Ear piece printed with minor issues

The print quality

I printed the ear piece body, but my printer had developed a minor fault causing a pitted and incomplete effect called "pillowing".

This was due to a power cable getting bent near the connector during printing and it's a well known issue that the manufacturer solved almost two years ago with a replacment housing.
I should have taken preventive measures against it long before this, I was simply being lazy.
Anyway, it's fixed now as you'll see in my upcoming posts, my printer is again perfect.

Luckily the model was still useable to test fit on the helmet as well as the inserts I've printed previously and it looks better than I expected for a first print.
Bear in mind that I don't havd a 3D-scanner (the good ones are still prohibitively expensive), I just use photos and measures to make a dummy model of the helmet that's far from exact.

The part fit on the helmet

I made screw holes in the helmet and screwed the ear piece in place with M3 screws, nuts and washers. The screw positions are covered by the bolt head plugs.

As often is the case it's not the things you think that actually go wrong. I put a lot of thinking and effort into the fit of the ear piece toward the rubber edge of the visor. This fit was spot on as seen in the photos.
The thing I got wrong was the angle and flatness of the
 helmet at the back where the L bottom of the ear piece meets it.

The gap is visible in the photo above and well as from the under side seen below.

I'll curve the L bottom of the CAD model in further to meet the helmet this week and then re-print it next weekend (it's a 3 day print).


After analyzing the problem with the printer, fixing it and planning the changes to the 3D model I played around with making some mockup photos with the chin light and the rubber bellow.