[Completed] Wearable Arc Reactor Mk I

[IAmTheClayman]

Hey all,

So this is my first official project on RPF, and while I'm nervous as hell I'm looking forward to it (previously I built a steel Captain America shield based off of the excellent tutorial by Valor, but decided not to create a thread for it since it wasn't original work). I'm making a wearable replica of Tony's cave-built arc reactor from Iron Man, a prop I've been in love with ever since I first saw the movie. I had 2 goals going in:

1. The whole prop must be 3/4" thick or less (that way it actually looks decent when worn and not too bulky)
2. The dimensions and colors need to be as close to movie-accurate as possible

That said, as a game development major I started by heading into Maya and drafting up a 3D model to get a basic idea of the dimensions of the pieces. Here's what I've come up with




I plan on making 90% of the components out of styrene (I'm still not the most confident metalworker, so I feel like styrene will be a bit more forgiving), and resin casting the green-tinted ring using Clear-Lite since I plan on actually embedding the "palladium" wire ring in it. I also plan on etching my own PCB despite having little to no knowledge of electronics.

That said, if anyone can help me out there I'd really appreciate it. I've already picked out some potential LEDs to use, as my choices were really limited since I only have 1/16" of clearance between the PCB and the frosted acrylic backplate. They're made by Rohm and can be found here, and while each only gives off 5500mcd as of right now I plan on using 40 of them, if that's even feasible.

So basically, if anyone has advice for me I'd be grateful. I've already checked out marsattack's thread, which was a real inspiration and just a beautiful piece of workmanship, as well as the build threads found on these two blogs.

I'll be updating soon-ish hopefully, but between classes, finals and Christmas break I don't know how productive I'll be in the next few weeks. Hope I can come back after all that with some pics of the resin ring and wrapped transformers

EDIT: After looking at my reference photos again I realized that the gaps between the transformers were too large, aka the transformers weren't wide enough. New version below


EDIT #2: Now that I've completed this build, here's some pics

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

Hey all,

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Had an early dinner with the family this year since some of them wanted to get some early Black Friday shopping done, so I had some time to myself after to work on my 3D model. Spent a lot of time making some more accurate measurements and found that a lot of my pieces were off. The gold rings below the focusing ring needed to be adjusted, which ended up affecting the dimensions of some of the pieces around it as well. I also decided to make this render slightly more accurate color-wise. The resin ring is still a bit off, but right now I'm more focused on the dimensions of the pieces anyway.



My big question right now for the PCB has to do with the number of LEDs I need to light the unit. Since each LED gives off 5500mcd (ignore the incorrect number in the pic above) I should be generating 220,000mcd total. Does that sound like an appropriate brightness? And if it is, would a 9V battery be sufficient to power it for, say, 5 hours?

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

Alright, after some more subtle adjustments to my model I think I'm ready to start buying materials. Here's how the final model turned out:

I plan on starting with the resin cast ring, carving the ring out of wood then making a box mold. If anyone sees this before I start, is Tap Plastics' Platinum Silicone worth the cost? A 1 pt kit costs $40, which seems like a lot to me, although it does look more forgiving than other products I've looked at. I'm open to recommendations for silicone and resin

And with that, I'm done for the night. Wish me luck

 

[KramStaar]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

Looking promising mate, best of luck!

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

hey all,

Just a quick update today. Went to my local plastics store and picked up a sheet of scrap 1/8th" frosted acrylic (for the "LED diffuser", for lack of a better term) and a sheet of clear 1/8th" clear acrylic (really just for creating my silicone mold). Total cost: 3 bucks. Gotta love going local.

Also planning on buying a sheet of 12" x 24", 1/32nd" thickness clear acrylic from Inventables for the remaining pieces. Why acrylic and not styrene like I originally planned? Because I finally got laser cutter permissions from my university! This is going to save me so much time and effort, since making up the cut guides took about an hour tops and the actual cutting shouldn't take more than a half hour. And I'll be more than willing to release the cut guides once I finish my build.

That's it for tonight. Hopefully I'll have another update soon

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

Another quickie tonight:



Laser cutter worked out spectacularly for my trial run, considering the operator was worried that the focusing ring might melt because of how thin it it. Had to sand down the top piece of the "LED diffuser" (photo on the right) to get it to fit just right, but no big deal in the end. Stuck the pieces together with good ol' methylene chloride.

As for painting the focusing ring, that was just three layers of plastic primer, 2 layers of flat black enamel and a layer of metallic silver on top. Didn't wet sand since I wanted to avoid the ring looking too smooth (Tony Stark did build this in a cave, after all )

As for parts, in addition to the primer, black and silver paint I bought two different gold spray paints (to try and get a good brass texture), plus the copper and brass wire I'll need later. Total cost so far: $48. Figure by the time I'm done I'm looking at around $250, although a good deal of that is for reusable materials like the silicone and resin

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

hey all,

Big update time. Finally got my 1/32nd" acrylic in (Inventables was fantastic FYI, a tad over $21 with shipping, and even though they were backed up with holiday/Thanksgiving orders they were great about getting my order out in a timely manner) and got my pieces cut. Couldn't get a ton of work done today with finals coming up, but I'll definitely make a decent amount of progress over the weekend. Here's what I have so far:




This is my case. I realized that in the wearable version of the arc reactor there's actually a clear pane of glass/acrylic in front of the actual prop (you can see it more clearly in one of the featurettes), so I made sure to cut a small groove into the case that way I could fit a piece of acrylic. While I could just close the thing off, I'd like to see if there's any way to make that front pane removable in case I ever need to work on the inner pieces.



The concentric, telescoping rings. Still have to put these together and paint them to look like brass, but that shouldn't bee to much of a challenge



The focusing ring and mount. Not much to say here, but I'm really happy with how this turned out. Just need to sand some of the corners to round them off before I paint it a flat black.



And finally, the palladium ring. Here's the deal: as it turns out, upon rewatching the cave scene I realized that Tony inserts the cast palladium into a piece of glass (there's a telltale "clink" when he slips it in.) So I decided that it didn't make sense to cast the piece in resin. So instead I had to 1/8th" rings cut, got on the Bridgeport milling machine in our fab lab and carved out a channel using the rotary table. Then it was a simple matter of cutting the right length of aluminum wire, bending it to shape and sandwiching it in between the two rings.

That's where things went wonky. Turns out that methylene chloride like to bubble up on you, which is why the finished ring looks a bit grimy. Unfortunately that won't do, so now I'm remaking this piece, and I'll use the transformers and copper wire to hold the two halves together. No methylene chloride = no bubbles, and a perfectly clear piece.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll have another update out over the weekend

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: (First Project Ever) Arc Reactor Mk I

Hey all, smallish update tonight. First, the case is officially done



Really simple, just a base coat of flat black followed by chrome from about 14 inches away to get the grainy effect you see in the film version. Not 100% accurate, since I wanted to be able to remove the clear pane in case I ever need to fix the inner components. So there's a groove in the case which matches the extra pieces on the clear piece, which slides in and twists to lock it into place.



And here's the heat sink(?), again primed in black and then sprayed with a mix of bronze and gold. The mesh is actually just a kitchen sink drain strainer I picked up at my local hardware store, but I think it's a good size for the reactor. I'm trying to get the palladium ring and transformers done in the next 24 hours, but we'll see how that turns out. I was worried about how this would all look, but now that some of the pieces are painted I'm feeling much more confident. Looking forward to posting my next update

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: [Painting Time!] Wearable Arc Reactor Mk I

Quickie before I head into my exam:



It's all coming together now :lol

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: [Painting Time!] Wearable Arc Reactor Mk I

Another quick post, now with weathering



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[IAmTheClayman]

Re: [Painting Time!] Wearable Arc Reactor Mk I

Hey all,

Finally done! Pics below



While I'm not thrilled with the fact that the LEDs are visible through the "frosted" acrylic, for my first project I am very happy with how this came out. Unfortunately it ended up thicker than I would've liked, but that's what happens. Now I know that I need to account for a certain amount of leeway when I make my 3D model. In the real world things don't come together quite as cleanly as on a computer (at least not at my current skill level.

I did the lighting using an LED strip I got from RadioShack, cut into 3 LED sections and soldered to fit into the back of the unit. Next time I know to pay more attention to the wavelength of the LEDs, as the light is on the warmer side. But again, live and learn.

I'd love to hear what you all have to say, where I could've done a bit better, etc. I'll most likely revisit this at some point, but this isn't a bad start

 

[CGHanson]

Looks great, man!