“I just finished my Iron Man Mark III Suit in time for Halloween. I started the project in April and just finished today. The suit is cast from fiberglass backed resin. The maker of the suit would likely prefer to remain nameless but the cast was very high quality. The electronics were purchased from The Real Tony Stark and I would recommend his products highly if your looking for iron man related tech. The devices do what he says they will do and he responds promptly to questions and/or problems.
The painting was done in a garage with a borrowed HVLP auto spray gun and a 20 gallon compressor. I aspired to a result that would approach Fingaz’ work but, as a complete amateur when it comes to painting, I had very little confidence that the result would be anything close to what Fingaz can do. I was pleasantly surprised with how it came out. I used Toyota Salsa Red and Cosmic Yellow as the colors (Thanks to Davy’s thread for inspiring the choice of those colors) and I couldn’t be happier with the result. The pictures don’t do the paint job justice, it looks even better in person. It goes to show that 80% of the battle is using the correct tools for the job.
The most difficult part of the job was most certainly the knee joints. I originally used double hinge knee braces that I took out of two sets of Futuro knee braces purchased at a local drug store. This is what I used: http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/fut…154874-product. I took the metal brace part out and fiberglassed them into the knees of the suit. I thought this was a stroke of genius!
Not so much. I didn’t take into account that when you knee bends it doesn’t bend back perfectly straight but rather bends back and to the side. The brace based knee joint works great if there is no human leg in the suit but the knee is a complex joint and the engineering and angle work required to accommodate flexion and extension was too much for my abilities. I ultimately ended up tearing out the braces, re-sanding the inside of the legs and then using a very simple joint made up of nylon strapping secured with Magic sculpt. The strapping keeps the lower leg attached to the upper leg and also allows for movement in any direction thus allowing the knee to work well.
The following are various pictures of the build. I hope you enjoy them and if anyone has any questions regarding strapping and/or painting I’d be happy to provide you with my thoughts and experiences. Thanks.”
This is an amazing build- we highly recommend checking out the source of this article and seeing the amazing progression to a beautiful finished product!
Source: TheRPF
