Alright, I'm back with the first update.
The first things came off the printer last night:
[ATTACH=full]234887[/ATTACH]
It's two-tone because I was getting rid of some old filament.
These MinuteFett files are incredible! The first thing I noticed is the curvature. The ab plate specifically almost perfectly wraps around the torso in the way you would actually expect armor to. I've seen many sets of armor that take the term "plate" very literally
Now, I didn't print these at a very high quality. I believe it was a layer height of 0.20 mm, which was on purpose. When I made the armor for my last costume, I realized near the end that I didn't have time to print the last few pieces at the higher quality I usually worked in, so I increased the layer height and speed to save time. After the parts came off the printer, I noticed large, relatively smooth parts like Boba's armor can be printed at double the speed, half the quality, and look nearly identical. If you really take quality time to smooth out the layer lines with bondo and filler primer and sandpaper (or whatever method you find works for you) it will be worth it in the end. For reference, I logged my hours when working on my helmet that I printed at the same 0.20 mm layer height, and it took 22 total hours of smoothing to get it to a point I was happy with. While that may sound like a long time, but it took over 3 days straight to print the helmet. So for large parts, you'll almost never spend as much time smoothing the part than it took to make.
All of that to say this: Print at lower quality, then spend more quality time smoothing.
