Wearable, light-up replicas of Iron Man's arc reactors.
I am a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). So when I needed a team costume for the annual Disney employee scavenger hunt, I looked to Earth's mightiest team for inspiration–the Avengers.
The Avengers: End Game movie is the finale to a 22-movie-long plot, driven mostly by Iron Man's story arc. So I thought it would be fun to create an Iron Man-themed team costume.
First, I looked into using battery-operated LED puck lights, because they were the right shape and could emit blue light, just like Iron Man's arc reactor.
Although the puck lights came with an adhesive backing, I was skeptical about it being strong enough to stick to clothing effectively, especially for multiple uses.
So I looked for another solution. Next, I explored using glow-in-dark paint and ended up purchasing this bottle of bright aqua glow-in-the-dark paint.
My idea was to paint the arc reactor pattern on a wooden or plastic disk-shaped object. The black paint would help create negative space and give the illusion that there is a cage on top "blocking" the blue light.
I intended to reuse this arc reactor replica for future Halloween costumes, so I needed to attach it to my shirt in a way that was not permanent and would not damage my clothes but adheres strongly enough to stay attached during the event.
Immediately, I thought of using a magnet. I planned to glue a strong magnet to the back of the painted arc reactor and place a plate of magnetic metal on the inside of the shirt, essentially sandwiching the shirt between the magnet and the metal plate.
After showing my plan to a teammate, he offered to 3D print cases for our arc reactors, which would save us the tedious work of painting the arc reactor pattern by hand. I was sold!
The new plan looked like this:
My teammate used a software called PreForm to convert the SolidEdge file for 3D printing. (Since I was not involved in this step, I won't go into too much detail about the printing.)
Now that we had our light source (glow-in-the-dark paint,) attachment mechanism (magnets,) and the 3D printed case. We were ready to assemble.
We painted the base plate with glow-in-the-dark paint. Several layers of the paint were needed to achieve an even level of opaque glow. Once the paint was dry, we charged it with a strong light source to test out the glow.
Next we hot glued the 3D-printed cases to the painted base plates and super glued the magnets to the back of the base plates.
We chose to create different variations of the arc reactor as seen throughout the many Marvel movies. Even Iron Man needed to iterate on his arc reactor design!
After the glue was dried, we attached the arc reactor to our shirts using the magnet.
Just before the scavenger hunt started, we charged our arc reactors with a bright headlamp, so they would stay charged for the entire night.
