in composites and have shot some offcuts for fun.
It didn't take much to stop 9mm, however 1/8 carbon backed with 3/4 fiberglass didn't stop 5.56 at all.
Why not do what suggests, but in reverse?
Get an existing DT helmet, gut it so it's just a thin shell. Sand the interior, lay-up your composite from the inside. Then attach a liner or "suspension" inside it. You might have to build up certain areas a bit thicker to have the correct mounting points for the suspension. If you need to take up volume without adding weight then you can add some pieces of rigid foam and then glass over the top of them.
No problem, I am trying to make an effective helmet, a "full" effective helmet.
Yeah rifle rounds will be the bane no matter what.
>lay-up composite from the inside and attach a liner
This was my plan, I am currently printing the Helmet as we speak. It will be put into a silicon mold with Rebound 25. The mold when it's finished curing will allow me to make the DT helmet from the type of material or filament I want.
The structure or what the Helmet (outer like in the picture I posted) will be made from 102 Medium, it's a type of a impact resistant polymer that as it cures it can harden into complex shapes and still retain rigidity and structure. The interior of the helmet, say the top will be layered with fiberglass, Kevlar Carbon and trauma pads. It's going to take a few times to get the proper protection I want the inside of the helmet (before I even construct the "liner" fully I am going to do tests), the idea was make a separate mold, a rounded mold that is the inner diameter of the helmet and attach inside so I don't have to constantly make a new helmet if it doesn't test up to my standards.
>rigid foam
There is some industrial foam that is used for trauma and impact resistance in certain helmets, the Russians have something similar in their titanium Altyn helmets that soak up a lot of force, so I'll be looking around for that.
Also will I attack lights at the front? Nah, kind of larpy, but I wouldn't be opposed to have a side mounted Surefire light like pic related in a impact shell on the side of the helmet. The eye cut outs are going to be that thin poly-carbonate lenses, you find that or Trivex generally in shooting goggles/glasses.
>from .22LR to 5.56
Hello OP, i would like to let you know that this is unnecessary. What you want to do is start half way up the penetration list. If it penetrates, go down until one doesn't. If it doesn't penetrate, do the inverse. That way you are able to cut out large amounts of time and still get accurate data.
Hi OP, to confirm: So the summary is to not get hit by rifles and have kevlar material on the front and back (at least one layer) to control blow thru. Possibly attach plates to select locations?
That would probably more efficient, I'll do that.
From the Fiberglass that is curing right now, the fiberglass armor would be layered over soft Level III in the chest area. Was thinking about steel plates, but for now I'll be trying soft.
First rule of armor, thickness>material. Even paper can stop a bullet if you've got a fuckton of it.
So what you want to do is take a bunch of slabs of fiberglass down to the range and start putting shots into them. Don't worry, this is the fun part.
After that you can start worrying about kevlar underlays, hardened overlays, and all sorts of design work.
And TL;DR This might work but you should experiment as much as possible.
One layer of kevlar is worthless. Even a very thin low-rated bulletproof vest contains many layers. you build up a composite of many many layers of material.