Elysium Max Exoskeleton

guitarpirate

Active Member
I am super-excited about building my own Elysium exo suit because I love cyber-punk and sci-fi. Hoping to wear it on stage when playing electronic metal :)

Started about three months ago, my plan is to solid-model all parts in AutoCAD using photo references, prototype using paper and cardboard to make sure scale is right, then submit for manufacturing to a CNC shop. Last step is finishing, which will involve tapping all connections with metric threads (both male and female), painting, stamps, decals, and final assembly. I am planning to use aluminum for most parts, and SS316 for certain connectors that are most likely to get bent or break. Hard rubber and poly will be used for soft under-lays (such as soft plates underneath the shirt where spine and hips connect) as well as some inside parts of pistons. Really hoping that mfg. will not run over $4000, otherwise I will have to prioritize the parts and leave easier ones for myself to forge and polish.

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The 2D drawings are almost done, and prototyping is close to completed. I have maybe 3-4 drawings left to do before I create another branch and get busy projecting geometry, revolving and extruding :)

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The real "pistons" are literally just tubes inside other tubes that have the OD turned down a little bit in certain areas. There are no internals.
 
I think the real pistons were plastic. Mine are metal, so I have to worry about polished surface of the moveable part getting scratched, hence the internals. Also, what did they do to make sure the inner rod didn't fall out of the outer rod?
 
The pistons were all metal, save for the rod ends. And they were a relatively sloppy fit (and still showed tool marks). I believe there may have been a piece of elastic or cording inside, given what I've seen from reference photos.
 
As you can see from this reference, the upper arm piece connects with two pistons at the back (and swivels from the "back connector" of one of the shoulder piece extremities), and one piston at the front (swivels using ball rod ends from a chest piece extremity). I trust that if I design everything to specs of original suit it will "just work", but I am going to prototype with cardboard before I submit the order for metal pieces.

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Got 3mm, 6mm and 12mm taps as well as black screws. The screws look pretty close, and fit the Igus KARM-06 rod end bearings I bought earlier pretty snug.

The 3mm are used mostly in spine back and pelvis wings, and have the "socket head" that's fat with ribs for screwing in without a screwdriver. The 12mm also have the socket head, and appear to be used to connect pelvis wings to base. The 6mm have normal heads with a hex hole that I got a set of 90 degree mini-wrenches for (couldn't find a screwdriver to fit).

Forgot to mention, when drilling holes (or in my case, having them drilled as part of CNC), 6mm thread requires a 5mm hole. Each of the taps says "use with XXXmm drill bit" so now I know what size to make all the holes in my drawings. So far I've been making them exact size, which is wrong.

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It seems that rod bearings need "space" for maximum ball rotation. Having screw head flush with the bearing as in picture below severely restricts motion. That's food for thought.

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As mentioned by OldSkoolEffects previously, the rod bearings are plastic (6mm metric thread, 20mm head size).
 
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2D prototyping on last few pieces (neck, head and wrist-ring). The only things left are a hip connector plate, back-of-forearm piece, and possibly more connecting pieces from wrist to forearm. For the back of fore-arm, I might do more detailing to include bike brake cables running from each finger along the grooves in the forearm, to tiny pistons. That should look more exciting than the real thing from the movie.


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Not quite done with 2D work, but pressing on to 3D. Worst experience in AutoCAD so far is it trying to extrude uncapped surface from polyline instead of extruding a solid. Selecting polyline and using polyedit close closes the microscopic break somewhere that causes this and then a solid can be extruded.

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Thanks a lot for attention and kind words, I will address the sharing concerns once the project is done.

Currently working on upper-arm:

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Ended up re-creating the hip 5 times because it took me a while to get used to "planning ahead" for Boolean operations... The final-final version is this:

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Cool, glad my work could help you. You should start by compiling a folder of reference photographs. I spent about 2 weeks doing nothing but saving pictures and trying to find everything in high res. The best references are of actual exo suit parts being sold on eBay as part of movie auctions. Even getting all 2D drawings I have won't help you if you don't know where each part goes and how they connect. The good news is it seems every month there are more exo suit references with more detail. It's almost like there are 30 other people doing the same thing as me and I am finding bits and pieces of their work.
 

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