NASA Apollo Astronaut Space Suit

thingiverse

I designed components of the Apollo astronaut suit for a fancy dress party using historical photographs of the space suits from the Lunar Surface Journal. The neck ring, largest component at 30cm in diameter, was broken into four separate pieces to accommodate most printers. My printer settings included XYZprinting Da Vinci 1.0 with no rafts or supports and a resolution of 0.2mm. A moderate infill percentage of 10% was used, but I increased the number of top layers to prevent sagging. Printing this suit requires patience as the time required for printing and finishing components is significant. After printing, I smoothed surfaces using sandpaper starting with coarse 80grit and progressing to finer grits to achieve a smooth finish on the top surfaces. The four quarters of the neck ring must be assembled carefully, ensuring adjacent edges remain parallel when sanding. Once assembled, glue the segments together with superglue. I used a clean cloth to remove dust from the parts and applied a light coat of spray-paint primer suitable for plastics, using Dulux Duramax plastic primer. After drying, I applied red or blue spray paint matching the anodizing in the original space suits. Metallic Sharpie pens were used for silver and gold details on the components. For the mission patch, NASA emblem, name tag, and American flag, I printed labels that were stuck to the suit. The dimensions of these items can be found here. The name tag font was likely "Futura Condensed," as discovered through online forums. Once all components were printed and painted, I superglued them to a white disposable coverall suit. When selecting a coverall suit, choose one with an opaque white exterior liner for the best appearance.