This past month I have been working more on my two jobs and waiting for the CNC machine to be fixed and ready for use. Its quite a temperamental machine it seems and we're working out the driver and electrical shortcomings.

Well, today I had a couple hours to work on the interior skeletal system of the boot some. I hope to pick up the pace! Here you can see what is inside the shin that will be aluminum for the prototype. just above the boot, this bone system connects into under the knee. I have been doing drawings of the mechanics for the boot for the past month, but won't be posting those draftings so the 3D work is what you will see.

The shin plate, skeletal, my leg and the calf. There is more to add and some arms and articulation for the linear actuator. My leg definitely has more calf to it than what is here I think, but the other proportions are really close.

Adding a gasket and configuring the ankle joint here.

It has been a while since an update. Alot of projects are going on right now for me but we are doing research and software work. I also need to save money for the main mechanical/ electrical items for the next phase of the project. Until the boot and interior skeletal within it are finished I won't be moving towards the magazine article and fund raising for the project. More 3D modeling is going on, but I will make some nice renders soon with the inner workings and what will be CNC aluminum.

Later!

The past few weeks have been super busy with working in NY and two other jobs. The team has been meeting and discussing/ planning various components in the suit. Its really exciting to envision some of the newer mechatronics components. 

I just made this comparison for armor scaling as it relates to a full body scan that I have of myself. This shows how Marvel really pushes the 7 plus heads high hero standards. Who in the world could have such a small head? They would have to be eight feet tall or something! Here you can see what an actual suit proportion would be for someone with a medium sized head and standing at 6' 1' with a thin frame (me). 

The MK 42 suit on the left and my body scan model on the right.

I took the helmet, torso, arms, and legs separately and scaled them to fit over this profile.

Here is the side by side from the movie to real life. The legs may even be thicker but this is pretty close to what it would look like as an armor suit scaled to my body.

Here is how the mechanism looks and how it works so far!

As you can see, we had only enough time after soldering the final wires to the board to tape it into position for demonstration. I will just create a housing for the electronics sometime next week after getting back from NY.

For right now, there is only one lock set on the left side of the calf as you see here. However, with both sides locked there won't be any play when force is applied pulling apart. Awesome work so far from our computer and electronics engineers on the team! :)

Well, we were able to successfully display at the Mini Maker Faire on Saturday! The lock mechanism was soldered just in time and it worked to demonstrate an auto locking function. Here are some pics from the start of that day. Five of the eight of us showed up for the event, which was good because we had to address the huge amount of people coming to ask questions. Kevin also showed up later on (who is working on programming a voice command "e-butler" system). I will take some more pics of the finished boot tomorrow, as I had no time to do so this past week in cramming in prints and assembly.

Setup time at the little 10x10 booth.

Matt and his girlfriend programming the gauntlet control for display.

I demonstrated the locking and movement of the boot all day, so my arms got red sun burnt!

I let kids try on the V1 boot and walk around in it. They were so excited!

The team, (minus Kevin who showed up later).

Getting Ready for the Maker Fair

Tickets are inexpensive, bring the whole family! :)

Here are some pics to show the scale of the boot, which actually looks much smaller than it is in my hands or on my leg! I am 6" 1" and the top comes up closer to my knee joint.

Yea I look tired, its been early mornings and late nights with two jobs and this project.

Off to get some good sleeeep...

Earlier today I was able to sand and weld the calf together (looks somewhat rough from slurry). Tonight I decided to just try out the calf adhered to the shin with the dampeners installed. It works great! I have yet to CNC the slider arms for the calf and still have to get the complete circuit for the lock, which I also completed the pin and housing for earlier today.

Taking a full step with articulation! 

Here are the installed dampeners which give a much more rigid motion to the shin.

Some people may consider creating the 3D prototype for this suit is a waste of time.

Well, check this out! Lets just go ahead and imagine Titanium replacing any of the plastic I design!

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/05/elon-musk-shows-off-his-crazy-iron-man-inspired-3d-modeling-setup/

Just this afternoon, I finished printing out the last piece to the calf plate! I just need to work on sanding down the warpage from the mid-calf prints as they warped on the platform, before welding the calf together. I will work on getting it to fit together much more seamlessly with the shin.

Here you can see the mid-calf pieces are warped from where they were on the platform and their combined warping made the gap you can see here. That will be done away with when I sand both pieces flat on that seam.

Yaaaay! Now onto getting the mechanics installed!

Printing out the calf since yesterday afternoon, when another spool of plastic came in. Here are a couple pics of newer pieces. The section between the mid calf is printing out today.

The two mid calf pieces here are taped inside on the seam but fit flawlessly onto the shin!

As usual, a bit of cracking happens and needs to be filled in. Beside you can see the temporary piston for the shin to operate with the calf. Hopefully I could get ahold of some linear actuators if pneumatics is less than satisfactory. 

The mid section there is actually going to set the lower calf down a bit further but it is just balanced on the shin.

Sized and screwed in the heel joint here. it glides perfectly with the axis being the outside of the heel.

Hope everyone's Labor Day weekend was great! I worked some on creating these parts yesterday. Just need to thread the metal shaft to screw into the printed parts on the larger dampener/ pneumatic piston.

I printed the pneumatic piston parts last night and just need to scale them up a bit and reprint.

If we decide to create pneumatics on this peice I can redesign the plunger and how the air would force into the chamber.

20x60 Banner ready for the Maker Faire, along with the poster of the boot and a poster of the actual MK 42 suit.

Today was an electronics config day, while we are trouble shooting the lock mechanism. We ended up jumping over to the Arduino Mini to get the circuit set up. We found that the magnet sensor wasn't reliable enough so we ran out to the electronics store to switch it out for a limit switch and some more voltage reg. parts. It is a pretty complex circuit we are having to program for this particular element but I have the parts printing out now that will house it all.

Matt working with a very small micro controller, which burnt out because of back voltage from the solenoid. So we switched to Arduino Mini for now.

The lock box housing is being printed out now, and the pin printed earlier this morning.

Yesterday, I was able to CNC out the aluminum arms for the shin plate as well! Then I installed them and put the pins into the front of the boot.

The head slipped on a couple attempts, but I was able to cut out a couple arms. 

The large vice grip is a must! 

I screwed in the aluminum arms, ready to install.

The toe and shin are ready to get hooked up to a couple more things for motion control.

Up next... printing the rest of the calf plate, installing the lock mechanism, adding sprints, other joints, etc. Then onto the gauntlet!

Lately, I have been learning the CNC machine workflow more. Between working two jobs it has been hard to find ample time, but the time I am working lots gets done! Here are a couple update pics!

Using the Mach 3 interface to operate the execution of the G-code and table.

Cutting out of plastic to prototype the shin arms before cutting them out in aluminum.

Yesterday I quickly welded the boot together and just waiting for more filament to arrive in the mail to print the rest of the calf! I will also be working on printing the lock mechanism today so we can get that fitted with the electronics tomorrow.

While I'm printing consistently twice a day, here is a look at my little work area in the garage. So you know I'm not ordering things from Shapeways, and you can see some of my processes.

A table for working on the boot assembly and for the electronics team to come over and work also.

I will need to order some more grey plastic rolls soon. Here I started printing the mid shin piece.

What you dont see in the pretty pictures of the boot pieces, the scraps from rafts and supports.

The boot V2 so far, with shoe done now and working on the shin.

You can see these are not glued or sanded at all, just right off the printer.