What are your thoughts on 3d printing custom armor parts to go into clothing? I’m cheap but I do have a 3d printer. My armored shirt cost me over $100 which is why I only own 1. I have nylon filament, abs, and pla that I can print with. Any thoughts on that, good or bad? Essentially all they are is a piece of clothing with pockets for the armor inserts. Possibly could even be snapped or velcro-ed into place.
2 Likes
Way better than nothing
And just not as durable as regular armour
3 Likes
1 Like
That’s cool. But I think body armor has less specifications to it. I have a little bit of flexible filament though. I’ll leave the helmet stuff to the experts lol.
1 Like
Yes definitely leave to experts. But 3d printing pretty much has endless opportunity
2 Likes
How many of you wear slide gloves when riding? Having a controller in your hand isnt exactly conducive to using that hand for sliding or sliding upon bailing.
Related to printing and protection in general, specifically slide pucks, I’ve been planning on printing out an adapter/interface that fits my controller between my palm and the puck. Since the main thing I do when bailing off a longboard is slide to a stop on my hands and knees, I don’t feel comfortable giving up this ability because I have a controller to use.
As for armor on your body, when I was younger my friend and I melted a bunch of cutting board all over a jacket and pants, and used that before we got our hands on second hand leathers. The jacket and pants we made we’re actually pretty effective since they would tend to slide between the cloth ripping itself to shreads, as opposed to leathers gripping and flipping you like a ragdoll on more gnarly pavement.
If you are smart about where you put the armor, it does work. The jacket we used got torn up way before the cutting board, so you could probably fasion yourself a really slick looking single (or few) crash use armored suit, where filament would probably take damage around the same pace as the usable life of the jacket / pants you put it on under crash conditions, or design the armor to be modular somehow for easy replacement- Velcro even, but that might be pointless if you are just using regular clothes. Make sure to get good coverage, you never know how you are going to fall, and consider padding under the armor plates. And also knowing that leathers and purpose made protection is always going to be better, which you can get relatively cheap second hand if you look on Craiglist or eBay.
Nylon would probably be your best bet if you can manage to print it wide enough without it warping off your plate before you are done printing… It’s naturally slick, really tough, and semi flexible, which I though would be better than landing on rigid and brittle PLA.
Edit: I just realized that I think you meant armor, like chest and bone protection type stuff, not abrasive resistant type armor… If that’s the case I have no idea… I wouldn’t trust something home made for that purpose.
4 Likes
I was thinking of doing the armor in the shoulders, elbows, back and possibly knees. Making them modular to work with different clothing. Perhaps doing the velcro or snap method and wrapping it in some then foam. The last accident I had I landed on my shoulder and hand pretty good. I’ll check out second hand stuff though. I hadn’t thought about that.
2 Likes
Everything about this scene is relatable
2 Likes
You have inspired me, I am going to challenge myself and attempt something that I have no experience in.
2 Likes
Lol, my thoughts were to take the armor out of my armored shirt and model it then print it. They already did the work lol
1 Like
My thoughts are start from zero 
2 Likes
Craigslist seems to be a gold mine btw thanks
1 Like
1010101010
2 Likes
The thing is, when I was in the store today, I saw a shirt similar to this https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/knox-defender-elite-mki-shirt where the shirt was thin mesh but the was armor built into the back, shoulders, and elbows. But it’s about $300. I refuse to believe it costs that much to make lol. Like I could use a lightweight shirt for probably $10 and armorize it for free with the printer I vs in my basement. And probably custom fit it to my body.
Signed, The cheap lady
1 Like
In my defense, I’ve been creating useful things in fusion 360 for a few months now and have been getting better at it. This seems simple enough. Not like some of the crazy sports cars and sculptures people model these days.
2 Likes
Yes I have also been tinkering around with Fusion360
2 Likes
If you have an Xbox Kinect, look into using that to scan your body into a 3D model… Works great and super fast and easy to get 1:1 scale models of body parts for reference, probably good application here for making custom tailored armor.
2 Likes
Or make your own pucks, which is honestly a good chunk of people prefer. At least those with access to materials anyway.
But are there other ways to effectively use both slide gloves and a remote? You can’t do an emergency shutdown slide with a remote in your hand. Maybe you could, but I haven’t tried it.
I was thinking you could have a remote a bit like the Power Glove.
That would be so bad.
2 Likes
Something I haven’t seen addressed yet is the way something is printed and how that affects its use. Basically, pretty much any filament you use is likely to “shatter” along the lines of the filament on impact (I don’t know what happens with flexible filament). This has the potential to go from being a piece of safety equipment to small plastic splinters driving into the fabric of your clothes- at best. It doesn’t matter that it’s plastic, at high enough speeds, breaking shards of the stuff can easily be sharp enough to do significant damage. All this applies more to consumer grade FDM printers, I suspect that industrial ones, with their microscopic levels of accuracy and wider range of materials will have less issues with this. My advice, for whatever it’s worth, is to test your designs thoroughly on a manaquine or something similar. Think like how car companies test safety equipment. Just to be clear, I love this idea and I’m curious to see what you do with it but it always bears repeating that with safety equipment you MUST. NOT. COMPROMISE. EVER.
2 Likes