workshop Ironman is one of my favorite
movies and today we’re going to be
taking a look at how to build our very
own Iron Man arc reactor nightlight
let’s go over the materials that we have
and get started building I do have quite
a few items on the workbench at the
moment but most of them are low cost and
easy to get your hands on I have a can
of some seaside colored spray paint I’ve
got some black and some gold acrylic
paint a simple paintbrush this cutting
board I think was 88 cents at Walmart
and about the same cost for this small
strainer these little touch lights come
in a pack of two for eight or nine
dollars at Walmart sitting underneath
our touch light is a piece of foam core
board these of course usually come in
much larger sheets I’ve just cut a small
piece off because that’s all we’re gonna
need for this build I have a strip of
staple guns staples a standard keyring
three small hex head screws some copper
wire this other matte underneath the
rest of this stuff is also supposed to
be a form of cutting board it’s sold in
a three pack for about a dollar and it’s
just a thin flexible plastic I have a
circle compass an exacto knife a glue
gun and I have this tool which is
designed for punching holes and setting
Hardware in leather really I’m just
going to be using the one tool that
punches out a small hole it’s a little
bit smaller than a standard hole punch
if you don’t have one of these you can
easily use a drill bit or a small hot
nail for the holes that we need to punch
it’s just going to be used on our thin
orange plastic the first pieces we need
to make are some circles cut out of our
thick cutting board and they need to be
the same diameter as our touch light we
want to cut out two circles one will
just be a disc that’s the exact same
size and shape as the surface of our
touch light the second piece will be a
ring that almost perfectly matches this
white border going around our light for
the solid disc we can easily just trace
out the light and it will give us a disc
just the right size but because we want
to add a border on the other one let’s
try using a compass just the right size
to measure out the first circle and then
keeping our Center in the right spot we
can measure out a smaller circle within
it now the diameter of this light
appears to be just barely under three
inches so if we set our compass to be
just under an inch and a half we should
get a circle that’s the same size as the
diam
or light the specific measurement of our
ring should be just exactly the width of
the inside of our staples because our
staples are later going to fit over this
ring it’s kind of funny how this ring
looks larger than this one because it’s
measured on the outside and this one is
drawn at the exact interior diameter but
really these two should come out being
the exact same size cutting boards are
designed to be tough and they’re
designed to hold up to things like
knives and blades so this board can be a
little bit tricky to get through however
there are a lot of tools that can cut it
really easily if you have a hole saw the
right size that would do a great job
however in the interest of saving time
for the video I got my hands on a scroll
saw and I’m gonna use that to cut these
pieces out
there’s our first disc I want to cut out
the inside first and of course I can’t
just pass the blade through but these
blades are designed to come off and on
really easily so what I’ll do is drill a
hole into the plastic take the blade off
fit it through the hole and then
[Applause]
there we go our ring is now cut out
let’s clean this up with a little bit of
sandpaper and then we’ll be ready to
move on now the reason I chose to use
this cutting board material is that it’s
strong rigid and it’s excellent at
defusing light so what we’re going to do
is have the disc and the ring both sit
above our touch light and they should
give a nice muted glow without being too
intense the arc reactor in the movie has
a slight blue tint coming off of it so
let’s take our solid disc and paint one
side of it with that aqua blue spray
paint we have we can now see that we get
a nice soft slightly blue glow just what
we’re looking for we now want to take
our ring and modify it so that it has
ten points going around the circle of
what seemed to be magnetic coils of some
kind to do that we’re going to be using
our staples and our copper wire each of
the two points we’ll use two staples so
it’s break twenty staples off of this
stick that we have we’ll want to place
our staples over our ring flip it over
and then crimp them down so they’re
holding on tightly to the ring we should
have less than one centimeter of a gap
in between the two staples once the
staples are really well pressed down
they should hold themselves in place
pretty well you could maybe move them if
you tried hard but overall they’re gonna
stay where you put them now let’s put
another set of staples directly across
from the first set with our first two
sets of staples installed we now need to
evenly spaced out four more sets around
hopefully the staples are holding on
nice and tight to your plastic ring but
if some of them are a little bit loose
you can easily just use a dot of hot
glue to hold them in place now that we
have all of our staples attached to our
plastic ring you need to wrap some of
our copper wire around the plastic in
between the sets of staples let’s cut
off about a two-inch section that we’ll
use to wrap around that way we won’t
have to pass all of our wire through our
ring as we do the wrapping so now on the
back of our ring let’s put a small dab
of glue in between two of the staples
we’ve then press our copper wire down
into that glue if you’re using really
hot glue make sure you don’t do that
with bare fingers it’ll hurt wrap that
around once cross it around the back and
then wrap it down a second time and we
now have a nice coil of wrapped copper
wire in between our two staples so on
the back again let’s trim off the excess
so it doesn’t wrap around further and
then we’ll glue down the ends of our
copper wire and look at that we have our
little electromagnet driving our arc
reactor or whatever that thing is like I
said it’s not very clear the exact
function so now we just need to do that
nine more times there we have it all ten
of our sections are now wrapped with our
copper wire and our ring is looking
pretty good on the inside of the arc
reactor there are a few concentric rings
building up from a spot in the middle
that has sort of a mesh grid over it
we’ll be using the metal mesh from this
sieve as the grid on the bottom of the
arc reactor and we’ll be cutting some
concentric rings out of this plastic for
the Rings that build up inside the arc
reactor to begin let’s cut off the mesh
from the sieve and flatten it out as
best we can so that we can measure a
flat circle rather than a domed one
we’re doing now fortunately this stuff
is quite flexible
to measure out the size that we want
that circle to be we’re going to make it
match the keyring that we’ll be using
this will actually end up getting
attached to the arc reactor a little bit
higher up but it’s a perfect measure for
we now need to cut out five concentric
rings the smallest of which should fit
nicely right over our silver mesh the
largest of which should just barely be
smaller than the interior diameter of
our plastic ring we’re going to want the
smallest ring to slightly overlap the
edge of our mesh so if we make our first
circle just slightly smaller than that
we should be able to make the outside of
it just lightly larger and then it will
completely cover the edge so that right
there will be the size of our first ring
and now we need to have four more of the
same thickness extending from it there
we go our fifth ring and we can see that
it just barely fits inside the plastic
ring with the copper wound around it we
need to use our exacto knife and very
carefully cut out around each of those
so now we’ve got our five circles of
ascending size and we need to change
them to the right color the pieces in
the movie look like they’re probably
made out of brass so let’s use a nice
golden brass colored paint and change
these to look like they’re made of metal
I’ll first add a black base coat onto
the plastic as I think that will make
our five plastic circles are now painted
and looked nice and brass colored now we
need to find a way to attach them at an
ascending angle onto our arc reactor our
smallest ring needs to be attached to
our mesh circle and that will get glued
we’re going to want to suspend our ring
a little bit above the disk down below
so let’s cut out three pieces of our
foam core board that will act as struts
holding the ring up above the disk our
big plastic ring will sit supported up
above these pieces but we want our
smaller brass colored concentric rings
to sit nested down inside going from the
bottom up to the hype of the top ring so
now we want to cut from that point down
to where our foam core board touches our
smallest inner brass ring and of course
we want to cut all three pieces to match
I have here an equilateral triangle that
I cut out using a compass and a ruler
and I’m just going to use that to mark
what points to put these supports on so
that they’re evenly spaced around our
now let’s quickly hit the sides and
sloped parts of these supports with some
[Music]
now that we have our supports painted
what we’re going to do is glue our rings
so that they’re touching the supports
and stacked nicely on top of one another
the angle that we’ve cut the supports
out should keep them perfectly spaced as
it ascends from one sized ring to the
next piece we need to make is a slightly
thicker ring that will go above all of
these this will have holes going through
it all the way around and it’s what our
hexagonal headed screws will fit into
that its widest it should have the same
diameter as our top ring but it will be
much thicker so its inner diameter will
be considerably smaller than our top
we now need to use our poll punch and
punch holes going all the way around
this ring to make sure that I have three
that are evenly spaced out I’m going to
use my little equilateral triangle again
and just put three marks of where I want
those holes to go also be helpful to me
to have an inner line that will show
where the edge of the hole should go so
I don’t end up having one hole right
here and one hole right here so I keep
it in one nice smooth straight line now
I have three evenly spaced holes and I
need to fill in all of the gaps between
them with our holes punched we can now
take our hex head screws and thread them
and now get a good sense of how this is
going to work but the only pieces we
still need to cut out are some support
struts that go from our three hex head
screws into the middle to hold up our
silver ring we’ll cut those pieces out
of some more of this semi rigid plastic
we can see that we aren’t going to need
those pieces to be very long they only
have to reach from the hex head screw to
let’s add holes into the end of each of
these three tabs and then we’ll bend
them to give a little bit of a different
shape to hold up our ring slightly lower
than the plastic ring with the holes in
it now I’m going to use the back edge of
this razor blade to add a couple of
bends into our plastic so now we need to
attach each of these three tabs on to
their respective screws it fits nicely
over the screw and let’s just add a
little bit of hot glue to keep it firmly
in place with our three supports in
their spots we can drop in our little
ring and now we can mark where we need
now let’s add a little bit of glue on
all those edges and a fix our ring
permanently
we do have a little bit of overlap so
let’s take our exacto knife and just try
and trim a little bit of that off here’s
our center ring now let’s use a little
bit more of our paint and paint
everything that’s orange to be black
at this point it’s time to start the
final assembly on the piece
so first let’s glue the outer ring onto
the support structure around it now the
way that these are spaced out our little
hex screws will rest nicely right on top
of the highest golden ring so we just
need to add a little dab of glue to the
bottom of each screw and then a fix it
onto those rings
let’s cut three small support pieces out
of our foam core board glue them on and
then paint everything black before
gluing this on to the supports
then we’ll attach the smaller black and
silver rings into the center
[Music]
in a darkroom this lights up beautifully
this of course is more of the display
piece arc reactor than something you
would want to wear as a costume it’s
fairly wide overall but you would be
able to follow these exact same
principles and just make everything
shorter if you were trying to make a
version that you could maybe mount to
your chest as part of a costume Tony
Stark built one of these in a cave now
you can build your own with just a quick
trip to Walmart and a couple of tools
thanks for joining us for this video and
remember to come gear yourself up with
hats shirts and other cool merch at the
king of random comm see you there
interesting drawing black on top of the
silver mesh it doesn’t really look it’s
black it just looks like it’s invisible
almost that almost perfectly matches this edge on the scope there it goes