Iron Man Mk 46 out of Sintra

[Cri7e]

I may order the files...as my confidence to try will likely improve when Formlabs starts shipping the 3L.

I would love to be able to print the entire suit on a resin printer, unfortunately I think the high price of the resin and relatively brittle material make it hard to print an entire suit out of. Have you taken a look at the new Elegoo Saturn? Looks like a great machine for the price!

 

[USS Endeav]

I haven't see that printer although I do have a similar version of their smaller one. I also use the Form2 and a Form3.
To print this armor costume, I'd first call in to Formlabs and get their input as to which resin would be best suited for it.
They have several engineering resins and I believe the Tough or the Durable would be a good fit. I'd love it in vacuum formed
PETG but that is beyond my ability and the cost of printing parts to mold would exceed the cost of a purchased set.

 

[Cri7e]

Several paint issues later and me amost wanting to quit this project I can now show some well needed progress on the hands! At this point they are about 95% done. Only thing missing are the arc reactors and the little arc for the palm patch which I will lasercut at my local maker space out of 4mm plexiglas.

Its always interesting to see that the red color looks so much different in pictures than it does in real life. Its actually much darker with a hint of purple and not the bright red as seen here. Probably depends on what camera you use.

I decided to go with a black glove instead of painting it with a flexible plastidip like paint because I was just not happy with the red color of these paints. I would rather have a color that fits well with the red than a red that looks somewhat off.

The small metal parts and arc reactor are still missing. Im already working on designing the arc in Fusion360 and will print it out of black resin, finish it and make a mold in order to cast it in clear resin. Plan is to put a white led behind it to ulliminate it.
For weathering I used a water mixable oil paint! It has the greasy look of normal oil paint but you can clean your brush with water afterwards which is great! Unfortunately is also takes about 24h to dry, just like normal oil paint.

I already started adding some more details to the forearm using 1mm Forex. I really like how the proportions of the hand, palm patch and forearm fit together.

I will probably start working on the helmet next. I need to work on something that i only have to build once LOL.
Thanks for the interest and see you guys soon!

 

[blickfangQ2]

Looks really great! Awesome paint job!!
Don’t worry, the hands are the most work since you have so much small pieces. As soon as you get going on the larger parts, the progress will kick in much faster!

Im really looking forward to the arm!

 

[Cri7e]

So I have been thinking a lot about motivation, or better the lack there of, when it comes to this project! I am really happy with how the prints are turning out and I love the proportions of the final pieces. The real struggle in this project for me is all the sanding that I have to do in order to finish it to my liking and I came to the conclusion that I just cannot motivate myself enough to finish these 3D prints. This is why I have decided to sell the majority of my printed parts and start over from scratch. For anyone interested in these parts keep a lookout on the junkyard and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Of course the hands wont be availale for sale, those are mine to keep

Having said that this project is far from over. Thinking about starting over has sparked a lot of new energy and new motivation and I will be starting over with materials and methods I have been working with on my Mk40 already. The base material for the suit will be Forex (a sintra like material available in Germany) and the pepakura files from GordanUA which I completely forgot about and fell in love with the second I opened them. I will start ordering materials as soon as possible and start over with a fresh start.

To hype myself up even more I decided to do a quick comparison of the old 3D files:

vs. the new Pepakura files:

I really like the more elegant look of the pep files though I have to work out some sizing issues with the helmet, it looks kinda big at the moment, so I might have to increase the scale a little bit to make everything fit together well.

Hope you guys are just as excited for the new start as I am!

 

[Cri7e]

You guys are in for a treat today since I made great progress on the new Mk 46 build out of sintra. I realized that I just love getting some hands on time in the workshop. Fabricating everything by hand gives me a great chance to add missing details on the fly, and boy are there many details on this armor! It is incredible.

First I had to scale everything to the correct proportions in 3D space while at the same time ensuring that the armor would still fit my body. Luckily I made a rough 3D model of myself using an Xbox360 Kinect a while ago. This way I was able to make everything fit.

Having a reference photo is always a great help (this is a screenshot from a 3D model by inside3Dedu.com) Yeah I know, the helmet still look a little bit big, but this is the smallest size to fit over my head. Just shows that the CGI models really are not realistic.

I first started with by building the chest. Great thing about sintra is, you can score detail lines with a simple metal screwdriver or similar.

admittedly there are some rough areas with big gaps but those will be filled in with either plastic filler or something flexible like kwik caulk. I still need to do some tests to see which one works better.

After finishing the chest I started working on the abs, which turned out great in my opinion! These were some of the hardest parts to figure out yet. Especially all the small detail was a nightmare to cut out. but it turned out great! Once the body is finished I will start finishing and painting this part of the armor in order to not get bored with just one task too quickly. Unfortunately I probably wont be able to paint much more this year since its already starting to get cold again in Germany....

Cant wait for your feedback!

 

[xl97]

coming along nice!