Sister of Battle Helmet Guide
- josephaguilarsanch
- May 22
- 7 min read
Prove your undying loyalty to the God-Emperor and recite the imperial hymn as you print your own functional Sabbat pattern Sister of Battle helmet
Generic ornamentation has been included. It is all separately printable, so you can add whatever ornaments you wish to fully customize your set as you wish. Contact me if there are specific ornaments you would like to see.
This Build Guide will list the following:
Required materials to complete the project
Written instructions for both variants of the helmet
Recommendations for Print Settings/Orientations for certain pieces
Any additional questions you have concerning the building of this model can be sent directly to me via the contact page on my website
Build Requirements
Any 3D Printer with build volume as small as 250^3 mm.
All larger pieces come with sliced options that fit the above dimension.
(You'll need up to 12 individual magnets for the mechanical helmet assembly, up to 20 individual magnets for the simplified helmet.
Up to 8 individual magnets can be used depending on which helmet assembly you choose. (4 for mechanical assembly, 8 for the simplified assembly. Used to hold Hinge Rib that covers the Hinge Screw.)
Optional Hardware
Visor Requirements
The visor was designed to work as one flat curved piece so no vacuum forming is necessary. Printing the lens template will allow you to cut your visor to size to fit within the helmet.
Mechanical Helmet Assembly Instructions:
For the Mechanical Helmet, we are going to start by showing the assembly of the Mechanical Hinge system. This hinge fits into the main body of the helmet by these two tabs.
These two tabs can be friction fit in place while you first assemble the helmet, to ensure that everything is working properly. Eventually, once everything is painted, you will want to glue these tabs in place. It is important that the hinge assembly does not move or shift in its housing as this can affect the alignment of the gears and cause the motion of the face shield to bind. When I assembled mine, I hot glued it in place throughout the build process and once I was ready for final assembly, popped out the hinge, and re-glued it using super glue.
The inner hinge sleeve can be attached to the body of the helmet immediately and the hinge can be assembled while attached to the helmet. However, I recommend building it separately first. Once you paint it, you may need to gently sand/file certain pieces just to ensure the Face Shield Rail still glides smoothly through its openings. Because of that I recommend building the hinge separately as shown in the video below and attaching the entire hinge unit as a whole.
All the pieces are held together by the central printable screw holding the inner and outer sleeve together. I do recommend that you use a little hot glue to ensure Gear D does not shift in its groove. Shifting of this gear can cause the Face Shield Rail to not sit flush against back wall and can cause binding.
I used a little WD-40 once I closed the mechanism for the last time, post painting. This is not entirely necessary but can be helpful to ensure smooth gliding motion and rotation. Be aware this can strip paint that has not had long enough time to dry.
Lastly, be aware that in order to cut down on file size, I have you mirror this entire assembly for the other half of the helmet. This includes the screw. This means the right hand side of the helmet will feature your expected righty-tighty screw, while the left hand side will be reversed. The screw does not have to be tightened too-hard to hold the sleeves together. Additionally over tightening can cause too much friction, impacting the smoothness of the face shield rotation. The largest Hinge Rib piece that covers the screw can be magnetically held in place with a 5mm magnet or held in place with hot glue. As long as you only use a small amount, the hot glue will still allow you to remove it later if you need to disassemble the hinge mechanism
Once you assemble both your hinges attach them to the helmet such that you see the two rail peaking out of them, facing forward. This is where the face plate will mount itself later.
Next, we'll move onto assembling the neck shield.
The neck shield mounts into both of the hinge units via the Neck Shield Gear. This part should also be glued into the neck shield. The arrows point towards the front of the helmet to help you orient the piece.
Once both pieces are in the neck shield, you can slightly flex the neck shield to help insert either gear into its corresponding housing in each hinge mechanism. You want the front of each of the Neck Shield Gears to be flush with the front of its cavity. This ensures you are aligned with the correct gear teeth to ensure a good seal with the Face Shield.
Once complete, you can insert 3 10mm disk magnets per side to improve the seal between the Neck Shield and Face Shield.
At this point you should have a helmet that looks like the image below. The Face shield will be able to slide onto the two hinge rails shown, and when it does, you will see it snap to the magnets embedded in the neck seal.
The Face Plate itself is a singular printed piece, but does have some options additions.
First, for your lenses, the cross-section view shows how to use the lens templates to size your lens material. Simply print the template and cut your visor material to size. The arching tabs that hold the lens in place will flex it into the helmet, locking it place without the need for any glue. This makes it easy to remove later as well.
If you want to add the Face Shield Studs/Rivets, there is a printable template to help you space those evenly.
Lastly, you can insert 3 10mm disk magnets on either side of the face shield for better sealing to the neck seal.
One last tip I will mention, while the face shield does an ok job of staying in place on the rails without glue, any slippage on either end will also increase the risk of binding. Essentially both sides are now mechanically linked by the visor in the center, so any misalignment between the two can increase the chance of binding. Additionally, because of this, its always recommend to drive the motion of the visor by rotating the hinge via the ribs on the outside rather than try to force the movement with the visor/neck shield. Essentially, once I was happy with the paint job, I super glued the hinge units into the main body to ensure they don't move around or get misaligned even slightly, and then hot glue the faceplate onto the hinge rails (hot glue just in the off chance I need to try and replace the rails due to mechanical failure). Once everything was securely connected, I noticed the smoothest motion.
You can now attach your face shield and complete your helmet!
Simplified Helmet Assembly Instructions:
The Simplified Helmet Assembly follows a very similar assembly process, starting with the hinges (which in this case are static), and then attaching the neck shield and face shield. The Hinges use a similar tab design as before, but this time the tabs conform to the contours of the helmet itself and the hinge is hollow to allow for the inclusion of any speakers/fans/etc. you desire. Just as before, you can glue this with hot glue for a temporary hold and later use something stronger when you are ready to commit to the final build.
The hinge unit contains cavities for 2 10mm disk magnets per side for later attaching the face shield. Next we will attach the Neck Shield. The body in this case has two oval shaped pegs on either side. These will hold the neck shield in place and simply require us to slightly flex the body of the helmet and the neck shield itself to allow us to get the face shield in place on the pegs. I recommend doing one side at a time.
Once in place, we can attach 3 10mm disk magnets per side to the neck shield to ready ourselves for attaching the face shield.
At this point, you can follow all the same instructions from the mechanical variant section for assembling the face shield. Once ready, you can insert 5 10mm disk magnet per side to complete your magnetic face shield.
If you do not wish to use magnets at all, you can also use the face shield clip to physically hold the face shield in place. Be aware that you will not be able to remove the face shield in this way without remove the helmet all-together.
General Printing Tips
The pieces are not pre-oriented so you will have to adjust them to ensure they are in an orientation more optimally for printing (flat surfaces touching the build plate). Additionally, for pieces that have no ideal flat surface, such as the face shield and the helmet body, try adding additional supports near the curved bottom surfaces to help bed adhesion. Many slicing softwares should feature the ability to "paint" on additional supports.
Sizing Rings:
To assist with sizing the helmet, I included a Sizing Ring. The Sizing Ring represents the narrowest part of the helmet so as long as you can slip that past your head, you will have plenty of room on the inside of the helmet.
Each helmet variant's folder has a separate sizing ring as the two helmets have different internal geometries. The simplified helmet has less internal geometry so has more room/can be printed smaller.
Optimal Print Orientation
Load Bearing Pieces
The only piece that may come under notable stresses is the Hinge Rail. I printed it at 60% infill just to ensure there is no risk of snapping due to the weight of the face shield. Additionally, printing it flat on its back will ensure that it is less likely to snap at the arms.
General Print Orientations
In general if you see any circular or semi-circular arcs on any of the prints, you can place a support blocker to reduce the overall number of supports. Arcs like that are typically self supporting and print find without supports.
All pieces of the Hinge assembly have flat faces ideal for printing. Some will still require a small amount of supports, namely the inner sleeve.
Most of the larger body pieces have no easy surface for aligning with the build plate, but the neck shield does have a flat surface if flipped upside down.
With that you should be all set to join the service of the Emperor!
