Pulse Blade

Project Type

Costume

Date

2026-Present

Skills

3D Printing, Blender, Illustrator, Laser Cutting, Vinyl Cutting, Soldering, Electronics

Ongoing project documenting the process of constructing a Pulse Blade Pilot costume from Titanfall 2.

Helmet

Files & Printing

Similarly to the ODST project, I'm primarily using files from Titlewave Designs. He sells a set that includes 3D print files for the helmet and body armor. His models are detailed, high quality, and fairly accurate to the in-game assets. However, there are still a few modifications that need to be made prior to printing.

Using Blender, I boolean holes(marked with red) into the helmet, either for LEDs or for wires to pass through. In hindsight, I should have added more holes for ventilation, attachment points, inset electronics, and magnets.

I use Armorsmith Designer in order to scale the files to my size. While the program is amazing, it isn't accurate for every single body part, so care should be taken to ensure the part is properly scaled. Consideration should also be taken for auxillary components, such as hair, head mask, padding, and electronics. Case in point, the helmet is scaled to 93% uniformly of it's original size in Armorsmith, but is slightly too small in reality, to the point where a balaclava is the difference between a fit.

Unlike my ODST, which was printed on a Neptune 4 plus(320 x 320 x 385mm), This helmet is being printed on a Centauri Carbon(256^3 mm). This means that the helmet needs to be split up into more parts, 4 in this case. I'm still printing with PETG for its ease of use, durability, and higher melting point. The files come with the atachments separately, so naturally those are printed separately.

Processing

Joining the Prints

After printing, the sections are joined. I use superglue for the initial bond and tape to keep the segments aligned. During slicing, I added dovetail connections to make alignment easier.

Plastic Welding

A soldering iron is used along with extra filament to meld the seam together, creating a molecular bond between the PETG of the two halves. This offers superior adhesion and strength compared to other adhesive options and is much less likely to crack along the print seam in the event of an impact.

Attachment Ring

At this point, I also embed a metal ring at the nape of the helmet. This serves as a secure attachment point, allowing me to clip the helmet to something should I need my hands free, without having to worry about the connection point failing.

Embedded ring used as a secure clip point during travel.

Painting

Gray filler primer base.

For painting, I start with a base of gray filler/primer. Following that, I add a coat of silver/metal paint with a layer of hairspray on top. The hairspray allows me to chip off paint later on that exposes the silver. Then the entire helmet is painted white, masked off, and painted black.