Yet another one: Ironman MkV Pop Rivet and foam hybrid

[CinnamonB]

So, it's yet another Ironman build. I've been meaning to post his for a while, but I've been bogged down. Right now I'm trying to finish a thesis as well as find a job, so when you throw in "build a baller halloween costume" into the mix, it kind of cuts down on spare time.

So, months ago I was inspired by all the "trash can and pop rivet builds" I was seeing, and decided to go for it. Looking back, I feel like I've bitten off several times more than i can chew, but that's what it's all about, right?

My plan is this:
I want to make a full body suit, where the entire upper body is attached to an undersuit shirt, and where the leggings are completely attached to a pair of pants. I have an injured shoulder right now, so ease of putting on is key.

To accomplish this, I'm making the chest, arms, abs, backs of the knees and codpiece out of the trashcan hard material. The shoulders are toy hard hats from the dollar store. The helmet is a Gemini Khan bucket that I ordered as a raw cast and finished myself. Finally, Every other part is going to be made out of foam that is directly attached to the undersuit, for maximum ease of building and comfort.

Another major goal is the minimization of visible gaps in the armor. So spots like the chest-to-bicep flexible "tread" part will actually be made using small pieces of the trash cans and elastic strapping. Sounds like a great idea, but I'm probably an idiot.

So, I've been mainly focusing on the hard parts so far. Nearly done those, with just the articulation and back plating to do on the left arm, the cod piece, and somehow I need to get these stupid ab pieces to work.

PICTURE TIME!

The forearms were made by making a skeleton and then putting the "scales" on it. The completed one in this pic turned out kinda messy, but the second one actually looks pretty nice.

Here's the progression of the GK helmet, starting with right after I made the eyes (white LEDS, hot glue, and the lenses from some plastic reading glasses from the dollar store)








I made an arc for halloween 2 years ago, so I dug that up, built it a new light core out of a dollar store LED spotlight, added better innards to make the light pattern look right, and then used hot glue as a diffuser.


Not bad, eh?

Shoulders!!

Aaaand here's the current state of the right arm.

Arm in action: YouTube - Robutt_arm.mov


So, lots still to do, and when you consider I'm no longer being paid as a masters student and need to finish my thesis ASAP for financial reasons, I'm kinda running low on time. To be honest, this might get put on hold till next halloween, so I can focus on my school. We'll see.

Now if only I can get these stupid robot abs to work properly :angry

 

[Bimmer]

wow man this is some phenomenal work, and thanks for reminding everyone how awesome GK's helmet really is. Your paint looks really good as well. The silver undercoat makes the red pop real nicely.

I'm diggin the arm articulation and it seems like you've got the method nailed down really well.

Excellent work!

 

[CinnamonB]

Thanks Bimmer, I really appreciate that. I've never gone this far with a costume before, so I feel pretty out of my league sometimes.

As for the articulation pieces, I have to give the Big Ups to Starx for his completely awesome posts and videos, I literally just followed what he did and bam, articulated.

A word of advice for that, in fact: You'll note on my articulation pieces I used the "notch in" method, where you remove some material from one side of each panel to increase the flexibility. If you do this, and are new to it, don't take off the material before you make the holes and assemble, wait until you have all your rectangular pieces assembled.

That way, you can carefully look and see exactly how much overlap you have to work with, and that lets you take off exactly the right amount, instead of accidentally taking off too much before assembly and having gaps. If you've done it a bunch of times, you'll be able to tell ahead of time how much to remove.

Hopefully in the next 2 days I'll be making a tape mannequin, and then it's foamin' time.

PS: here's a Gambit costume I did about 4 (or is it 5 now?!) years ago, and my Budget Ghostbusters from last year (at a total price of $150 for the entire costume, very budget and not too shabby.)

These represent the previous complexity peaks for my costuming, so I think you can see how I'm kinda stretching to new limits with this one.

edit: man i make dumb faces in photos after a beer

 

[CinnamonB]

Update: All parts are now made, and painting/clear coating is done. Nothing but assembly left. I'll have more pics as my assembly continues.

BOOSH!! (and/or ka-kow)

 

[Bimmer]

sweeet looking good man!

 

[TMP]

Great build and good reffrence. Also creative to find use of the hardhatliner.

 

[CinnamonB]

Hopefully in the next few days I'll start getting the completed foam portions attached to the undersuit, and it'll actually become a plastic/foam hybrid like I'm calling it. A lot of the back, nearly all of the legs, and the cod and butt are foam.

Also, half of the "pec treads" are foam, with half (shown in the pic above) made of rigid plastic, and the other half made of thin foam that will be flexible and will fill in the connection between the pec and the bicep. That's honestly my big "money part", and I really hope I manage to put it together right. If it does, then the tread will flex with my shoulder's motion without stabbing me constantly.


PS: my shoes/boots look goofy as heck, but whatever

 

[IronManiac]

I'll be excited to see that. One of the things i've noticed on the Mark V builds is people arent able to connect that silver tread from the chest onto the arms. Its always disjointed and broken away from the arm, when the movie suit has that connected at the arm pit in one long unbroken chain.

Keep it up, and keep posting pics!

 

[CinnamonB]

I originally planned to do that part by attaching a whole bunch of the tread sub-pieces to a pair of elastic bands, and then attaching the bands to the under-suit at key points, giving me a nice flexible and stretchable version of compression articulation.

The problem is: this garbage can plastic is the biggest pain in the butt I have ever faced. Seriously. Paint doesn't want to stick to it, primer doesn't want to stick to it, even carefully applied contact cement doesn't want to stick together two pieces that have been sanded and cleaned. Makes sense, you don't want stuff sticking inside your garbage can, but I swear that plastic is like Teflon sometimes.

However, I'm way ahead of schedule, so I might take another run at it in the next two weeks, depending on how my thesis goes since that's top priority.

The foam sheets will work, but they look pretty cheap and I'd like to kick it up that one last notch (especially since the back and legs are looking very slightly half assed. not as much detail as I'd like there, but due to injury limitations I couldn't do full back articulation like I wanted.) so I'll see how it goes. I've got some ideas for alternative materials.

 

[keef300]

Hey man. Looking good!
I'm also trying to make a mark V and I'd love to get in on how you did those expanding/contracting arm joints!!

any tips you can give? =)

 

[CinnamonB]

I'm back!

As for the joints, as I said before, it's all about StarX here on RPF. He has a thread where he's building an Ironman costume, and showed step by step how to do the joint compression articulation. Read what he did, and do a few test runs with card stock to get a feel for it.

Current situation:

The arms are now fitted with clips that let me snap them onto the chest armor. I'm going to use the straps to attach the shoulder bells directly to the chest armor, and hopefully that doesn't screw me over. I've also got the thighs done, and I'm working on the calf greaves. The abs and flanks continue to be awful to build. But it looks like I'm gonna make it.

I still haven't decided about the flexible pec sections. I might just go with my ones made of foamies, but I might split them at key points and then stitch them to my undersuit so that they flex when I move. Hopefully they turn out better than my back panels, which are...amateurish.

But I'm an amateur so it's all good.

 

[MisoHornKnee]

That is looking fantastic!

Quick question:

For the plastic lenses you got from glasses at the dollar store, did you just leave them clear or did you tint them white? It seems like the led lights up the whole lens.

 

[CinnamonB]

Ah, for those I covered the entire backside of them in hot glue. The trick is to let your glue gun stay really hot and take your time, otherwise you end up with little bubbles against the lens.

You just fix your LEDs in place using the hot glue, with a little hot glue on the lens followed by the LEDs, and then coat the whole thing. I used two LEDs, one on the outside corner of the eye pointing in towards the nose, and another at the top-center of the eye pointing down. Then I covered the entire back of the hot glue with electrical tape, but looking back you should try to put something that will reflect light back into the glue, rather than absorb it.

In person the whole thing glows, but has two distinct bright spots where the LEDs are. On camera it flares a bit and looks uniform, which means all the pics are going to be amazing.

You might want to try this with 3 LEDs, with one near the bridge of the nose, or just by jamming as many as possible into it to try to make it more uniform. I'm not really sure how to get rid of the bright spots short of putting more hot glue between the LEDs and the plastic lens, and then just sticking more LEDs in (like, 8 per eye).

For reference, I see out a small slit under the glowing eye, and it gives me a fairly limited field of view. I have a feeling I'll just be putting it on for pictures.

If anyone has a good way of modding helmets to hinge open, I'm all ears. It'd help immensely, and I cant think of anyone who's done a tutorial on that.

 

[Graphic Jordan]

This is a great idea... if only I knew how to wire the led's to a battery and switch. I desperately need this for my Halloween costume.

Ah, for those I covered the entire backside of them in hot glue. The trick is to let your glue gun stay really hot and take your time, otherwise you end up with little bubbles against the lens.

You just fix your LEDs in place using the hot glue, with a little hot glue on the lens followed by the LEDs, and then coat the whole thing. I used two LEDs, one on the outside corner of the eye pointing in towards the nose, and another at the top-center of the eye pointing down. Then I covered the entire back of the hot glue with electrical tape, but looking back you should try to put something that will reflect light back into the glue, rather than absorb it.

In person the whole thing glows, but has two distinct bright spots where the LEDs are. On camera it flares a bit and looks uniform, which means all the pics are going to be amazing.

You might want to try this with 3 LEDs, with one near the bridge of the nose, or just by jamming as many as possible into it to try to make it more uniform. I'm not really sure how to get rid of the bright spots short of putting more hot glue between the LEDs and the plastic lens, and then just sticking more LEDs in (like, 8 per eye).

For reference, I see out a small slit under the glowing eye, and it gives me a fairly limited field of view. I have a feeling I'll just be putting it on for pictures.

If anyone has a good way of modding helmets to hinge open, I'm all ears. It'd help immensely, and I cant think of anyone who's done a tutorial on that.

 

[Azurial]

before i dropped my IM build i was going to use parts from an Erector Set. u set up an H shape (more like an italic H) and glue the top portion to the inside of the helm and the other side to the faceplate, bending it slightly if u need to.

 

[CinnamonB]

Really? An erector set? Would that be strong enough? And does that have solid enough hinges? In fact, what would I use for the hinges?

Also the gluing is something I'm worried about. I'm not sure if I'll get a strong enough bond, and I'd hate to leave my "face" lying in the street somewhere. I've been having issues when it comes to contact cement and plastic.

 

[German]

This is a great idea... if only I knew how to wire the led's to a battery and switch. I desperately need this for my Halloween costume.

Assuming a 9 volt battery as mentioned in your thread, you just need: Positive battery lead to 390 Ohm Resistor to LED anode(the wire on the round side of the LED), LED cathode(the wire on the flat side of the LED) to negative battery lead. This also assumes a single LED with a 3.4v voltage drop for a bright white LED and 15mA current. If you have the actual specs of your LED, you can plug them into this calculator to get the correct resistor. You can use the same calculator to figure out your resistor for multiple LEDs.

 

[CinnamonB]

Ok, so. Minor update.

I've been trying to build the flanks of the torso, and assemble the legs. The two ways I've tried to do the flanks have failed spectacularly, and the legs suffered a minor blowout last night due to some primer i forgot to remove before contact cementing the elastics on.

So. I think I'm going to simplify the flanks considerably, either with red fabric sewed directly to the undersuit, or maybe some layered strips of red vinyl if i can find it and afford it. I'm super-annoyed with this part, so I'm just going to hobble it and stomp all over its face in order to get this thing done on time.

The legs I can probably repair and finish tonight. They're coming together really nice, and very comfortable. The trick is getting in and out of the robot pants. Not easy.

Pics once the pants are assembled.

 

[Graphic Jordan]

In support for all my FOAM IRON BROTHERIN' I ask the question... can we see some updates?

 

[Joshalots]

wow! isn't his how anthonyle247 does his armour aswell?

Looks really good for mark 5 but wouldn't suggest to make the other suits the same way