Iron Man Helmets - Mark 3 and Mark 42

rafinger · Oct 18, 2012

Hey all. I started working on an Iron Man helmet with my friend a while back, and just wanted to show you all and also get tips on how to do things! Here is my progress so far:

Well, first of all, I made a really quick one for the premiere of Avengers, but later gave it to my other friend before he moved, here it is:

This is the new one:

We added fiberglassed the inside, resined the outside, and added internal supports:

Back:

Right Back:

Front:

Front Left:

Faceplate waiting for more detailing:

As you can see, we need a lot more sanding, spotfilling, and detail to get done. We haven't quite figured out how we're going to do the ears yet. If anyone has any ideas or tips for that, that would be greatly appreciated. Tell me what you think!

Inheritor95 · Oct 18, 2012

Looking good!

Sai 257 · Oct 18, 2012

Looks very good. I know you said you resined the inside and that looks like bondo on the outside. Just out of curiosity how'd that work out for you? I was under the impression that those products didn't react too well with EVA foam.

rafinger · Oct 19, 2012

Sai-257 said:
Looks very good. I know you said you resined the inside and that looks like bondo on the outside. Just out of curiosity how'd that work out for you? I was under the impression that those products didn't react too well with EVA foam.

What you heard is correct. Unfortunately for me, I found that piece of information out after it was already on the helmet. The resin did not fully cure when it was applied, but the helmet was not damaged in any way. How we went about fixing this was by adding two more layers of resin. But if you do want to resin your helmet, try epoxy resin. That stuff will work absolutely fine with the foam.

rafinger · Oct 22, 2012

Just a little update here:

The hinges that were designed:

Ready to go:

Faceplate ready for priming, spotfilling, more priming, final sanding, then molding:

rafinger · Oct 30, 2012

Alright, so we got the faceplate completed (for the most part, there are issues)

Prep before molding:

Here it is ready to be molded:

Our "work station":

Silicone Mold:

Our first cast:

So here are the issues. If you notice in the picture above, there are little indentations where Legos were used as keys for the mothermold. These sank in during casting. Another issue was the mothermold itself. We don't have pictures, but we only made it in one piece, which caused the original foam faceplate to have to be broken in order to get it out of the mold and the mothermold itself to have to be broken to take the cast out. So, the original piece is ruined, so we simple can't remold it. We have decide to fill in the dents of the cast and remold that piece. Prep is still being done to it, such as filling in the dents and adding fiberglass to make it more structural.
Hopefully it will be ready to mold soon along with the rest of the helmet.

Fiberglass added:

Dents being filled:

We placed the original broken piece in, just to see how things are coming along:

KnightRider665 · Nov 17, 2012

Looking Good

DBmike · Nov 17, 2012

Damn, that's a good looking helmet! Good to see the Bondo took well to the foam.

To answer your question with the ears. As your doing a casted helmet then all you need to do is use something like poly cement which is a glue for plastic models to stick the ears onto the helmet. It just melts the plastic a little bit, nothing damaging so don't worry and they'll stick down just fine.

Nice work buddy

Mike

rafinger · Nov 19, 2012

More Updates!

Sanded down:

There was some warping of the cast due to the fact that it was so thin, so it was cut off, leaving the only fiberglass exposed:

Filled and sanded!:

More warping that had to be cut:

Everything sanded and screws added! (Still a little bit of cleanup work to be done where the top and bottom halves of the faceplate connect in the middle):

Hopefully more to come, soon!

briciius · Nov 19, 2012

Woooouuuuuhhhhhh love it men !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ghost01 · Nov 19, 2012

Yet another post of molding foam! I'm glad that people are tackling this so that I can learn and hopefully make casts of my own work in the future. Looking great! Keep up the good work!

rafinger · Nov 24, 2012

Some big updates here!

As you can tell, we are very serious about the work we do:

More filling on the faceplate to get the right shape:

Bondo in need of sanding (Tip! Only apply as much as you need. It's better to add more if you have to than to add too much. We learned that the hard way.):

All sanded down (more filling is still needed):

The jaw had a lot of problems, so it had to be cut off. (A paper one is in the process of being constructed):

Due to some warping, the lower back panel had to be cut away, so a paper one was made:

All in all, it's looking pretty good!

Tstiffler · Nov 24, 2012

Looking great! keep it up.

rafinger · Nov 29, 2012

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Besides a few low sports on filling on the extrusion in the front, it's getting pretty close to being done!

Braces added:

Molding supplies arrived!

drack · Nov 29, 2012

Looking really nice so far man! Looking forward to this one being finished.
Wish my dremel bits would hurry up so I can start detailing mine. Although these things should never be rushed "the race is on"

Tom.

rafinger · Jan 7, 2013

Some more updates for you guys!

We finally molded the faceplate (Hopefully it'll be the last time)

There are a few little dents here and there, but nothing a little body filler can't fix!

GuitarMaster157 · Jan 7, 2013

This is an awesome build, subbed!

rafinger · Jan 19, 2013

GuitarMaster157 said:
This is an awesome build, subbed!

Thanks!

Alright, update time!

A new jaw had to be constructed, so I went with cereal box cardboard:

Ready to add resin and fiberglass!

The rear part was also remade out of paper:

The paper part was connected to the lower back part. Now it's just waiting to be fiberglassed and resined too:

There is still some filling and sanding needed on the back in order to get the correct curvature:

Just a window of where we're at!

Tigersgrace · Jan 19, 2013

rafinger said:
Just a little update here:

The hinges that were designed:

Ready to go:

Great build +1sub. Just one 1 question. Are you planning on making the hinges manual or mechanical?

rafinger · Jan 19, 2013

Tigersgrace said:
Great build +1sub. Just one 1 question. Are you planning on making the hinges manual or mechanical?

The hinges that we have right now would only work manually, so we have to do some tweaking to get it ready for motorized movement.

I forgot to show you guys a little problem I had to overcome! Basically, when the lower rear piece was on a flat surface, the piece itself was not flat due to slight warping. So I cut out a U-shaped piece of MDF and clamped it down, with two Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on the side that was flat acting as a shim, since there still would be some forces wanting to pull it back to the warped position.

You can see the warping:

Clamped up:

All flat!

Iron Man Helmets - Mark 3 and Mark 42

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