Iron Man's Chest Arc Reactor 1

I'm stretching my modelling muscles some more and taking on a few small projects at once. The first up is Iron Man's chest piece. I'm looking specifically at the one from Iron Man 2 and the Avengers. The one with the triangle in the center.  And now it's time for a screen grab...

Bam, you've been Iron Manned!

So that's whats going on today in the workshop...err...living room floor. It's going to run off of 2 double batteries. The switch and power supply will be one small hand held piece that can slip in a pocket or where ever and easily be turned on and off.

To start. I scoured the web for dimensions. They were actually pretty difficult to come by for some reason. You'd think Stark would have leaked his plans all over. I managed to get some basic dimensions off of one of the collectible chest pieces out there. Some site, some where had it posted. So I was able to build off of that.

I also found this image from one of the DIY sites.

I will happily give credit to the creator of this image if I could only find out  who made it. If you have stumbled upon this blog let me know and I'll credit the hell out of it.

I reworked this a bit to fit the dimensions I found and used it as a stencil to start cutting out better guides.

From paper to cardboard so that I've got a fairly sturdy yet rough piece with which to cut out the actual layers out of wood. Which of course is the next step.

The final chest piece is going to be comprised of a series of layers. A few layers of wood with a layer or two of plastic in order to get the proper glow.  It's meant to be worn under a shirt. So I don't have to get too detailed. but of course I'm going to do my best to get it as close as I can. The following images are of the wood cut outs. Being that it's meant to be worn under a shirt it can't be too thick. So it's hard to judge the size of it in these following images, but it's going to be roughly 1/2 an inch thick. Less if I can manage it with all the wiring and lighting.

Once I got it to a shape and smootheness that I was happy with I decided to see what it would be like with lights. Just a test. The following image or two is literally all taped together. The LED is soldered directly to the power source. No switch yet. And the frame, light, and diffuser are all taped together.  You'll see.

And there we have it folks. The beginnings of my ARC reactor chest piece. I hope you enjoyed stage 1!