My Hellboy Mecha-Glove v3 Upgrade (full rebuild)

[Helpful Nerd]

In January of 2015 I started building my "old parts / junk parts" Hellboy Mecha-Glove prop replica. Here's the old build thread:

On Hand Materials, Old Parts, Junk Parks Hellboy Mecha-Glove Build

In 2016 I upgraded my mecha-glove. Working on this prop on and off for the past four years has taught me a lot, mostly that I need to be more patient. But, since I started this prop I've gained new skills, for example, I got into 3D printing and 3D modeling. My modeling skills are now good enough to create models of parts to upgrade this prop.

I've received lots of great compliments in the past at various conventions about my glove and my Rasputin cosplay. However, I was never 100% happy with my mecha-glove and about a year ago I decided to do a v3 upgrade and get this prop to the point where I'm truly happy with it.

A couple weeks ago I tore down my glove into all it's parts and decided that I'm going to do a complete rebuild.

This thread will be all about my v3 glove and everything I'm doing to put it together. This time there will be lights and I will get the "spinning gear" portion to turn in some motorized fashion.

The goal is to have this final build finished in time for DragonCon this year, but I'm also not going to rush this build.

My mecha-glove still won't be super screen accurate and I will still be using some off the shelf items. But this build is going to be mostly 3D printed parts and other parts that are close enough for me and way better than the previous glove. For example, this time around the fingertips will be glass and not plastic round bottom cigar tubes. While that was a creative solution I am trying to make this final version nicer and more accurate even though it won't be screen accurate.

I'll post some pictures from this new build shortly. In the meantime here are a couple pics of my Rasputin cosplay and the most recent pictures of my glove before I broke it down into parts and

 

[Helpful Nerd]

Here's what I've worked on so far:

First thing I did was spend time taking notes, sketching ideas and sorting out measurements. I also finally found the bearing that I'll use for the "spinning gear", the large metal ring that rotates.





The bearing is for lazy susans. I found it on Amazon for $17.99 which is way better than the hundreds of dollars that Adam mentioned on one of his YouTube videos. The bearing has an OD of 200mm and the hole in the middle is 144.5, around 5.7 inches so it's smaller than the arm tube on my previous glove but close enough that I'm just gonna slightly scale everything down. This final version of my glove will be a tad smaller but not so much that it's super noticeable. I had to model the main arm tube and 3D print it because of the size of the bearing - I can't just go and pick up PVC pipe at the size that will slide into the bearing. The image below is of the top section of the arm tube with the bearing suport / mounting ring on it and the bearing sitting on the mounting ring.



I 3D modeled the new fingertips that I'll be using. the lower ring portion is where these will slide into the new leather glove that I'm going to use. And the lower ring is where the tips of my fingers will go and that will allow me to have better control of the fingers and move movement this time around.



Here's a screenshot of other parts that I've been modeling.



Mostly the "spinning gear" section of the glove. I'm ordering my 4th 3D printer at the end of this next week. My new printer has a 300 X 300 X 400 print volume and then I can print the different parts of the "spinning gear" without having to slice the parts up in netfab.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading!
Joshua

 

[Helpful Nerd]

One of my goals on this build is to put silver liquid inside the large glass dome part and motorize a method to churn or mix the silvery liquid around. it's a challenge that I'm going to try and solve. I already have an idea involving a low RPM brushless motor that turns a rod with some little rubber floppy fingers on the end that is covered by the liquid and when it rotates it creates a mixing or churning motion of the liquid. That's the idea so far.

I am concerned about running a rod through the bottom of the dome base and how to make sure that the rod can turn while also being leak proof.

I did a quick test tonight and created some silvery liquid. I used some dish soap and Kyrylon silver metallic spray paint. One of the things that I realized about the liquid inside the dome is that it has to be something that can mix or churn without leaving a bunch of residue on the inside glass that would make it difficult to see the mixing/churning motion. When I was doing dishes today and I squirted out some dish soap and put the bottle back down I noticed that the soap quickly ran down the inside of the plastic and didn't leave much a film or residue.

I put some dish soap in a glass jar and sprayed some paint inside and stirred it together. I didn't mix it thoroughly, just enough to get the paint and soap mixed but still have some streaks in the paint like the liquid in the prop. It works well. I'm going to have to do a test with clear dish soap because I used yellow dish soap and there was a slight yellow tint to the mix. So far rolling the liquid around the inside of the glass jar the residue isn't that bad. It's not a bad first test.

If anyone else has some suggestions and input on this I'm all ears.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Marsupial]

Joshua got himself in a bad place and took more time than he anticipated but in the end he made things good. Just sad it took a year longer to get my printed parts.

 

[dortega]

looks pretty cool so far, cant wait to see new updates. I want to try to make my own glove, u said that the you are making the arm tube a little bit smaller, what are the real dimensions for the tube then?