Re: Just What This Forum Needs: Another Ironman Build
I just picked up a little paperback; " Getting started with Arduino" hopefully it will begin to rekindle some old High School memories
BTW did you find a stretchier rubber for the neck piece?
I've been doing a tiny bit of tinkering with an Arduino. In the end I'll be integrating at least one into this build.
I did find a stretchier rubber. Right now I'm experimenting with Vitaflex 50 from Reynolds Advanced Materials (it's a Smooth-On product, they're my nearest distributor). If it performs as advertised it'll work great. It has a 60-minute pot life, so it's a pain to rotocast. The real problem is that it has a 16-hour cure time, so I won't know if it works until tomorrow. For now it looks promising:
The color is the result of a careful blending of pigment into the rubber. If I got the ratios right, I won't have to paint these pieces.
On the subject of rubber parts, I've finished the sculpt for the inner elbow pieces. I started by lumping some clay onto a piece of PVC pipe and chucking the whole thing into the lathe:
Using the lathe as a sort of horizontal pottery wheel, I smoothed the clay using a variety of tools:
Since I was using oil-based clay, final smoothing was done with a piece of upholstery foam soaked in isopropyl alcohol:
Once everything was appropriately ribbed and smoothed, the last step was to sculpt in a few little notches to either side of the centerline:
The next step will probably be building a stone mold using Ultracal 30 and slipcasting the whole thing in latex just like a Halloween mask. Since the whole sculpt is so long, each pull will actually give me both elbows stuck together end to end. That'll make more sense once I've done it.
I've started on the inner knee sculpt too:
It still needs quite a bit more work, but with the insanely hot weather I've had this week, the clay is a bit too soft:
Once it was too warm to sculpt with the clay I was using, I shifted focus to making the molds for the thighs:
Since I was unhappy with the rotocast versions of the smaller size, I'm setting these molds up so they'll be easier to lay up in fiberglass. This means making them into two-part molds. So I'm starting with a clay wall:
Once it was watertight, I poured on a print coat:
At that point, I decided it was too hot and I had to get out of the workshop for a bit. I don't know how hot it was because I don't have a thermometer in there. I don't want one because it will confirm that either it's really hot or I'm really a wimp. In any case I was sweating bullets and decided to go to the gym to cool off on the treadmill for a while. I'll be heading back out to the shop in a bit to layer on some more thickness. The silicone will cure overnight, so tomorrow morning I'll be able to built the mothermold for this side, then flip the whole thing over and start the jacket for the other side.
So stay tuned for more updates...
