As part of an ongoing Project, to design and build a real-life suit of MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor from the video game, Halo, I endeavoured to reverse engineer many of the components and systems that were being put into the real MJOLNIR Armor into usable products that people can buy, or build themselves.

A big aspect of this was the ability to make very high-quality components that maintain their quality and add to the finished product's overall aesthetic, form and function. After talking at length with many people from the cosplay community in the UK and the USA, many agreed the visors were one of the most problematic aspects of their builds. Most would either attempt at-home vacuum forming or defer to purchasing vacuum-formed visors from people online that come with an immense price tag. On top of this, the problems with visor mirroring mean that really the only ways to do it is to either purchase a hydro chroming kit, costing hundreds of dollars or to airbrush spray silver spray paint onto the inner surface of the vacuum-formed visors, which sacrifices even more visual clarity on a visor that is already difficult to see through.

With this in mind, I endeavoured to create a visor which maintains fantastic visual clarity but also looks legitimate to the aesthetic of the game, whilst also offering immensely variable customisation options for the near limitless variations that a person can make of the visor designs.

I started this journey with the Morrigan Helmet from Halo Infinite. After modelling the visor, I attempted numerous times to 3D Print it myself on a resin printer, first using the Anycubic Photon Mono X, and then the Phrozen Sonic Mega 8K S. The Printed Components had varying results, with some issues with visual warping, layer lines, and in some cases, just the process of washing the prints with water or isopropyl alcohol caused the visors to become irreparably cloudy.

The first decent result I got was after using the RESIONE G217 Clear 3D Printer Resin with a 7-second layer exposure time, and a rest time of 5 seconds. I enabled antialiasing and made sure to pour the resin into the tank and then let it rest so many of the tiny air bubbles rose out of the resin. I also slightly overfilled the tank, and adjusted the lifting speed to be very slow, at only 1mm per second, and a lift height of only 5mm, meaning that at all times, the visor printed edge remained submerged in the resin, so as not to introduce any further air bubbles into the resin. After a very laborious and long print time, the visor was finished and I removed it from the printer. I gently washed it in a washing station with isopropyl alcohol and then put it into a curing station for 10 minutes. After this, the visor was ready for the laborious task of sanding to remove the layer lines and polish it to optical clarity.

After wet sanding with 500, 800, 1000, 2000 and 3000 grain sandpaper, I gave the visor a few sprays of a crystal clear coat of spray paint, and got a relatively good result for an at-home 3D printed visor. That is of course until I considered PCBWay for their 3D printing services. They had helped me by 3D Printing the Metal Shell for the real MJOLNIR Helmet, and I wondered if the same level of quality could be achieved with a clear resin print.

I sent the visor .stl file to PCBWay, and selected their SLA Printing option, with both a clear resin and an orange-tinted transparent resin. 2 weeks later, this arrived!

With a clarity that absolutely put my homemade Print to shame, this immediately became the default for my Helmet. I added a gold window tint and a photochromatic lens on the inner surface of the orange visor and attached some magnets so the visor could be fitted into place within the helmet, and I think the results speak for themselves.

Overall, PCBWays Clear SLA Printing has now become my go-to for visors and optics for any projects I will be undertaking in the future, and have implored people from across the cosplay community to do the same as the quality really cannot be questioned. I made a full video reviewing many of the steps necessary in building this helmet and the immensely high-quality visors that were used in its development, which I have attached below if you're interested.

Myself and many other Cosplayers agree that the ability to 3D print visors like this is an absolute game changer, enabling levels of customisation for the cosplay community that most could only dream of previously. This is a breakthrough moment and I'm very excited to see what the community do with this new innovation.

Thanks for reading. Thanks to PCBWay and thanks for everyone's continued support for Project: MJOLNIR.

Take it easy everyone, and find peace, in the Domain.