How to Make the Goggles From Oppenheimer

I guess I am in a bit of a Christopher Nolan mood as my last build was from Inception and now Oppenheimer!

While I was watching Oppenheimer, one of the scenes I felt was most impactful was when the nuclear test was being done. I found it quite visually striking seeing Cillian Murphy‘s Oppenheimer wear the vintage-style welding goggles that are now quite synonymous with the stereotypical 'mad-scientist'. As a bit of a self proclaimed 'mad-scientist' myself, I thought, 'how great would it be to make myself some practical workshop safety goggles inspired by the film?'

I have often thought that the vintage safety goggle look was very compelling and spans many genres of fantasy streetwear, such as steampunk, industrial and kind of general scientific/sci-fi aesthetic, so this seemed like a great excuse to finally make some!

These goggles don’t have to be Oppenheimer related, you can utilise them as a basic framework and paint/finish them in any way you want. they could easily go with: cosplay, streetwear, motorcycle riding, workshop-safety or whatever application you can imagine.

The supplies you will need for this project are as follows:

• 3-D prints of each of the STL files attached to this step
• Print out of the attached template for the side mesh
• Some round sunglasses with 55mm diameter lenses
• 1/2 Inch thick elastic strapping for the headband of the goggles
• A small section of beaded chain (3mm in width) to connect the eye cups together
• (Optional) A small section of rubber heat-shrink tubing to place over the beaded chain to improve comfort and durability
• Some material to cover the space for the mesh grill. I found the material that most closely resembled the grill/mesh on the Wilson goggles was the mesh used on speaker grills so I therefore took apart some old speakers to recycle for this project.
• You will also require six M3 screws to fit the holes on the side of the goggle where the mesh is placed. The screws only need about 2 to 3 mm of depth to be flush with the inside of the eye cup, although I could only find screws with 5mm of thread, so I ground them down to size.

Substitutions

If you cant find any of the following pieces I will suggest some possible alternatives:

Sunglasses - If you have issues finding sunglasses with this specific diameter, you could definitely cut out the same size circle from a sheet of acrylic or some other optically clear/ translucent material. It would be better with the curve of the lens from sunglasses but since the lenses are attached by a threaded lens cap, there is a margin for error that will still work.

Elastic Strap - You could make this strap out of anything really as long as you have a way of adjusting it to fit you comfortably, using something like leather with buckles would be great for a steam punk look!

Speaker grills - You could also utilise a number of other materials such as aluminium screen door mesh or another close weave mesh material that could be drilled through four screws to be fixed to the goggle underneath As long as the screws can get through it and its flexible enough or able to be bent/ heat formed to shape it can work! Even something as simple as the plastic of a water bottle could be used, although that would not have the same benefits for airflow.

The first step to this Instructable is explaining the design and inspiration behind this project. If you just want to build the project and don’t want to know the backstory and 3-D modelling design process feel free to skip to step 3.

I began by trying to do some research to find still frames from the film, but due to its recency and the short duration of the goggles presence in the film, there was not much material to base a design off of. I found two screenshots from the teaser trailer that I have been able to examine more closely. Based on this examination, I’ve looked into vintage welding and safety goggles to try and place what may have been used practically or used as inspiration for a custom creation by in the film prop department. 

During this research, I came across Willson brand safety goggles, which were common during the period and seem to have a very similar silhouette and construction with the mesh side panels and similar lens shape to what I can see in the screenshots. I therefore used this as the basis of my design, while taking some liberties to make it more practical for 3-D printing and my own personal use case.

The first step to actually producing these goggles was to design a 3D model for the majority of the goggle components using Fusion 360 as my auto CAD program of choice. I use fusion 360 as my primary CAD software for 3D printing due to its ability to meld 3D files with real world measurements accurately. I can implement threads in the design that I know will print with great functionality and ensure that with the proper tolerances my printed parts will fit real world parts that I have fabricated separately.

During this project, I branched into an area of Fusion 360 that I have not used as often. I’m very familiar with the general solid design window, using the basic transformations to produce a 3D printing ready files. However, I have not used the more organic vertex and mesh based form modelling very frequently. Since this project has to interface with a more organic shape, being the human face, the rigid restrictions of the general solid workspace felt like it would require more effort in order to try and produce a workable model and the finished project may not have come out as I envisioned as I don't have enough skill-set with that workflows tools to make a smoothly shaped more organic looking shape. So I felt I needed to use this as an opportunity to learn how to use the Form modelling section of Fusion.

I began my modelling process by taking measurements of the parts that I needed to interface with such as the screws and elastic straps that would be utilised in the design, as well as the main constraint, the prefabricated lenses at the centre of this project. Using these measurements, I began modelling in both the Solid and Form Tabs. Working from the lenses back towards the face, I started by designing a threaded component that would snuggly hold the lenses in place, but allowed them to be removed easily and interchanged with other lenses, if desired.

As this part would need to have tight tolerances for the threading to work well, I felt modelling it with the thread creator in the create menu of the solid tab would be more effective than attempting to use the Form tab to model a thread by hand, as I had less familiarity with it and it seemed more difficult/unnecessary work. Therefore, I decided to utilise the multiple tools Fusion 360 has to offer and produce a body in the solid tab and a separate body in the form tab that I could later combine into one component to export as an STL or clean up in the slicer/Meshmixer.

The shape of the eye cups is more complex as it has bends and deformations to allow the goggle to fit comfortably against the nose and brow ridge that would be difficult to produce using basic solid modification and transformation tools like extrudes and splits. In order to make the process of modelling easier, I modelled the eyecup with a 3D scan of my face, that I took with my phone using a 3D scanning app, as reference to try and ensure the fit when printed would be as close as possible. 

This meant I could relatively easily manipulate the vertexes of my base form, namely the cylinder, to fit around my face geometry and match the existing form of the goggles I was using for inspiration. I then used a series of insert edges and careful deletion of faces and creation of new faces as well as general transformations like move and scale in order to result in the geometry that I wanted.

Once I had the form how I wanted and fitting closely the 3D scan of my face, I smoothed some areas out a bit to make them less protrusive, so they wouldn't only fit the contours of my face, but hopefully allow a more wide range of people to find a comfortable fit.

Now that I had the general form of the eyecup produced, I knew I needed some holes for screws, as well as the elastic strapping and the beaded chain link across the bridge of the nose. For those areas I utilised the solid work space to use extrude and cut operations to subtract from the form body I had created.

Since I had a design that I was relatively happy with, and all the practical design elements were there that were needed for it to function and be assembled effectively as intended, I did a series of test prints to test my tolerances and the fit and comfort of the design against my face. I then made any adaptations to the 3D model that I felt were necessary and printed my final versions of each component.

To make this project you will need print out one of each of the goggles, left and right, and then two of each other model. The STL's are scaled in such a way that the tolerances should be optimised for FDM printing. The goggle parts will require supports and are best printed with the flat threaded side facing down on the build plate. the other parts should all be able to be printed support free. I printed at a resolution of 0.16mm in ABs and found the parts came out great! I don't currently have a resin printer, so I am unable to say how well the tolerances work for that application but hopefully shouldn't negatively impact the fit, if needed please adjust the files accordingly.

Before we can assemble the goggles, we need to prep each individual component. The first of these modifications is harvesting the lenses themselves from the sunglass frames.

Most round sunglasses will have a pretty thin wire frame, which makes it fairly easy to remove the lenses by simply deforming the frame to pop the lens out.

I did this with the two pairs of sunglasses I bought for the project as I was hoping to make a couple pairs of goggles with different styles to them.

As the smallest M3 screws I was able to find had a 5mm thread length, the ends of the screws were protruding from the inside of the eye cups which I did not like aesthetically so I sanded them down using a Dremel tool. If you can find smaller M3 screws this step may not be necessary.

Using the template I provided, its time to shape your speaker mesh/ alternate material so it fits well with the 3-D printed part. To be cautious, I would recommend cutting the material a bit wide and sanding them down to fit as closely as possible. The template provided is based off of the pieces I have used for my build, and in order to get them to fit the goggles tightly the placement of the screws and shape of the pattern are designed to be installed with a degree of tension between the screws, pulling the mesh tight against the printed part. This might mean however, that if the mesh used is different than what I used, the deformation of the material may vary so a bit of extra material to adjust the screw placement and fit into the recessed area would be good practice.

Cut out the template and trace it onto the material. Once the shape is transferred, using a pair of tin snips or a Dremel with a cut-off wheel depending on the thickness of the material, cut away the excess material. I found the best way to get the fit right was by bending the material to shape and sanding it to the correct profile to fit in the recess tightly, and marking the screw holes again just in case. Then flattening the material again and drilling the holes for the screws.

Using a selection of small needle files and some varying grits of sandpaper I sanded the prints to minimise the layer lines and prep the surfaces for painting. I took the surface to a 220 grit which I found resulted in a great spray painted finish. If you want minimal post processing, feel free to print them in the colours you'd like and finish to whatever standard you are happy with.

To get the best finish I recommend painting the pieces separately and then assembling afterwards, this also allows you to more easily paint different pieces in different colours with minimal masking. I would recommend masking off the threads though if possible to ensure the functionality is not compromised.

For these goggles, since they are inspired by the film, I kept them subtle with a flat back paint job, but added some weathering with some chipped paint down to a metallic silver to make it look like some paint had been worn off in the areas it would most often be touched/set down. I felt like this subtle weathering added a lot of visual interest, more than if it was just all a pristine flat black but not too in your face.

As described in an earlier step, I find to get the best fit between the mesh and the goggles apply the screws under a bit of tension so they sit flush against the print. In support of this I find placing the screws on either side under a bit of tension followed by the centre screw provides the best fit.

The lenses are a press fit into the lens cap as the screw threads are slightly inset. Once the lenses are in place just screw the caps on to the threads in the eye cup. Make sure the lens cap is squared up against the goggle and screw it on finger tight. There is a slight chamfer on the external threads of the goggle piece that should allow a more positive interface of the threads. Both sides of the goggles, although mirrors of each other have the same threading so both are tightened by a right hand twist.

This step requires the most finger dexterity but shouldn't be too difficult. Start off by clipping the chain clip on to the beaded chain, with the thinner side facing towards the longer side of the remaining chain as seen in the photos. Next feed the remaining chain through the whole in the nose bridge area of the goggle as shown and press fit it into place. Then slide the section of heat shrink tubing over the chain to add a more comfortable fit and clean appearance if desired.

You can now cut the remaining chain to a more manageable size and slide it through the other goggle before attaching the other chain clip to make the distance between the goggles comfortable for you, you can adjust the size by changing where the chain clip is and checking it for comfort against your face.

Now that the goggles are connected and sized right to your face, you can either leave the remaining chain to adjust size for others, or clip it to make it more tidy and less distracting while wearing them. Be sure to leave at least one of the beads on the outsize of the chain clips to hold it in place or it will come loose.

The final step for assembly of the goggles is to attach the elastic strap and adjust it to size.

I began by cutting the strap to about 18 inches/ 45 centimetres, then passed it through the strap tightener part as shown, then through the goggles, and back through the strap tightener again on top of the first time through. Then repeat on the other side.

You can then pull on the remaining sections of the strap to tighten them and get a good fit on your face.

I wanted to try out a few different paint jobs and weathering techniques so I made a couple pairs of the goggles and may end up making even more, they are so quick to print and assemble! I did a brown and gold/brass colour scheme to try a more steampunk sort of look, as well as the black industrial style that better matches the movie.

Once the goggles are fully assembled you can add some powdered paint/chalk pastels or go over the whole piece with some washes to bring them together or just leave them as is.

Show off those completed goggles however you see fit! Hope you enjoyed the Instructable and let me know if you've got any questions in the comments below. Enjoy my very amateur attempt at modelling the goggles and some attempts at editing to make it more thematically appropriate.