Iron Man Glove

I made Iron Man's glove, complete with LEDS and a laser. Originally for a school project, it quickly became something that I was fully invested in, and I eventually plan on making and entire suit.

Materials used

• 3D printer
• PLA filament
• Soldering iron
• 2x Push buttons
• Electrical wires
• Spray paint primer
• Paint (any color)
• Flashlight with laser
• Strong magnets
• Hot glue
• Sandpaper (the lower the grit the better)
• Saw
• Files
• Elastic ribbon
• Fabric glove (winter gloves or gardening gloves work well)
• Electrical tape
• Respirator mask (optional but highly recommended for lung safety)

The first step is to printing the pieces. Starting with the the pointer finger (or index finger), print it at 100% scale. Most likely the print will not fit your finger first try, so you can either move it to your middle or ring finger if its too big or your pinky finger if its too small. Or you can play around with the print scaling to get the prints to fit snuggly around your fingers. Careful not to make them too tight, as we still need to add the elastic ribbon and fabric glove in. Everyone's hands are different so don't get discouraged if this part takes a while to get perfect.

Note that if you do scale the print, all of your fingers may not follow the same scaling. My pinky finger went down to 80% scale while my ring finger only went down to 95%.

Printing the hand plates are fairly straight forward. Just print them at 100% scale as they do not need to fit snugly around anything.

Printing the palm of the hand follows a similar process, but this time, making sure you have some wiggle room around the center of the palm of your hand and around the base of your thumb. This is were the electronics will be housed, so its important to save room for them.

Files for fingers and hand plates can be found here. Files for fingers follow this naming format "(name of finger)(section of finger).stl)" so for example "pinkytop.stl" would be the tip of your pinky finger. Files for hand plates are labeled "Platecutlarge.stl" and "Platecutsmall.stl"

Files for the main part of the hands can be found here. They are labeled "glove_R_pt01.stl" and "glove_R_pt02.stl"

After all of your pieces are printed and fitted to sized, its time to move onto the next steps.

Sanding away the layer lines is important to having a smooth finish on the final glove. The amount of time you spend on this step directly effects how smooth the finished product will be. Starting with the lowest grit sand paper you have and move up as needed, removing as many imperfections as you can. Do not worry too much about sanding the inside of the pieces, as this does not effect the appearance of the final product.

When you are satisfied with how smooth the prints are, lay them out in a well ventilated area (outside if possible) and spray them with the paint primer. This will fill in all of the little holes and make your prints extra smooth.

Caution!! Breathing in Spray paint is bad, always wear a mask and spray in a well ventilated area like an open garage or outside. Breathing in the dust from sanding is also harmful, make sure to wear a mask.

Adding the electronics may seem daunting but is actually fairly easy. Start by taking apart your flashlight and finding where the actual lights and lasers are housed. Depending on how well the flashlight casing fits inside the hole of the glove, you might have to cut or file away excess material.

Caution!! While removing excess material, be care not to damage any wires or lights

Now that the lights are free from their casing, its time to rewire them to the battery. Following the circuit diagram, the new circuit allows us to individually turn on the lights or lasers.

Caution!! Soldering irons are hot and can release harmful fumes. Always be safe around them and wear a mask while or be in a well ventilated area when using them.

Lastly use a hot glue gun to fix the buttons in place. Only put a tiny amount of hot glue on at first so that you can easily remove them if adjustments to their position needs to be made. You should be able to individually press each button by moving your thumb up/down or forward/back. Once you are happy with their placement, fully secure them in place with more hot glue, making sure not to accidentally cross wires, as both buttons are close to one another. Additionally glue the light casing in place making sure you can still fit your hand in the glove while wearing the fabric glove.

The physical glove is now done, and all that's left to do is to paint it. You can go with the classic hot rod red and gold, or choose a different suit variant to follow or make up your own color scheme. I choose to go with the Superior iron man color scheme of white and blue. After painting, you are finally done with this project

Everyone says "who's gonna be the next iron man?" Its you, you will be the next iron man.

Welcome to the end of this Instructible, Hope this project was as fun for you as it was for me.