Are you ready for battle in a galaxy far, far away? One man from Saratoga Springs, Utah certainly is. Nils Rasmusson, a computer software engineer,recently built his own Stormtrooper suit with a 3-D printer.
Rasmusson bought a 3-D printer five years ago, but his hobby quickly began to grow. In fact, he became so good with his printer that he shares his 3-D printing and DIY project ideas on YouTube. Over the course of nine months, Rasmusson began to tackle the challenging task of creating a full Stormtrooper suit.
Rasmusson used five 3-D printers that worked for about 400 to 600 hours to create the suit. The suit is made of plastic filament with the helmet alone consisting of nineteen different pieces. That wasn’t all though. Stormtroopers constantly get shot down in the films, so Rasmusson decided to change that. The helmet, one shin guard, and the back plate were made bulletproof with the assistance of one of his friends who bulletproofs cars. It was too expensive for him to bulletproof the entire thing.
Then, he put the helmet to the test. The helmet did its job, but looked worse for wear by the end of the firing range. So, Rasmusson cut open the helmet using a water jet to see how it performed on the inside. The bullets were stopped inside the suit. Only the eye guard did not stop the bullets, which made sense because he did not bulletproof it. There was bulging in the fabric where the stopped bullets were, but otherwise the suit did well.
The suit is far from complete though. Rasmusson says that “it is rigid. These are very hard plastic pieces, so it’s not a comfortable suit to wear.” He hopes to try a softer fabric with the next build to try and fix that. Regardless, Rasmusson has created something incredible and hopes to keep improving it with time.
Just imagine, a swarm of Stromtrooper soldiers on the horizon who are all guaranteed to miss their shots.
