Entries Tagged 'Projects' ↓

The pictures above show my right-hand Mysterio costume glove, on it’s own and with the bracer.

A note: I do not recommend that you sew your own costume gloves. It’s a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, which you can probably better spend on other aspects of your costume. However, if you have decided that your gloves NEED to be made out of specific fabric to match other aspects of your costume (such as Mystero’s boots), here is how to do it. Continue reading →

Here is a picture of the sphere, cape, and bracers put together. Obviously, I need to work on the green jumpsuit, gloves, and boots.
After a bit more work on the sphere, I am now able to see out of it relatively well. I used a standard green & yellow dish scrubbing sponge to buff/scratch away some of the reflective coating from the inside directly in front of my face when wearing it. I don’t have a lot of peripheral vision, and the view is slightly dimmed, but it’s much better than before. If you look very closely from the outside you can see that the “viewport” portion of the glass sphere is slightly less reflective than other areas, but because it’s dark inside the sphere I get the same effect as a one-way mirror. I have covered all of the rest of the interior of the sphere with packing tape as a poor-mans tempered glass substitute, but I will still be very careful walking or navigating steps while wearing the costume.

Today I sculpted some fillets onto my mysterio bracers using Sculpy (An oven baked modeling clay). This gives the “hooks” a more three dimensional appearance, a bit more strength, and smooths out the connections between the hooks and the bracer itself. I only used 35g of Sculpy per bracer, so the hooks are not extremely wide, but I’m glad I added them, even if it will end up taking me 5 extra hours of work.

In the picture, the bracer on the left has the Sculpy, and the one on the right is pre-Sculpy. Continue reading →

Today I started on the actual costume part of my costume (as opposed to the props) and found 3 yards of remnant fabric ( $1 per yard!) that is approximately the correct color for my mysterio cape. Because the costume needs something that is closer to a cape than a full cloak, I made a “half-circle” cloak, which typically falls over the shoulders but doesn’t completely close in the front. [A full circle cloak is MUCH more massive and would hide most of your body.] The trick to cutting an even half circle is to fold your fabric in half, have somebody hold a piece of string at the corner, and trace out a quarter circle (with a washable fabric marker if you have one). When you cut out the quarter circle and open your fabric back up, both sides of your half-circle match. Then do the same folding trick when you cut out a neck hole. Remember, you can always cut more, but adding fabric is hard. If you get lucky and find a knit fabric that doesn’t fray, you may not even have to hem the edges.

Roomba with stuck bumper sensor
The above video shows a roomba with a stuck front bumper sensor. As you can see, the robot keeps backing up and trying to turn away from
the phantom obstacle it thinks is in front of it. This particular sensor was triggering because lint had gotten into the optical beam path and was blocking light to the photodiode detector even when the bumper was not being hit. I was able to repair it by removing the bumper cover (unscrewing 4 screws) and vacuuming out the hole where the plastic pole from the bumper goes between the IR diode and photo-transistor.
Continue reading →

I glued the “hooks” or “spikes” to the mysterio bracers and they look very nice! I had been considering using clay or shape-lock to “fill in” the areas around the hooks to make them more “3D”. But after examining them, I think I may simply leave them as they are now. I kind of like the flat/sharp look. Next up, selecting cloth for my costume, and matching spray paint.

After my order of 1/8″ craft plywood arrived, I converted two 24×12 sheets into eight panels and eight frames which I then assembled using wood-glue.

Here are some images of the assembly procedure:

After building a lightweight urban commuter out of pieced-together secondhand components, I purchased a lighter weight, used, and inexpensive single ring crankset for it. After installing the bright and shiny new crankset, I realized that the bike was actually starting to look like it might be worth something (despite the fact that I retained the 10 year old plastic MTB platform pedals). To fix this, I hit the laser engraved brand name (ProWheel OUNCE, not exactly an expensive brand, but your average bike thief may not know that) with a steel file. While I had the file out I decided to remove all of the other possibly expensive sounding brands from the bike, which mostly consisted of logo filling and decal scraping. In addition to hiding the brand, filling the metal parts instantly drops the potential resale value, and may even save you a few grams of weight depending upon how vigorously you file things down. This is more “urban stealth” than full on urban camouflage, but I may go buy some faux rust antiquing paint for the full effect later.

Continue reading →

This is my new lightweight urban commuter (a.k.a. MARTA bike). I purchased a used carbon fiber frame, and a used mountain bike frame that had been made into a single speed road bike and combined all the parts (plus a few extra) into a lightweight single speed bike. The frame is designed for road tires, and the clearance is very tight, so I am limited to a thin road tire on the back.

The mountain bike frame came with a standard MTB crankset, and I’m using the middle gear (34 teeth) to a 16 tooth rear cog (4.3 gain ratio). This combination makes it easy to get to the MARTA station without too much effort (don’t want to arrive at work all sweaty). I have also experimented with using the larger (42 tooth) sprocket and a 15 tooth rear cog for a 5.7 gain ratio, but that combination only works in the winter when overheating isn’t an issue. Because it’s a commuter bike, I added a LED headlight (held on with a hose clamp) and a detachable RavX Super Sight bicycle taillight. The running weight is 18.6 lbs, or 21.2 lbs when I carry a U-Lock.

Parts Details:
Vitus Plus Carbone (Carbon Fiber frame) 55cm 21.6″ (1988)
Vitus Dural 979 aluminum fork, Cinteli Stem, 26.4 Cinelli Bars
Front Wheel: Ritchey HB 575 Rim (26×1.0 tire)
Rear Wheel: Ritchey Hub ZER system, AERO OCR wheel 6061 T-6 Alloy
ETRTO: 622-14, Tire: Vlittoria Zalfiro 25-622 700x25c
Shimano Ultegra 6600 brake on back, “Schwin Approved” calipers on front, Tektro Reverse Alloy TT Brake Levers
Shimano Bottom Bracket, Square Taper 68mmx118mm UN54
RavX Rear Flasher, Front LED light

With lots of help from my friend Christian (Check out his comic!), I got a template made for my Mysterio bracer panels. The panel is actually assembled out of two layers for an extra 3D effect. Layer one is the bottom, with the “circle-hashing”, and the other layer is the frame around it. The small green circle is pre-existing marks on the craft plywood that will be covered when I paint the bracers once they are fully assembled. In this picture you can see the different laser cut parts that I will be replicating (8x) to make two bracers. The power level settings for this particular panel were 15% speed, 100% power, 2500 Frequency on a 40 watt laser engraver from Epilog.