Sandbagger's Iron-Man builds - Now in STEEL

Farrell27 · Jan 31, 2016

Mighty Sandbagger, I have been enjoying this build since discovering it over a year ago. I have dutifully endured your leaves of absence due to work, other commitments, and of course the birth of your wonderful twin girls ( Congrats btw ). I endured them because this build is always worth the wait. Your work is just incredible and a joy to watch. I feel terrible that my first post to this forum is ( dare I say it? ) a criticism! Adding mesh to the chin in the way you have makes sense and looks cool...adding mesh to eyes is the opposite. I realize you're just toying around with the idea at point, and I also realize if anyone could make that look cool it's you, but as it sits right now, it just looks bad. Chin yes! Eyes no! Again, the work you are doing is off the charts awesome! I only mention my humble criticism in the interest of keeping it that way. Oh god! I feel a repulsor blast to the chest coming my way!

le1120 · Jan 31, 2016

Farrell27 said:
Mighty Sandbagger, I have been enjoying this build since discovering it over a year ago. I have dutifully endured your leaves of absence due to work, other commitments, and of course the birth of your wonderful twin girls ( Congrats btw ). I endured them because this build is always worth the wait. Your work is just incredible and a joy to watch. I feel terrible that my first post to this forum is ( dare I say it? ) a criticism! Adding mesh to the chin in the way you have makes sense and looks cool...adding mesh to eyes is the opposite. I realize you're just toying around with the idea at point, and I also realize if anyone could make that look cool it's you, but as it sits right now, it just looks bad. Chin yes! Eyes no! Again, the work you are doing is off the charts awesome! I only mention my humble criticism in the interest of keeping it that way. Oh god! I feel a repulsor blast to the chest coming my way!

Yeah the mesh in the eyes doesn't look that great in Iron Man's case...but it looks fabulous in the chin. Really amazing what you've done with it though.

sandbagger · Jan 31, 2016

Farrell27 said:
Mighty Sandbagger, I have been enjoying this build since discovering it over a year ago. I have dutifully endured your leaves of absence due to work, other commitments, and of course the birth of your wonderful twin girls ( Congrats btw ). I endured them because this build is always worth the wait. Your work is just incredible and a joy to watch. I feel terrible that my first post to this forum is ( dare I say it? ) a criticism! Adding mesh to the chin in the way you have makes sense and looks cool...adding mesh to eyes is the opposite. I realize you're just toying around with the idea at point, and I also realize if anyone could make that look cool it's you, but as it sits right now, it just looks bad. Chin yes! Eyes no! Again, the work you are doing is off the charts awesome! I only mention my humble criticism in the interest of keeping it that way. Oh god! I feel a repulsor blast to the chest coming my way!

Thanks for your input mate and I'm glad you are enjoying the ride with us all.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Criticism is fine as long as it is constructive, which in this case it is so all is well. As you said, I'm just toying with it and it's by no-means set in concrete - or steel for that matter. In the picture they are just press-fit in there. When I get a chance I'll put the lights back behind them and see how they look turned on. My LED COB lights are SOOOOO BRIGHT!

Anyway, we'll see.

SB.

- - - Updated - - -

le1120 said:
Yeah the mesh in the eyes doesn't look that great in Iron Man's case...but it looks fabulous in the chin. Really amazing what you've done with it though.

Thanks man. See above.

brand · Feb 1, 2016

Hi SB!! About the mesh... I agree with the other guys! I've been using the xrobots method with a white cloth mesh and it works great

...you could frame the mesh very tight so that it seems rigid

snaze1 · Feb 1, 2016

brand said:
Hi SB!! About the mesh... I agree with the other guys! I've been using the xrobots method with a white cloth mesh and it works great ...you could frame the mesh very tight so that it seems rigid

I completely disagree with the last 2 poster's, I think the mesh looks ace & should stay!

George · Feb 1, 2016

So many people,so many opinions...but only one crafter.You decide what you want for your build,Sandbagger.

sandbagger · Feb 1, 2016

Thanks to all sides of every opinion. It's all part of this awesome community of builders who share knowledge, experience, tricks and techniques.

I love it. Keep 'em comin' folks.

SB.

Update:

Tonight I made a spray booth out of a cardboard box, pedestal fan extracting paint out of the shed, then made a start on the high-build primer filler.

Last time I did this it took quite a few iterations of bog, spray. sand. I remember it looked awful when I started but with time and patience it looked brilliant in the end.

The can of filler cost me $17 at super cheap auto, but I think I'm going to take it into a professional auto sprayer and use the helmet as a test before I move onto the rest of the suit.

Murdoch · Feb 1, 2016

Well now I'm going to place my 2cents.
Mesh on the chin or any other accent parts is OK. Just as long as it is not conflicting with the integrity of the design or flow if you will. I think a mesh in the chin is fine. The ears, even some other small area. But the eyes are a focal point for this character, to place a mesh, a generic one at that - kind of diminishes what has become a staple to the design. That being said SB what you're doing here with this build has been incredibly awesome, and this is YOUR ARMOR but. We are just as invested in this as fans and it would be wrong for us not to point this out.
Now I am not opposed to anyone to tweeking for a different kind of look, but you will find that this will almost be a really lazy move. Now I have huge respect for anyone who can do what you do. Your armor, blades by Baz, the fabrication of tools ect. Honestly I can see us being great friends, so please don't take this as any sort of attack, just an opinion from a guy who loves this build...GMurdoch

SofaKing01 · Feb 1, 2016

Brilliant! I love the primer stage!

sandbagger · Feb 2, 2016

Murdoch said:
Well now I'm going to place my 2cents.
Mesh on the chin or any other accent parts is OK. Just as long as it is not conflicting with the integrity of the design or flow if you will. I think a mesh in the chin is fine. The ears, even some other small area. But the eyes are a focal point for this character, to place a mesh, a generic one at that - kind of diminishes what has become a staple to the design. That being said SB what you're doing here with this build has been incredibly awesome, and this is YOUR ARMOR but. We are just as invested in this as fans and it would be wrong for us not to point this out.
Now I am not opposed to anyone to tweeking for a different kind of look, but you will find that this will almost be a really lazy move. Now I have huge respect for anyone who can do what you do. Your armor, blades by Baz, the fabrication of tools ect. Honestly I can see us being great friends, so please don't take this as any sort of attack, just an opinion from a guy who loves this build...GMurdoch

Whoa down there boy!

Nah.. all good my friend. As I said, just feelin it about a bit. Nothing wrong with tinkering eh? After all, it Tony never tinkered, we none of us would be here would we?

- - - Updated - - -

Next layer of touch ups today. I noticed a big improvement in smoothness, using only tiny amounts of bog this time. I think one more layer should do it.

Each time I bog it, sand it and spray another layer of primer-filler on it, I notice tiny faults, but less and less of them each time. This has to be done bit at a time. You can't just go and slap a thick layer of bog on then try to sand it into shape. I'm trying to add as little weight to this as possible and too much bog can thwart the mission.

I also pulled the hot-glued mesh out of the chin, cleaned it up and spot-welded it in.

Murdoch · Feb 2, 2016

Hey SB are you looking to finish the helmet before the rest?GM

sandbagger · Feb 2, 2016

Murdoch said:
Hey SB are you looking to finish the helmet before the rest?GM

I'm at the stage where I have no money to devote to this mate. So I do what I can with what I've got and a small trickle of money now and then.

At the moment I have a lot of electronics and stuff ready to start fitting into the helmet, so I figure I may as well get one whole piece of the suit done at a time, then when it's totally finished, move on to the next.

That's the plan at the moment.

Farrell27 · Feb 2, 2016

Brilliant update as always Mighty Sandbagger! Looks great! It's unfortunate that money is the ugly reality for these projects. But hey, that just means you have your priorities straight
(family first) and on the bright side, the longer this takes, the longer all of us on the forum get to enjoy it! Awesome!

sandbagger · Feb 5, 2016

Spent a bit of time in the shed tonight fine-tuning the fit of the eye lights so it's neater on the outside.

I inlaid the faceplate with some glad-wrap to protect, pressed the eye-lenses in and pushed the bog in from the front.

I tried the lights behind the steel mesh too and it looks terrible so that puts that to rest. Another light sand than etch prime and it's looking almost ready for paint.

In testing the eye lights, man are they BRIGHT!! I will have to find a way to dim them. Not as easy as you might think with LED's I hear. I'm a basic positive and negative man, so my electronics guy will sort that out for me hopefully.

Each one of these lights was originally running on three batteries. Now I have BOTH lights running on three batteries and they are still working fine and still as bright. I'm wondering if the draw from two lights on one set of batteries going to be a problem.
because the chipsets on the COB LED's are compensating. I really like these lights and lenses so it would be a shame to have to scrap them for something else. They are perfect fit and uniformity, just a bit too bright. Maybe if I can't dim them electrically I can just tint the lenses.

collinE83 · Feb 5, 2016

If you have a guy who'll help you with the electronics, you probably won't need this advice, but you can half the amount of voltage going to each LED, and therefore cutting the brightness in half, by wiring the LED's in series rather than parallel. You can check out google images, which has simple diagrams if you search "series vs parallel".

Hope that helps.

le1120 · Feb 5, 2016

I know what you're saying about the LEDs being too bright, but honestly that may be a good thing especially in the daylight. If there was a dial for controlling the brightness that might be optimal, (especially dark times) but from what I've seen there are too many iron man suits that have poor lighting. As a big Boba Fett fan, I know that when it comes to the weathering of the cloth parts, whatever appears to be enough is not enough to be noticed by those seeing you from afar, and so you have to do it a bit more than looks ok from where you're standing, but it'll look good to people around you. It seems like it may be the same for the LEDs. Just some friendly thoughts.

sandbagger · Feb 5, 2016

Thanks gang. Yeah I tried running in series but the voltage drop on my power source was too much.

My electronics dude is going to fix it for me I think by putting in a better resistor. He also mentioned having a dim setting for indoors and night time with the bright mode for daylight outside.

Today's update:

I just bought this 40mm silent fan from Jaycar, so it was
more prototyping today with cardboard to design a mounting bracket for it. It took a couple of goes, but cardboard is free.

Next I traced it onto metal, marked and centre punched all the holes and tapped the four in the middle with a 4mm tap. I have a jar of screws left from dismantling an old computer and most of them are 4mm. Perfect for this sort of stuff.

Next was to mark and stitch drill the intake hole, then file and sand it all smooth.

The end result is quite neat.

And it screws straight into the two drilled and tapped tabs I welded in earlier.

87sf · Feb 6, 2016

SB you are one of the most persistent people I know of. The work looks great and so many practical ideas. It must be such a good feeling to have the helmet primed and the fit out under way. I found lots of those types of fans on ebay for the cheapest price.
Such an inspiring thread.

87sf

tiga · Feb 6, 2016

On dimming LEDs: if you use a microcontroller to turn them on and off, you can program them to flicker quickly and that will make them effectively a lot dimmer. That's how I control the Widow's Bites bracers I made. Pure software and it works great.

If you just have a ON/OFF switch, power supply and resistors connected to a power supply, you could add a trimmer/potentiometer (a variable resistor) to limit the current. If you set the trimmer to zero, you'll get full brightness and when you increase the resistance, the LEDs will dim. The resistance range you want depends a bit on the circuit you have (input voltage etc), but anything between 200Ω to 1kΩ is likely to work OK. Or, you could use a 3 position switch where you have settings for OFF, 50% and 100%. The 50% setting would have the current go through a resistor (and again the value depends on your existing circuit, but you can experiment with different resistors until you find a value you like).

joberg · Feb 7, 2016

Great update once again!

Sandbagger's Iron-Man builds - Now in STEEL

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