Halex's Iron Man Mk IV

[Halex]

Its all coming together nicely

Heh, trying! Having never made a costume with joints before there's a lot of uncharted territory, but the result feels pretty solid so overall I think it's going relatively well.

--

Didn't get much actual work done this weekend, but did manage to try some pieces on and get the spacing right.

Took a lot of messing around with the spacing/slack on the shoulder joints, but it finally got to a point where I was happy with the positioning. Models are unclear on whether or not the shoulder bells should align or be slightly above/below the shoulder straps of the back armor, but it seemed to hold position the best when they were slightly above. The picture was snapped after a fair amount of arm-waving and movement, which isn't great but is about what you'd expect. I can (barely) touch my hands in front of my chest and can get them roughly parallel with the ground.

Here's the final attachment method I'll be using for the arms...

... and a view inside.

The aluminum pieces go all the way from the forearms to the shoulder attachment point, which means there's virtually no weight on my arms to hold any of the pieces in place; it's all shared across the chest brace.

Here's a better look at the underside of the shoulder bell, showing how the pieces hold together.

Everything attaches to a single bungee cord on each side, keeping all the parts aligned but flexible. The u-bolt at the back is reinforced with two layers of fiberglass mat and is very strong, being the common rear attachment point. The d-ring at the top of the bicep connects via carabiner to the bungee, holding the bicep inside of the shoulder bell at all times, regardless of movement. The shoulder bell has two eye bolts that hold that piece in place, with cable clamps to keep it from shifting on the line (I think I'll move them to the outside of the eye bolts...). The biner/d-ring combo is very easy to attach and remove and the system as a whole is relatively comfortable and light. Then again, everything is light prior to bondo...

Lastly, the outside shot.

I can put this on solo, but that's about where it ends. I'm still struggling with how the chestplate should be attached to the brace, as a single point at the bottom (along with the arc reactor chamber) won't be enough. While magnets are an... attractive... solution, they have a habit of failing when I need them to hold on most. I'll probably resort to machine screws as I've done with most of the rest of it, but more research is required.

In addition to the torso fit, I slipped the leg on and even managed to get the half-resined boot on as well.

Looks about right, minus the shin and boot flaps/guards.

Be back with more updates eventually. Until then, comments/suggestions are appreciated, and thanks for looking!

 

[Noble 10]

wow man look's great

 

[Halex]

wow man look's great

Didn't realize it had been this long since I'd been back to the thread, but thanks Noble!

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Work has continued, despite everything else trying to steal my time away. Last weekend I was finally able to work out the attachment method I wanted for the boot and put the entire leg on at once.

It's a little hard to see, but the foot is flexed upwards as if walking. Much like other pieces, I took a couple small strips of aluminum and mounted one end in the lower shin and the other onto the boot itself. As of right now it tends to fall out of place rather easily, but once I pad up the shin to keep it in a relatively stable position, I think the entire structure will solidify nicely. It should allow a little bit of movement in the foot independently of the rest of the leg, which will hopefully let me move around without too much trouble. It also means that the weight of the leg will rest mostly on the ground rather than on the upper-body armor, as it would have if i had connected the thighs to the cod instead. I also got a shot of the entire thing together, though I haven't figured out how to attach all of the various flaps and covers just yet.

While that was going on, I continued working on the boot, as it's the next thing I want to mold and cast. Let the sanding begin!

Then... disaster! The boot is made up of three distinct pieces, and I didn't do the best job cutting the interior of those pieces apart so they could be adequately reinforced. When I washed the boot for the first time, the water found exposed paper and caved in the entire side.

After an hour or two of rebuilding, it was back to looking as expected.

A light coating of bondo over most of the rear of the boot...

... and a bunch more sanding, and we're left with this:

The boot is ready for a final gloss clear coat, then it's time to prep for molding, currently scheduled for this weekend. The goal is to be able to wear both legs and walk around by Sunday. The left leg has been reinforced but hasn't yet had hardware added, so there's still a bit of time to go on that one as well. Plus I need to find a way to make them less... prickly; the fiberglass cloth cuts me up every time I try the legs on. Thinking that a coat or two of SmoothCast may take care of it while adding some more strength too. Fiberglass mat may also do the trick, but I'm becoming less enthused with ploy resin as time goes on. If anyone has used SmoothCast for this before, or has other suggestions, I'd love to hear about your methods/results!

Looks like another busy weekend, but hopefully productive. Just told my manager I'll be taking half days every Friday from now until Halloween, so hooray for extra suit time!

Thanks for looking!

 

[Mstruvmgc]

Good to finally see the iron man you were talking abotu in the PM lol. Cant believe i have missed it so far. Looking good bro. Keep up the good work

 

[Halex]

Good to finally see the iron man you were talking abotu in the PM lol. Cant believe i have missed it so far. Looking good bro. Keep up the good work

Hah, thanks man! Good to see that trooper build of yours too!

--

Small update, but got some good work done last weekend. Both legs are now reinforced and jointed, just waiting on the boots to be finished so I can do a suit-up. Speaking of the boots, most of the weekend was spent on the mold for them. It appears to take about 12 hours to create a mold even once I know the process, mostly because the thickened silicone takes forever to set. However, after last night it was well worth it. I did grab a few shots along the way, and am much happier with the results this time than I was with the helmet.

First, when making a multiple-piece mold, it helps to keep them all together! Using the same cereal box cardboard and hot glue as the first time around, I built the sleeve to keep the parts separated but together as a unit. If you're wondering about the un-primed area of the boot, I was originally planning to have small metal inserts that would tie the heel and toe pieces together, but realized at the last minute that was a silly idea when I could simply build it into the boot and make it much stronger.

Next, I found a stand and started applying the silicone. The bottle of coke in the background was half full when I started... took a lot to keep going until about 3 am!

I built the mother mold the next day using fiberglass again. Nothing too special about it, other than it probably could have been a bit stronger as I only did 2-3 layers of cloth. If I do more molding, I'll probably consider using Plasti-Paste. I really hate fiberglass.

Last night I was able to do the actual castings. DragonSkin is an amazing material; I thought I'd have to cut the mold down the back to get the entire boot master out of the silicone, but it was stretchy (and layered thick enough) that it came right off. Glove (sock?) molds are awesome.

Finally, a matching pair!

I'll clean then up tonight and add some fiberglass mat for reinforcement, as the heel sections are a bit thin for my liking. The shin will be connected to that piece and I don't want it to shatter from the stress of weight and movement. Otherwise, I'm extremely happy with how they came out.

That's it for now, but more to come. Thanks for looking!

 

[Mstruvmgc]

righteous bro, good looking pair of boot.

 

[Halex]

righteous bro, good looking pair of boot.

Thanks man! They say you've gotta start at the bottom...

So I thought I'd posted an update last week, but apparently I wrote it and closed my browser before hitting "Submit Reply". Oops!

Regardless, I have a few more pictures and tidbits to add to the update. Been working on the shins a lot, literally going from the boots up. Here are the legs sitting atop the boots, prior to me going in there and modifying the boots to work with my configuration.

Shins gettin' some love, finally.

The front and back guards/flaps are modeled as separate pieces in the pep, but I found it easiest to attach them directly. They didn't need to flex in my case, so it simplified things a lot having them fastened in place. I'm leaving both shins minus the last layer of primer and sanding until they're ready for paint, as there's a good chance of scuffing and whatnot between now and then... no sense in having to do that final layer all over again.

After the shins (no pics of the left but it's at roughly the same point), I moved onto fixing the boots. No matter what I did, I couldn't get all of the flaps to play nicely with each other, or with the front piece on the shin. Eventually, I did to the offending flaps what I do to all things that stand in my way of completing a costume... I destroyed them. Removing the top of the smallest boot piece entirely, I attached the sides directly to the boots to cover the gaps, leaving only what was necessary to minimize see-through between the pieces. This configuration lets me walk a bit more easily with less rubbing, and once the final flap is added to the rear of the toe there shouldn't be much (if any) external difference. The strap is screwed directly into the sole of the boot, so I'm confident that the binding will hold up for a fair amount of walking.

Having reached a good stopping point with the shins but without the thighs fully reinforced, I decided to put the upper body together and see how it was coming along.

Of course, seeing that prompted me to want to work on those pieces... so I did a bit more sanding on the chestplate...

... and the shoulder bells.

All in all, it's coming along. The shoulder bells went from bare to primed in about six hours of work, so I'm confident the smaller pieces will be a lot faster than the shins have been. Still a few major hurdles to cross (*cough*Helmet motorization*cough*) but overall I should still be on schedule for Halloween.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Meatwad]

I can't see the pictures

 

[vshore100]

Awesome work Halex! Meatwad, it must be your browser. They are showing up in Google Chrome fine for me.

 

[Mstruvmgc]

holy mother of update lol. looking good

 

[Halex]

I can't see the pictures

Did vshore's suggestion work for you? Nobody else has mentioned having issues viewing the pictures and I haven't changed storage methods recently.

Awesome work Halex! Meatwad, it must be your browser. They are showing up in Google Chrome fine for me.

Thanks vshore! I'm not sure I ever properly expressed my gratitude for your help getting me on the right path for molding; your suggestions and input were invaluable in making a lot of the initial decisions, and I really appreciate it!

holy mother of update lol. looking good

Yeah, I procrastinate in doing them sometimes, but in the end it's all the readers/viewers who have to feel the pain of a two-week update...

But not this time!

After taking a long weekend (of which there will be several more coming up, since I never use vacation days), I've got a good bit more progress on the upper body pieces. I decided I wanted to add/raise some of the details on the shoulders after the initial primer pass, so I did a bit of masking to make the bondo application easier.

Once the filler was added, the shoulders were sanded/filled/sanded/filled/etc over the course of a couple days, along with the chestplate. Results were good; you can see the sections where I raised the detail, though the one towards the front circle is less clear.

With the focus on cleaning up the shoulders, I did another pass of sanding and spot putty on those, then left them to dry/cure overnight. The chestplate needed a bit more detailing, so I started in on that next. In the previous shot with the black primer, you can see that there's not a lot of distinction where the pieces of "metal" would fit together; the center reactor housing merges into the pieces that cover the pecs, which flows right into the sides, etc. After checking out some more reference photos, I noticed that these were clearly-defined lines in the suit and I was missing them entirely. Also, there were small lines in the sides I was missing, so I masked those off and prepared to cut them in.

The masking did help keep the lines straight, much to my delight. You can also see some additional cuts around the reactor hub where the pectoral plates meet up, and also where those same plates meet the sides. It's also gotten another round of sanding since the previous pic and is starting to shine just a bit.

That's it for now, but I hope to keep up the pace with this and still be on schedule. While looking through reference photos I did realize that the arc reactor isn't actually visible in the Mk IV... it's just a bright light. I'd love to have the reactor, but I think it may have to wait until the upgrade pass to be built; not sure how I'd have time to do it otherwise. Will have to wait and see though, never know what might be possible!

Thanks for looking!

 

[Meatwad]

Looks amazing as always man. And aslo, i user chrome both my on phone and desktop. For whatever reason they randomly showed up the day after your post. Can't wait to see more progress.

 

[Halex]

Looks amazing as always man. And aslo, i user chrome both my on phone and desktop. For whatever reason they randomly showed up the day after your post. Can't wait to see more progress.

Thanks man, glad they finally showed up.

Been hammering out some more parts on the arms lately and managed to get the first round of bondo/sanding/primer onto the forearms (hated the lack of symmetry with one being bondo'd and the other not!).

Also started on the biceps and got them to the same point. You can see a lot of the customization in the early shots where I had to expand the back and widen the cutout on the side. The top is a bit large but the area around my elbow is still a bit tight if anything.

I usually try to avoid the "BONDO EVERYTHING!" approach as it's typically wasteful and adds difficulty, but in this case there was so much smoothing necessary that I didn't really have an alternative. In the end it wasn't too bad and only took a few hours and some pretty scuffed fingers to sand it down to the basic shape. I own a Mouse power sander but tbh I don't really like using it. Rasps, files, and sandpaper all the way!

Everything was going well, until about midway through the process I realized it was still missing the elbows... whoops. I'd had to do so much customization on the biceps that the original pieces didn't fit anymore, so I'd put them off to the side and basically forgotten about them for awhile. It looks like I may have to custom-build some now that I've gotten the arms fitted and primed, though it's still possible I could salvage some of the originals and alter them.

Still a lot to do before Halloween, so I've had to bring in reinforcements... more on that later, but for now I should get back to my actual job.

Hope to be back with more soon!

 

[Meatwad]

Ohhh man, i can't wait to see these parts painted up. They look awesome. Keep up the amazing work man!

 

[Halex]

Unfortunately work got a bit overwhelming and I had to put the suit on hold, missing the holiday. On the plus side, I won't have to compromise quality this way! I wasn't entirely happy with having to say parts were "good enough" to be painted by a deadline, even if I wasn't truly satisfied with the finish.

With that said, I should be getting back to it this coming week. As mentioned in my previous post, I did get to a point where I needed some help as there were parts of the suit I really wasn't excited to work on (hands, helmet hinges, etc). Since I have an incredibly hard time actually asking for help, I did what a lot of us here would do... I built (a good portion of) it.

Got a Prusa i3 kit from Amazon for a pretty reasonable price. Assembled it and fought through some early issues, getting some pretty good results. Printed each of the red finger pieces individually, before getting gutsy and printing the entire hand in one go, soon followed by the palm/back portions of the glove.

Unfortunately, the fan went out and the extruder warped from excessive heat while printing the palm for the second hand. I got some replacement parts in last night, so if all goes well I should be up and running again next week. Overall I love the printer and am anxious to get back into it. It's almost mesmerizing watching it lay down the layers... frequently lose 10-15 minutes at the start of each print just sitting there staring.

On the other side of the build, I managed to get the thighs fairly far along. Since I have some extra time, I'll be making another pass over the entire thing for more smoothing, as I'm not yet satisfied with the finish.

The joints with the shins don't fit as well anymore with the finish layers, so that'll also need another look. Once that fits correctly, I should be able to put the unpainted legs together and hobble around, which I've only managed with one leg so far.

The break was nice, but I'm anxious to get back to it. I don't foresee any major impediments, although I do have a couple friends who want to get into costuming for Mass Effect, so I may get distracted by that somewhere along the way.

'Till next time!