3D Printing Tips & Tricks

On our second Iron Man armor build we decided to take a more serious approach to the mounting and strapping for actually wearing the suit.

Strapping:

For our suit builds, we've found a few tricks to keeping things connected and well-positioned. We put together some diagrams for how we've mounted these parts. By no means is this definitive but should give you a good starting point for your own builds.

From wearing suits around at photoshoots and events, we've found that the thighs are the part that weighs down the suit the most, especially as you walk. For this reason, we've directly connected the thighs to shoulder straps to carry this weight.

The abs section typically doesn't move that much since it's mounted at the most narrow portion of your waist. We use 1" nylon strapping and hidden side release buckles to connect the abs.

For the arms, we run strapping across the shoulders and secured down each arm with elastic. We use magnet tabs connected to the strapping and the inside of the armor pieces to connect each panel to the arm.

Magnets

For connecting large armor pieces together, we designed these slim magnet couplers that accept a 32mm neodymium disc magnet. The underside is recessed to house the magnet, and we use the tabs on the side to plastic weld the coupler to the armor piece.

For connecting armor pieces to our nylon strapping, we modified these magnet tabs to easily connect to armor pieces.