Scratch Build - In Progress ⭐ [3D Printed] The Iron suit project - Updated 31-10-2018.

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Hello boys and girls.


Time for another project to spend all of my spare time on

Since my last build, I've acquired myself a 3D printer. Since then I've been doing my best to perfect my own, and the printers’ ability to make the most flawless prints possible.
I’ve been printing, more or less, 24/7 for the past 4 months, and feel that I am now ready to jump into a new, and probably the most demanding project yet.

The idea is to create a full size Iron man suit with a built in, liquid cooled, gaming rig. Now as every part is 100% 3D printed, I expect it will take about 3 months, just to complete printing the entire suit, then comes the rest of the processing, the fillings, the sanding, the painting etc. so I hope you guys will be patient with this one

I’ve been experimenting with ABS and PLA and have come to feel that I have perfected both materials in terms of the possible quality of the print contra the speed/time it takes to create a good print.

For this project, I will be using PLA. The main reason for this is not that it is easier to work with or process when the print is done, on the contrary, ABS would have been a lot easier to work with, as it is easier to sand, easier to remove and repair failures (acetone and lighter tricks ), but it is purely because of the fumes that are exhausted when printing with ABS, and since my printer is inside the house, printing nonstop, I don’t want to expose my children to these toxic fumes, and that’s why I’ve chosen the corn based alternative PLA.

Before I continue, I have to give a great shout out and thanks to DaDave, for having inspired me to make this build as well as even making this project possible. He has, from existing pepakura files, converted everything to 3D and actually built a fully wearable Iron Man suit. Make sure to check it out, it’s pretty awesome

Now on with the project:

MATERIALS FOR THE SUIT (Update 31/10-18):

3D Printers:
- Tevo Tornado.
- Wanhao Duplicator i3 PLUS.
- 3D Pen.

Parts:
- 3D printed PLA parts, roughly 40 kilograms of filament rolls.
- Servomotors and Arduino board(s).
- 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab II.
- Battery casings, switches, power supplies, etc.
- Black skin-suit.
- Aluminum profiles.
- LED lighting and wiring.
- Modified mannequin to wear/stablize the suit.
- Polyester filler
- Glue... A LOT of glue...
- Acrylic primers and paint, matt black finish, along with signal red, for certain parts of the suit.
- Acrylic glass.
- Harness clips and belts.
- EVA or some other type of foam, for fixating the suit to the mannequin.
- Nuts, bolts, steel wiring, work gloves and a lot of other stuff.


HARDWARE (Update 31/10-18):
Since this has turned out to be a huge and time consuming project, the previous hardware intended, has been sold off or used for something else.
I am therefore taking the liberty to wait on deciding what hardware to use, until the final stages of the project.

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Now on with the fun part.

For what you're going to see in the pictures below, I've used about 3 Kilograms of PLA filament. I've printed the arms as well, and am currently working on the shoulders. I will have pictures of this up in upcoming week

I started with the last roll of PLA filement I had left, which happened to be red/orange, but it doesn't really mean anything, since I will fill, prime and paint it into the color-scheme I want. I'm just happy it wasn't pink

The very first part of the suit, the left palm in the process of being printed:



Almost done:



And finished. The plan is to add LED's to the palm and configure them to work with the HDD's LED, meaning that it will flash when the HDD is working. I will also try to add a feature where I can turn the lights on and off in standalone mode (computer being off.)

This has not yet been sanded or in any other way tampered with. Only the supports from the print has been removed (my nails are gone btw):



Fingers in the works:



As you can see below I failed terribly with the supports. The bottom of the fingeres went spaghetti on me and even ripped off when the supports were removed. I've already made new fingers, that are without flaws, but the pics are early stage, so I'm wearing the bad ones:





Helm being printed, sadly I didn't take pictures of all the parts being printed, but I don't think that matters once you see the result :

The top of the helmet/head:



The Jaw:



Bottom of the face:



And finally the helmet completed:

Front:



Front from the side, closed:



Front from the side, opened:



Here I have the left upper arm being printed:



Thanks it for now folks, thanks for looking

 

Awesome!
...but wouldn't the material choice make him 'Plastic Man'?

 

/slap Cheapskate

You naughty man!

 

looks great!
can't wait to see some ornaments going into the hands and the chest piece

 

Let's do a quick GoFundMe campaign to send this dude a 3D metals printer.

You know it makes sense.

 

Awesome work. I have a load of questions for you:

I'm about to jump into the 3D printing game - which printer are you using?

Have you seen the work that James Bruton (XRobots) does, especially his Iron Man stuff (and, even more especially, his Hulk Buster suit)?

Did you do the 3D design yourself or have you downloaded them from somewhere?

 

Thanks mate, yeah looking forward to that part too as well

LOL, I think that would prolong the buid too much but possible none the less. Metal filament is just so damn expensive. and since I plan on using at least 15KG if not more of filament it would ruin me.

Thanks

I am printing everything on a Wanhao Duplicator i3 PLUS. It's modded with everything there is to mod it with, Z-braces, all metal hotend, spring balancers, fan duct, filament guide etc. everything printed ofc Calibration of the Z-axis was also done. I had to actually lower it 2-3 cm, in order to get the bedleveling perfect. I've made a small review of the printer on my FB page, you can check it out in my sig.

No I haven't heard of it before, but it looks very interesting, will have to check it out, maybe some interesting pointers on getting the mechanincs to work, thanks for that.

I've put a link to DaDave in the first post. He converted the pepakura designs, the suit is based on, into printable 3D STL files. I've altered some of the files, making them possible to be printed on my printer, since mine has a max buildhight of 180 mm, so slicing/deviding of some of the parts is necessary.

Hope that answers your questions, if not, feel free to ask more

 

1st. update 26-11-2016.

Hi guys


Time for a delayed "small" update

After a major extruder clog, that caused severe damage to the hotend and thermostat, I've had to change more less every part in the extruder, this set me back a little, time wise, but I'm up and running again and printing 24/7

Arms are finally completed:



I was running out of filament, so I bought additional 7 KG. of the "red" PLA filament, this time though, I was in for somewhat of a surprise. I looks like the manufacturer has actually changed the color to make it look more red, so now it I've got somewhat of a difference in the color of the parts lol. Luckily this doesn't really mean anything, since it's going to be primed and painted anyway.





Last part of the shoulder finished in the new color:



Shoulder put together, here you can clearly see the difference in the colors:



Stay tuned for more update

Thanks for looking

 

It has occurred to me that this is going to take you forever.

 

Not forever lol I'm about 30% done with the prints.

 

Here is one modification you might want to look into if you plan on more large scale print jobs. Well not made for your printer, I sure it could be adopted to fit.

I'll be keeping an eye on this project.

 

Wow! That's insane... I think that won't be necessary, well not unless I wanna build a lifesize Godzilla in the future, who knows but nice concept, none the less

As a working update, the chest is now in the works, I hope to have it done by the end of this weekend

 

2nd. update 09-12-2016.

Hi guys


Time for an update.

I've finally finished the chest piece, along with the arc reactor. Hope you enjoy A total of 2 kilograms of PLA filament went in to this piece!

The chest put together:





The arc reactor, temporarily assembled just for the show of it I will be adding LED's to it later:



Mounted inside the chest:





Hope you enjoy, and as always, thanks for looking

 

3rd. update 16-12-2016.

Small update.

About halfway done with the prints

 

Note to self: Get into the filament manufacturing/distribution business.
Looking sweet.
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You've tried it on, haven't you?

 

Yeah, I think it will become big business in the future Thanks mate.

Uhm... no

 

Hi guys


Time for a "small" update.

Arduino programmed and servo mounted:



Thanks for looking

 

FTFY.

For YT links on here, you just need the video reference (the bit after the slash, or the bit after the ?v= in a full YT URL) in between the [ YOUTUBE ] tags.

 

Brilliant Thanks, I did not know that

 

Update 12-01-17

Hey guys


I've finally finished the helmet/head for the suit.

Here are some progress pics as well as finished result:

Filler added, and a lot of sanding has been going on:





Primer and first layer of paint added. I've chosen matt black, it's not dried up yet in the pic, so it looks a bit glossy:



Faceplate ready to get painted:



First layer of fluorescent signal red added, the camera has bad lighting, making it look more orange than it actually is :-/ I am hoping to add a UV light above the suit when I'm completely finished. This will allow parts of it to glow in the dark



The finished result, here you can see the red color better:





Lighting added the to helmet, It's only as a test, I need to make the light more focused in the eye region, more on this later



In the dark:



Here again a small video of the helmet, now painted:



Hope you like it

As always, thanks for looking