Iron Man's Chest Arc Reactor 2

Part 2! I'm not too great with smaller posts with a little bit of progress. It's more like SURPRISE!  A huge jump ahead in construction.  Over the past couple of weeks since the last post I've had a fair amount of building time, so a lot has gotten done. As of writing this it's almost 100% done. The only thing I'm left to do is a little bit of black paint for trim.

As you'll see it's not 100% movie accurate. It's not made out of steel. I'm also certain it's a bit too big. But I don't care. The color scheme is not perfect either. But this is designed to be worn under a shirt, not to be displayed in a glass case on my desk as some ironic joke from Pepper Potts.

So away we go!

Alright.  What we have here is the front piece that will go on over the plastic diffuser.  You'll see.  This will help hide a few little imperfections and keep the plastic disc on.

The beginning of the electronics.  For the middle blue section I've got 3 blue LED's aimed to illuminate the outside sections of the triangle.

And here you can see the white LED's now interspersed among the blue. Luckily the throw of the LED's doesn't bleed too much. So there is a definitely distinction between the blue and the white.

This is pretty simple...It's the back plate that  will be attached at the end. 

Here is the sides painted grey and the first layer of the top part. The top part is made up of the piece you see here, the plastic disc acting as a diffuser, and then the frame in the first pic.

Just another angle.

Here is the piece assembled with just the BLUE LED's on. But you get an idea of what the top frame does for the look of it. 

And of course...our wii-mote as a stand while things dry.  Pretty sure I'll be in trouble for that.

And here it is! Almost done. But the pieces are all together except the back and the batter pack needs to be attached.  (Which as of posting...it is. You'll see!)

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!