A couple of questions regarding Ironman foam armour

[brewer17]

Hi guys and girls,

This is my first post so please bear with me. Me and my friend will soon be starting our own Ironman and War Machine armour out of foam. After a lot of research im still left with 2 unanswered questions.
I have used the search function but i cannot find anything specific (i maybe doing something wrong)

So my questions are:

1: What thickness foam are you guys using?

2: With regards to the helmet, how have you lot been able to see through it? Obviously not through the eyes as there is a bright blue light in the way? We have been looking at pin size cameras, but Im curious to see what other people have done.

Any help woud be appreciated.

 

[ShaunDark80]

Hi Brewer

for the foam thickness, most builds I've seen use 6mm for the main structure, and 3mm for the detailed areas.

For helmet visibility, most leave a slit under the eye lights to see through. I considered the camera route, but unless you can find decent lcd panels that work very close to your eyes, there's no real benefit to this over the slits. A few people have been experimenting with light up lenses that can be seen through, with mixed results. James from XRobots made a decent set, but reported that you can only really use them in well lit environments. If you can solve this one, you'l make many friends here.

The only idea I've considered that could be an improvement is arranging the eye lights in a grid, so that you can look out between them. This presents problems with difusing the light without bouncing it back into your eyes, but I plan to give it a go before going for the limited visibility slit design.

Good luck, and keep us posted. If you get a camera system working, then we'd all love to see it.

 

[brewer17]

Hi Shaun Thanks for the reply.

We have been looking at riging up a set of Google Glasses to the inside of the face plate. Or even a car reversing camera and LCD screen. Suppose its just trial and error really.

 

[ShaunDark80]

If you can fit a set of these into your helmet, you could be onto a winner;

ST1080, 1080p HMD, head mounted display | SiliconMicroDisplay, Silicon Micro Display, SMD - Silicon Micro Display

i did like the idea of google goggles, but again, with the limited display size, I wonder if it would have any advantage over the slit. Plus they're quite pricey at the moment.

 

[brewer17]

I have found some china clones knocking about on the net, ranging from £40-£120.

 

[teragon]

or else there is also regular video glasses, used by a few if us, that work fairly well with a camera. Almost plug and play by the way. And not too expensive either. Mines used to be Vuzix 920, but they got destroyed trying to fit them in a too tight helmet, so I'm currently waiting for a pair of Vuzix 310 XL (bigger screen) to go with a bigger helmet coming shortly too. The key is to make sure you have enough space for them, knowing that you can get rid of the glasses frame if needed and keep just the screens module without damaging it.

edit : they're not 1080p though, it's usually standard 480p and only as good as your camera can give.

 

[brewer17]

Also what does WIP mean?

 

[ironmaided]

Also what does WIP mean?

Work In Progress