Iron Man "Suitcase Armor" with the help of rapid prototyping.

chosetec

chosetec

New Member
Here's a recently finished "Suitcase Armor" from Iron Man 2. I'll post some finished pictures first, and then include progress pictures.

The suit is made of laser cut plastic, waterjet cut aluminum, and pleather with LED lighting for the eyes and repulsors. The faceplate flips up but not automatically, that's for a future version. It's a work in progress, I'm planning to replace all the pleather parts with articulated rigid components, add more gadgetry, and improve the general accuracy. I wanted to have something in time for Anime Boston and the Avengers showing (my friend Ger is Black Widow).

The working time on this so far has been about three months, including design and CAD. Drawings and CAD screenshots to follow shortly.
 
Pencil sketches

Before I started with CAD I did a lot of sketches just to figure out the mechanics, especially of the rigid parts. I wanted to familiarize myself with the different components and how they might actually be hinged so that I could move comfortably. A lot of these designs ultimately weren't used but the brainstorm was helpful.

This is a just a small batch of the total drawings I did over the months. I included a sketch I did of a custom Iron Man suit which I might try building someday.
 
That is pretty cool. I don't think I have seen someone use aluminium for and iron man before.
 
CAD Model

Some pictures of the CAD Model I drafted up of the armor-to-be. I used Rhino3D, it's a good modeling program for engineering/design (and currently is downloadable as a free albeit expiring Beta for Mac users)

I started this model by drawing a reference outline of my body, the dimensions of which I got using just a tape measure, ruler, giant calipers. Then I drew flat 2D views of the armor front, back and side views and used those views to model the 3D mesh. Then I unwrapped/flattened the mesh pieces and added tabs or attachment holes where needed so that I could rivet or otherwise connect the panels to each other.

The biggest worry was that the helmet would end up too small - If I erred on the safe side I'd look like a bobble head. I measured my head as much as possible and crossed my fingers.
 
Thanks! I work in a university machine shop, so there's a lot of aluminum scrap from student projects. As far as weight and machinability goes, it's a lot better than actual iron! There are some smaller parts where I used steel for better durability.

Welmanshire said:
That is pretty cool. I don't think I have seen someone use aluminium for and iron man before.
Click to expand...
 
Cutting pieces (Laser, waterjet)

Most of the laser cutting I send to Ponoko.com while the waterjet is done at the shop I work at. Ponoko and shapeways are places you can send digital files and have them laser-cut (or 3D print) in a variety of materials including metal, cardboard, plywood and leather. This is really great if you have some complicated geometry and/or are in a rush.

The plastic I had them use is PETG (the same as soda bottles). It comes thin and cheap, but a downside is that it's quite brittle when subject to shock.

The aluminum and other metals are cut on a waterjet. This is like a high pressure hose connected to a motorized 2-axis system. The water entrains abrasive powder which wears away at the material being cut. It's quite versatile and can be used to cut through several inches of stone or metal, even.

I don't have any pics of laser cutting since I got it outsourced, but here are some pictures of the waterjet and the parts.
 
ASSEMBLE

I made it so that most of the parts can be put together using rivets. I use pop rivets (like Klik-fast). If... I mean *when* I make another suit, I'll use rivets again but I'll use flush rivets so that they can be easily flattened and hidden.

The helmet is held onto the head with some "headphone" looking thing. I call it "Beats by Dr. Stark". It isolates the sound from inside the helmet so you can hear pretty normally with the helmet on. I've had too much experience with helmets where all you hear is your own breathing.

The chest RT parts were cut on the waterjet from various sheet metal parts, and glued together using lots and lots of superglue. The lights are tiny surface-mount LED's and the circuit is formed from copper foil, glued onto the plastic and soldered onto the LED's.

After partial assembly, I sprayed the (clear) plastic parts crimson red.

There were a lot of last-minute changes to the suit and I still had to hand-cut, tweak, and replace a lot of parts to make it work. Everything that didn't work this time around as a rigid component I used pleather instead. A word of caution: DON'T USE ADHESIVE VELCRO on pleather or other vinyls. It may work for a day or two, but after that, the adhesive reacts to form a nasty flowing, sticky mess. I felt like a bug in a sticky trap!

The eyes were done with surface mount LEDs and the gloves were larger LEDs using champagne bottle covers as reflectors. Glove and arm armor was approximated with pleather panels.

That's all the pics I have for now, stay tuned for upgrades and more.
 
This is overall sick! If you manage to cut the hands from aluminum, you will be about as close to an actual iron man as you can get! next mod is making this thing fly
 
So freaking cool, man. Really top notch! Can't wait to see more work from you! :thumbsup
 
That's so awesome!

Thats so awesome one should compliment you.

You could say that we should give you (puts on glasses) props.



YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!



........my first post here ever, couldn't resist ^_^;;

Awesome suit, keep up the good work!


BTW, and I can understand if you say no to this, since you put so much work into them, and so many people would take credit for models, but if you didn't mind do you think you could share the CAD files once you're satsified with them (its an amazing suit already and you're STILL making it better! That's commitment) If they can be converted to pepakura that'll be awesome, but if not others could use shapeways and ponoko. Thanks!
 
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