Moebius War Machine including lighting

[Zhaith]

Hey guys,

Been a while since i built anything on here so here we go.

This is going to be a fully lit War Machine from Iron Man 2, the area to be lit will be the eyes, chest and both hand repusors and will be run off of a 3.7v rechargable lithium ion coin cell battery.

First up the obligatory box art

In addition to the various LED's i'll be using are these (from Left to right, micro usb 4.1v Li-ion charger, the battery and a capacative touch sensor)

I'll be able to place the sensor under the base supplied with the kit so that it will switch on the led's by just touching the base, no need to drill any holes to fit a switch and no need to then try and make the switch look like something else

So on to the build the first thing I have done is build a small board that will be glued inside his head which will light up his eyes

I expermented a bit with the led colour but ultimatey decided on red, I did toy with amber but it just didn't look quite right during testing.

The amber led's which actually looks better in the photo than it did to the eye. As you ca see a bit of light blocking needed.

The board was then glued into his head after some light-blocking, I used some old vallejo model air paint which i handbrushed in his head and onto the back of the faceplate.

And with the faceplate in position

A samall hole was drilled into the base of the helmet and neck and then the wiring was passed through both parts and will be teminated inside his chest.

So far the fit has been good however there's a couple of gaps around the faceplate which needed some attention.

I cut out a couple of bits of plasticard which once primed will be glued into place and i hope will block the majority of the remaining light leaks

The 2nd half of his neck was glued in place as well at this point.

Next step is to start on his hands.

Each finger on one hand needed to be glued seperately to the hand.

Once done the hand was light blocked, the repulsor lens glued in place and a single 0804 smd was glued on top of it.

I got a bit carried away at this point and forgot the photos but i'll document the other hand better when I do that.

Apart from some filling the hand is more or less done.

Thats about it for this update, more to follow. I hope you enjoy the build.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Zhaith

[Grayson]

Ooh, I liked the cheekline glow. Not technically correct, but very cool looking.

[Zhaith]

Time for a wee update, not had much chance to much the last week or so but there is some progress.

All the Led's are in place and indivually wired the hands are fitted with 0804 SMD's and the chest is a 3528, soldering wise they were fairly easy to do though i dont think i'd want to solder them myself.

If you haven't tried it yourself it's worth a go as they work out far cheaper than pre-wired SMD, although I can solder the smaller 0603's i wouldn't want to try it with an 0403 which are tiny.

I found a handy link which gives you an idea of the sizes, apologies for them being metric and not imperial.

An 0805 next to a toothpick just for giggles.

Using magnet wire on these make life a lot easier, if your want to solder your own SMD's be really careful when it comes to heat, you need to pre-tin the wires and SMD terminals first, make sure you let them cool down before attaching the wires, and when you do come to solder the wires be quick excessive heat will kill a SMD in a couple of seconds.

The chest LED was then glued in place.

Once soldered the SMD's were glued to the back of the repulsors with a few dabs of CA. Then the arms were drilled for the cable exits before the two halves were glued together.

The eyes were masked with some white-tack, which I soon found out was a bad idea as it was a total pig to remove from the eye sockets, then given a coat of Alclad black base and buffed with a polshing sponge, I am rapidly falling in love with alclad's products they are really easy to use and the finish is really nice.

The eyes were masked with some jammydog tape and the head was then given a coat of Duralinium

Last but not least for now the main power cables were ran through his left leg.

I should hopefully get a fair bit more done over the weekend so should have another update soon, thanks for looking.