Hardening select parts of eva foam armour

[OJ102]

Hi there,

Im lookjng into posible ways of toughening up my armour prior to painting.

Its a ironman endgame model. To help woth details i broke each component down into 3 layers.

Outerlayer - these are the plates of armour over areas that wont need to flex.

Base layer- these are the areas in the center requiring flexibility but need thickness for strength

Underlay- these are indents into the suit that are wither to fill joints ot show deeper detail but arnt structural so are thinner to not restrict inner suit space.

The outer and base are made with 100* high density foam, 5mm thick. The enderlay is 2mm same density.

Ive seen apme promising results using 3 layers of pva foam as a primer for adding resin to, this seems to make it ridgid.

I was thinking that if i could do that on just the outer layer, the panela that are large and dont flex, it could give a nice metalic feel as the base and under layers would cover the flexing.

Has anyone tried something like this? The suit has a fairly high detail level and will have lighting in just about every component wired into a central power pack in the chest so some reinforcement would help a lot

 

[xXDashIVXx]

Hi there,

Im lookjng into posible ways of toughening up my armour prior to painting.

Its a ironman endgame model. To help woth details i broke each component down into 3 layers.

Outerlayer - these are the plates of armour over areas that wont need to flex.

Base layer- these are the areas in the center requiring flexibility but need thickness for strength

Underlay- these are indents into the suit that are wither to fill joints ot show deeper detail but arnt structural so are thinner to not restrict inner suit space.

The outer and base are made with 100* high density foam, 5mm thick. The enderlay is 2mm same density.

Ive seen apme promising results using 3 layers of pva foam as a primer for adding resin to, this seems to make it ridgid.

I was thinking that if i could do that on just the outer layer, the panela that are large and dont flex, it could give a nice metalic feel as the base and under layers would cover the flexing.

Has anyone tried something like this? The suit has a fairly high detail level and will have lighting in just about every component wired into a central power pack in the chest so some reinforcement would help a lot

Ooooohh PaiganBoi !!!!

 

[TurboCharizard]

If you want to go with a harder shell over foam there's a technique I learned from Lightning Cosplay that uses Smooth-On Flexer to add flexibility to an epoxy resin.

How To Make an Epoxy Flexible Using Flexer™ Epoxy Flexibilizer

Flexer® is an additve for Smooth-On epoxies which makes the resultant castings flexible.

www.smooth-on.com

 

[PaiganBoi]

If you want to go with a harder shell over foam there's a technique I learned from Lightning Cosplay that uses Smooth-On Flexer to add flexibility to an epoxy resin.

How To Make an Epoxy Flexible Using Flexer™ Epoxy Flexibilizer

Flexer® is an additve for Smooth-On epoxies which makes the resultant castings flexible.

www.smooth-on.com

TurboCharizard you are an angel from the Cosplay Gods. Now then... Where can I get all theses materials???

 

[Dirtdives2424]

TurboCharizard you are an angel from the Cosplay Gods. Now then... Where can I get all theses materials???

uuuuuuuu.......Smooth-on............wow that was difficult......I'm tired doing all this research.

 

[TurboCharizard]

TurboCharizard you are an angel from the Cosplay Gods. Now then... Where can I get all theses materials???

I'm still waiting on my local plastics supplier to get their order in so I can try out Flexer. Apparently it works with most epoxies and depending on the ratio you mix with reduces your shore hardness. Hopefully there's more information in the boxes data sheet than the samples provided on their website which just list a few examples with EpoxAcast and EpoxAmite but I have a feeling this will be a rather fiddly method that needs plenty of testing with specific resins.

Apparently you can also thin XTC3D with acetone to get a similar result but I've never tried this combination of stuff from my shelf in the cosplay dungeon.