Vacformed Warhammer 40k Space Marine Armor - Finished Suit Pics on p.17

I know you are not selling these (with the issues over your beeky helmet) and I am not asking how much one would cost but I would be interested to know how much these beasts cost you to make.

After you get over the cost and 100's of hours to make the bucks (which would add a lot to the sale price of a suit) how do they work out cost wise in relation to casting them.

Is the material and process for vacforming cheaper than casting in molds or is it just an easier / quicker process ?

Once you have make your master is it quicker to make a vac buck or casing mold ?

Due to the size of the suits and the making process does the amount of waste from vacforming make much of an impact on the cost ?

Sorry for all the questions but I was interested in the process and as they are such large items I thought they would show up the differences in the costs of making them.

I would be interested to know how much these beasts cost you to make.

I haven't really been keeping track of the costs. I do know that I dropped $1200 on sheet styrene and ABS last week to get ready for the crew to come by over the weekend. That's probably most of what I'll need for five suits. There's also the cost of moldmaking silicone (I'll probably burn through 44lbs by the time I'm done) and casting resin (about a gallon worth of cast parts per suit) and finally the stilts that I'll be building into the legs. I've gone through about a dozen gallons of fiberglass resin since the beginning of this project and probably at least as much bondo.

After you get over the cost and 100's of hours to make the bucks (which would add a lot to the sale price of a suit) how do they work out cost wise in relation to casting them.

The reason for vacforming them is to save on weight. If I was rotocasting all of the parts, this rig would weigh hundreds of pounds. My Halo Spartan suits weigh around 50lbs when they're fully assembled, so extrapolate that out to a character that's eight feet tall and four feet wide and you've got a costume that nobody could wear.

Is the material and process for vacforming cheaper than casting in molds or is it just an easier / quicker process ?

Both. For the Halo project I went with cast parts because of the much greater volume of details involved in those suits. Since the Space Marines have large, smooth areas, there's no need for the fine detail reproduction afforded by silicone molds.

If I get really insane somewhere down the line, I may graduate to making fiberglass molds and blow in the parts with a chopped strand gun. That'd be years from now though.

Once you have make your master is it quicker to make a vac buck or casing mold ?

The masters are the forming bucks. Making a mold would require more work and materials after the masters were made.

Due to the size of the suits and the making process does the amount of waste from vacforming make much of an impact on the cost ?

We've been trying to minimize waste by arranging the parts as efficiently as possible on each pull. It still takes somewhere between 20 and 30 pulls to make a full suit though, so waste is inevitable.

For an idea of what something like this should cost, think of the price of a suit of stormtrooper armor. Now realize that that would only be six or seven pulls at the most on a machine like mine. The full-sized Space Marine will take 4-5 times the plastic sheet plus whatever cast parts are involved...

You can do your own math, but if someone tells you they can build you a costume like this for less than $2k-$3k, hold onto your wallet.

Thanks for the info, it's always interesting to learn more about the production methods used for these projects.

I'm looking forward to see the five of you all suited up for a troop. You are going to need a lot of space for all of you

Amazing job, I'll keep an eye on your topic.
Thanks for sharing.

Hey, loved the shots of those high powered sanders you have on your flickr (sp?) account. Awesome.

And I finally figured out what that pink widget you posted was... it is part of the knee joint? Man, where did you get the steel for that? Did you canabalise it from something else?

The leg braces are a good idea. You don't want to twist and ankle and go down in one of those big boys! This is just a hoot to follow! Every new post is just awesome to behold!

These suits are going to be killer!

I figured you'd go with something akin to drywall stilts. Does that helmet mean there will be a rocket launcher build in the near future?!?!

I gotta say, this build has inspired me to do something similar once I'm finished with this years costumes.

I'm no expert on stilts at all but I wondered if the bottoms of the stilts were wide enough? A wider base would mean less risk of falling?

oota goota said:

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I'm no expert on stilts at all but I wondered if the bottoms of the stilts were wide enough? A wider base would mean less risk of falling?

I think we were all thinking that I'm sure those are a basic template, with possibly a larger surface area and strap on design on the way.

Believe it or not, a wider base is actually less stable to walk on, try walking in snow boots on any hard surface, then imagine the extra hight you would have with stilts on.

My sister in law has circus skills and uses stilts all the time (the tallest pair she has are four foot high), and all of them have no base at all. If you put a wide base on them and land the stilt at an angle to the horizontal plane, it will force your leg to move in an awkward way and can throw you off becouse any wobble at the base is amplified by the time it reaches your leg.

This can be compensated for by adding X Y pivots at the ankle and strong springs to do the job of muscle and tendon, but gets complicated to build.

The way thorssoli has made them is pretty good. By the looks of the construction it can pivot forward and back (like a knee brace, sort of).

thanks canobi you learn something new everyday

So here I am wearing the stilts with high-speed, temporary strapping system (duct-tape) in place:


The "ankle" at the bottom has stops that keep the foot from bending too far in either direction. It's a good thing:


Over the weekend, I had a few more folks show up to help out:


Since I had a functional prototype of the stilts, I decided it was time to make boots. Lots of boots:


While they're easy enough to walk around in, Canobi is right about the need for extra pivoting movement. Attaching the much bigger footprint of the Space Marine boot to the bottom of the stilts would make it more likely to twist a knee or pop a hip out of joint if the wearer steps on an uneven surface. To alleviate this, I had to build in a bit of lateral wobble in addition to the fore and aft ankle flexibility. The simple solution, a section of rubber floor mat bolted in between the bottom of the stilt and the sole of the boot. Here it is taped in place on the bottom of the stilt:


Bolts run up through the sole, through the rubber, and into the steel base of the stilts. The end result is a very stiff joint that has a bit of give from side to side.

For the sole, I made this simple arrangement out of 3/8" plywood and a piece of piano hinge:


Then I flipped it over so the hinge would be on the bottom and stapled the toe piece in place:


Then the rest of the boot was stapled to the sole:


With the stilts bolted in and the shin in place, the wearer's knee is just above the character's knee:


I'll be using more of the rubber floor mat to make a rubber sole (and a raised edge around the bottom of the boot) but once I had a pair of boots put together, it became more important to try them out:


They're a bit heavy, but they worked pretty well. Here's a video of me stomping around in my excessively cluttered workshop:
Stiltwalking Test - YouTube

Stay tuned. I will have at least one fully-assembled suit within a few days...

That's awesome! Great work with the foot too. If I built something like this, I never would have thought about putting a pivoting toe to alleviate some issues with walking around.

Yeah, this is continually blowing me away. That hinged toe is genius. Going to look at different methods for designing stilts.

great to see the youtube clip. The suits looking good.........it's so frickin' HUGE!!!

very nice to see it in motion!.. now.. some really powerful stilt springs, a jump pack, and you got yourself an assault squad haha.

These look nice.. adjustable height... but $250


Really looking forward to seeing this all coming together, and seeing how impressively imposing it will be.

Another question. Which chest version did you use for the .pdo? I have looked at a few of them (including the work by Chewbacca which seems to be a good unwrap) and most seem to want a bit of resizing. I know you did not resize yours at all, and I wonder if that one is still up on 4shared. Maybe you could tell me how wide, etc... your chest peice is and I can resize based on that... From the pictures I would say that it looks to be about 45 cm wide, around 35 vertical and 30 cm deep?

The stilts look to work very well. Despite the bulk of the legs you still seem to have a large range of movement and look very stable, just watch your fluid intake as I doubt getting it off will be quick

This is Hands down the best build on this site at the moment

Gunhead said:

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Another question. Which chest version did you use for the .pdo?

This one came from Shiney over at Obscurus Crusade. Poke around a bit and you'll be sure to find the files I used.

Alric said:

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The stilts look to work very well. Despite the bulk of the legs you still seem to have a large range of movement and look very stable, just watch your fluid intake as I doubt getting it off will be quick

We've been working out the details of bathroom breaks for this outfit. It may just come down to peeing in a bottle while wearing the whole rig. There will be more than enough room to maneuver a container into place, then pull it back out and toss it into a trash can. But the better option is just to sweat it out.

Tobot said:

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This is Hands down the best build on this site at the moment

Thank you all for the compliments. Here's an update:

After several rounds of counting and re-stacking all of the pieces, we're finally somewhat confident that we have everything formed. Here's one of the part stacks (thigh and arm parts):


Here's most of the thighs assembled:


Since I'm running out of space for this build in my workshop, I've started stacking pieces anywhere I can find room:


At the end of each day, it's become more and more important to pick up the scraps on the floor and clear space for the next day's work:


At this point had the other guys get all of the leg parts assembled. With those put together, I'm able to focus on some of the details. Here's the resin cast insert detail for the bottom end of the calf:


Here's a shot of some of the thigh details:


Here's a few of the "patch" sections on one of the shins:


Since the patches and other details are pulled separately, I'll be able to make these parts different on every pair of legs.

Here's the rubber knee insert taped in place:


Here's a shot showing the limit of the range of motion for the legs:


And another picture showing the scale of the build:


The guy in the picture is my friend Daniel, one of the guys who will be wearing one of the suits. Everyone's been stopping by the workshop in the evenings in order to try on the stilts and get the hang of walking around for a bit:


It's been said before: if you can walk in my workshop wearing these things, you can walk anywhere...

In other news, I started working out the design of the first backpack frame for inside the chest armor:


While most if it is coming together nicely, I'm still behind on the sculpt for the rubber shorts to go inside the hip joints:


Stay tuned. Much to come in the week ahead...

Next thing you know he's gonna build a full sized Rhino for them to drive to conventions in

Damn. It just keeps getting better and better.

Have you worked out any of the strapping yet?

duke nukem said:

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Next thing you know he's gonna build a full sized Rhino for them to drive to conventions in

Warhammer Dawn of War 2 real rhino tank - YouTube

Wow , it's always wow win you can't wait to see the next step !,