
The Making of the Medieval-Inspired 3D Printed Women’s Sovereign Armor - muse900
http://lumecluster.com/making-of-sovereign-armor/
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protomyth
I remember a couple who once gave sword fighting demos at Gen-Con (cannot
remember the name). They made an interesting remark that the male of the
couple couldn't find historic armor that fit since he was 6'+, but the female
could since she was about the same size as most of the old armor wearers.
Shows you how nutrition has really upped the size of humans.

~~~
dogma1138
The average male height in middle ages Europe was about 175 CM, which isn't
that far off what what it is today.

The average height actually went down since the middle ages, and plummeted to
below 170cm in the 17th and 18th centuries, making people like Napoleon which
was 168-169CM tall about average for the day.

Being over 6" (182cm) in most caucasian / european descendants nations is
considered tall even today.

I'm also not sure what he means by finding "historic armor", modern replicas
are made to size, even production runs will have a height range that fits the
average modern male (or female, there are replica makers that make armor
tailored for women).

Whilst being tall he would also have no much problem finding chain mail or
plate to fit a 6" tall person, what he would have is a problem finding one in
wearable condition which isn't a museum exhibit ;).

Going further back to say the Roman empire we know based on the documents from
the period of Gaius Marius (Marian Reforms) that the required height of a
roman legionnaire translated to feet was 5"10-6"0 tall.

~~~
eugenejen
but here there are some citation with much shorter legionnaires

[http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/average-
hei...](http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/average-height-of-
ancient-roman-men-and-women)

" Imperial regulations, though not entirely unambiguous, suggest that the
minimum height for new recruits was five Roman feet, seven inches (165 cm.,
5'5") ... for the army as a whole a reasonable estimate of a soldier's average
height is around 170 cm (5'7").

\- Roth, Jonathan, and Jonathan P. Roth. The Logistics of the Roman Army at
War: 264 BC-AD 235. Columbia studies in the classical tradition, Vol. 23.
Brill, 1999.

"

~~~
dogma1138
"Roman records directly attest such measuring of recruits, although
determining the exact height requirement is problematic. Vegetius gives the
minimum standard, or incomma, as “6 [Roman] feet [178 cm.] or 5 feet 10 inches
[ca. 173 cm.] among the auxiliary cavalry or the [soldiers] of the legionary
first cohort.”15 Although both Fritz Wille and N.P. Milner see Vegetius’s
figures as an optimum and a minimum figure respectively, the expression
incommam . . . exactam strongly suggests a regulation height.16 Vegetius may
mean that cavalrymen must be 6 feet and soldiers of the first cohort five foot
ten. In any case, these are clearly height requirements for elite sol- diers
and not for the entire military. Praetorian Guardsmen probably had a higher
minimum height than rank and file legionaries until the Septimius Severus
started recruiting the latter into the imperial guard at the end of the second
century.17"

Page 9 of that same book.

During the later Marian Reforms the height requirements were extended to the
rest of the legions including the auxiliaries. That book however doesn't cover
that period.

~~~
unFou
I thought Gaius Marius was pre-Caesar, so Republican Rome? And Septimius
Severus / Vegetius were post-Augustus Imperial Rome.

Not sure about minimum heights, but the timeline seems a bit off here...

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Animats
I'd like to see the Hypermill people take this on. Each year, Hypermill, which
sells high-end CAM software for machining, takes on an insanely complex
project as a demo. They've machined a crown from a solid block of titanium.[1]
Their system has really good solid geometry, allowing them to use long tools
in a 5-axis CNC mill to get at hard to reach places inside a complex object.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w&feature=youtu.be&t=55)

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inputcoffee
This whole world is new to me, and I am as impressed as any layman.

Particularly interesting to me is how off I would be if I were to guess the
amount of time it takes to do anything.

Making the armor: 6 hours

Adding the LED and electronics: 115 hours

That's not literally what those categories are -- I am being hyperbolic -- but
it felt like that reading the time investment.

Might be an interesting heuristic to figure out how well someone knows a
domain.

Interview of the future: "How long would it take you to write a CRUD app in
Rails with persistent storage?" and just see if the time is realistic.

~~~
maxerickson
Just to note, the modeling was close to 115 hours and the manufacturing and
finishing for the armor was 172 hours. _Then_ the electronics.

(I think your numbers are your estimates, so I'm not trying to argue, just
stating the totals from the article)

~~~
inputcoffee
Even though I just had fillers in my example, I did misinterpret the numbers
in real life, so thanks for correcting that.

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everyone
I was just thinking. Humans seem to frickin' _love_ armour!! In reality it was
only used in certain circumstances by certain people and only for a very short
window in human technological development. But ever since it has been a part
of out art.

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everyone
The word 'practical' is used quite a few times. This looks like it would do
about as much good as bikini armour, all the intricately filigreed cutout
parts over your vitals and guts would be remarkably weak.

~~~
elcapitan
The "real life" archetypes of these are actually exactly that: renaissance
parade armor. They were never meant to be used in battle, and they're not
medieval. Medieval armor, if at all like that, would be way more pragmatic and
light weight. There was a short period at the end of the middle ages (15th
century) where knights would really wear very heavy armor, and that was the
end of that age. See: battles of Crecy and Agincourt.

~~~
theptip
Wasn't the longbow the end of that age?

~~~
unFou
Longbows were pretty ineffective against late period armour like that. And not
even plate - mail with gambesons (lots of layers of cloth) was pretty
effective at stopping arrows, and full plate harness (2mm thick on average)
was for the most part impenetrable even at point blank range.

What longbows were effective at was taking down horses and forcing your
enemies to slog a long way on foot with their visors down (restricting vision
and breathing). Making the fight a lot easier for your guys.

The end of armour really only came along with gunpowder weapons. Incidentally,
gunpowder weapons also made longbows obsolete- largely due to the difference
in training needed to shoot a gun (a few weeks on how to load) vs shooting a
100-pound warbow (years to develop muscles).

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Iknowthatfeel
I remember host gator from my childhood. Crazy that they're still around.

~~~
castis
It's possible that I missed something, but what does this post have to do with
host gator?

~~~
thegreatpl
We've hugged the site to death. It is currently displaying a 500 error, and
the site was made using Host Gator.

~~~
TuringTest
Youtube hosts the making of video.[1] Though I would like to read some context
for this thing.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc41jrMpH_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc41jrMpH_o)

Found this article [2] explaining the project:

[2] [https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/26537-custom-
medieva...](https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/26537-custom-medieval-
inspired-armor-soveriegn-armor-from-lumecluster.html)

~~~
ldjb
There's always Google's cache if you want to read the original article:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flumecluster.com%2Fmaking-
of-sovereign-armor%2F)

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robgibbons
This link is behind a .htpasswd, inaccessible

