Inexpensive 5 days built ►Foam Iron Man Mk IV◄

JFcustom

JFcustom

Sr Member
Hello users,
my 3yo daughter's school carnival's day was aproaching, and it would happend just the day of my birthday. Parents who accompanied where invited to disguise too, so I decided to release myself, making an old dream come true.

So, I surreptitiously picked up robo3687 iron man mark 4 foam pepakura templates (robo3687 you're my personal Jarvis), took an half-day for shoping, whole day for revising and modifying pep files (I prefer taping multiple sheets together to have larger pieces of foam rather than cuting and regluing many small foam parts, this way it seems I save a lot of time) and began cuting and gluing (my fingers and) yellow and pink 6.5mm PE foam... With the instant agreement of the original modeler : here are Robo3687's files, foam unfold JFcustom .

Glue, brand new sharp cutter :




Seven pink and one yellow :




Two coats of Sikafill TM, and first coat of paint :



Second coat of paint, more accurate, and let's try it out :








starkexpo1.jpg




starkexpo2.jpg




Next I'll show you pics and tricks about the damned-clever tips and tricks and cheapy materials I used to connect the parts, and to buid in 5mn an amazing 2 bucks lighted ARK reactor ;p


__________________



And after that, my next realisation and work on unfolding and building this foam-pep Guyver will be the object of a new post...
spoiler1
spoiler2
:love
 
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I have to say, for a time limited build this looks really nice! Can't wait to get on my computer to see the pics in full size.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8900 using Tapatalk
 
Re: 6.5mm Foam Iron Man Mk IV, french labeled.

my cheapest operational ARK reactor for moneyless


- you need -


An Evian bottle bottom, 2 inchs height :




One of this kind of pics, of your choice, printed on the thiner paper you can find, cut along the dotted, and then oiled for a better transparency :








A 80mm white round reflector, as you can find at the front of caravans or trailers (keep only the transparent part, of course, but better is to specify it however) :




A led(s) push-spot




and a roll of tape






- HOW TO -

Fill your bottle's bottom with

1. pic of the ARK, printed side turned down,
2. reflector, rugged side down, slicky side up in front of the leds,
3. led spot, lights turned to the reflector
4. cross tape your bottom's bottle to keep all inside in place.
5. Insert the thing in your chest, it fits perfectly, and holds alone.

2bucksARK.jpg


Push, it works.
Price : 2$
 
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Re: 6.5mm Foam Iron Man Mk IV, french labeled.

that arc reactor is genius-ly simple and effective!
 
Re: Inexpensive Foam Iron Man Mk IV, french labeled.

Joining articulated and some sealed parts :

I used to work as graphist in a publicity agency, and we had always somewhere in the office a couple of useless and sun-faded color charts.

chart0_th.jpg


And ?

And I kept thinking that the potential of these pretty little plastic juncture clips were heavyly underexploited.

chart1_th.jpg


So I ordered a pack of 100 pieces, as it almost doesn't costs anything.

clip1_th.jpg
clip2_th.jpg
clip3_th.jpg
clip4_th.jpg



You can find some here or here or here or here... of various shape, color, diameter and thickness.

clip5_th.jpg
clip6_th.jpg
clip7_th.jpg
clip8_th.jpg




And I promise you some discret and incredibly easy attaching for mobile parts (knees elbow toes...) as well as sealed parts such top chest, flaps, handplates, spin and so on... depending of the pressure when cliping.
 
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Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

You are an amazing human being!! I've been running myself ragged trying to figure out an inexpensive way to fashion an arc reactor that would look good. And you did it! I'm going to be taking a lot of inspiration from this thread. Three quick questions, what paint did you use, where did you get the foam, and how much was it? Again, amazing job!!!=)
 
Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

Fast build and great work.

I'd hate to see what you could do with more time and money...You'd probably end up inventing a fully functioning, flying Iron Man suit. :lol

Keep up the great work.

-Nick
 
Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

Great work!!!!! Also, some great tips, thanks.
 
Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

5 days? That is unbelievable.
 
Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

CapKaos said:
Three quick questions,
what paint did you use,
where did you get the foam,
and how much was it? Again, amazing job!!!=)
Click to expand...


I thank you all for your compliments, you know I just followed your technics and tutorials and I keep in mind I would still be in underwears without theRPF. So I want to congratulate you.

Well, what paint did I use... I picked four cheap 10$ red Technoral acrylic sprays, color chart RAL3004, and one common 6$ golden spray that I half used for chistmas decorations.



I got the foam at Decathlon, a discount sport articles store chain supllier of Oxylane products, sold as fitness mats. A kind of 140x50cm polyethylene carpet, 30 Kg/m3, 6,5mm thickness.

7 pink ones >>here<<

and a yellow one >>here<<



2.95EUR, meens about 3.75$ each.


Note that these paints do not hold on foam, and once dry crack on a single bend. Add that this foam is not completely slick. I had to apply in the hurry a couple of coats of Sikafill, an industrial flexible waterproof coating to seal roofs, to harden foam and make it smoother, fill gaps and hide few trivial bonding failures. And moreover, paint adhere on perfectly.

I could find less expensive than Sikafill, it would have given exactly the same result, but I already had, deep in my workshop, an old opened bucket of it...
You can count on 500ml for three heavy external coats, ie 6 more $.

On second thoughts, in the end it's quickly not so cheap...

... and 5 days, and nights, was just enough for my wife not to blow a fuse...
I must say I slept better the following week.
 
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Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

Ah, I see. Another question (if you don't mind of course)? You said in your first post that you prefer to tape mats together to make bigger pieces instead of smaller ones. What did you mean by that? And thanks for the advice! I'll definitely keep it all in mind once my build begins.=)
 
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Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

Well, it's a good question. In fact I wondered why nobody asked it before.
I do not exactly tape mats, my english must be rusted...

So, here we go.
On all pep file I found, it's always the same : objects are cutted in a profusion of smaller parts that always fit on a paper page. A4 or Letter. And of course it is, because pepakura is originaly designed to realise objects whithin paper itself as soon as a sheet comes out of the printer. You can't print a larger piece than a sheet of paper.

But,
I build with foam, not with paper. Paper is only used as a mask for cutting foam, because sadely my 1.40m mats can't be insered in my printer. I know, I tryed.


Here's the hint, illustrated :

an unrefined biceps :
a JFcustomized biceps :


an unrefined shin :
a JFcustomized shin :




an unrefined thigh :
a JFcustomized thigh :

and so on...



1. print your sheets
2. tape your sheets
3. cut your paper masks
4. cut your foam from the masks
5. you get less and bigger foam parts, you save gluing time, and less junctions means nicer curves an inproved "anti-aliasing".
 
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Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

As you could have noticed, an other trick is to keep some of the small rush parts of the original paper pep files, in order to enlarge some foam pieces to be sure to have enough overlap surface to glue parts together, while foam thickness keeps compensate the deleted part in the first pic below :

Before :



After :



And this way for marking edges (shown from under) :
 
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Re: Inexpensive 5 days built Foam Iron Man Mk IV

JFcustom said:
As you could have noticed, an other trick is to keep some of the small rush parts of the original paper pep files, in order to enlarge some foam pieces to be sure to have enough overlap surface to glue parts together, while foam thickness keeps compensate the deleted part in the first pic below :

Before :



After :



And this way for marking edges (shown from under) :
Click to expand...

simple yet awesome tips there! why do i always go the long way around when the easy things are staring me straight in the face haha!
 
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