A Question of Reliability, Answered

Reliability and durability is an issue that I've grappled with for years, even before taking on this project. Coming from an engineering background means that sometimes you tend to overthink certain things in a design process. The common train of thought is that even if you cannot make something to be perfect, the goal should be in getting it to the point where it is close enough, that it is virtually unrecognizeable from being so.

So naturally, the question of "how well can this suit take a hit?" entered my brain as soon as I set down to the planning process.  Multiple things (like protective gear for hockey and soccer, metal plating, and flexi glass for example) have been sourced out and compared initially in a physical thought experiment.

While all of those might be great things to use and try, pre-made sports protective gear doesn't offer the customization that I wanted, and working with rigid stamped/casted sheet material is just too cumbersome and time consuming.

Enter James Bruton from xRobots.co.uk.  I accidentally came across this gentleman's video on plastic casting a foam item.  Lights went off and I said, "This is perfect!"  I can shape the foam easily to create the armor pieces I want, and then cast each piece in plastic, and voila!  I have plastic armor, without having to worry about the possibility of someone punching ol' bats in the chest and denting the foam.

After watching his video tutorial, I decided to contact James, and he was kind enough to give me some tips on how to make the whole process work within the specifications of my project.  That was very awesome of him to do, so here I would like to share his video for all of you as well.

The keen-eyed will notice that in the previous post, I've already included the Smooth-Cast 65D Roto Liquid Plastic Compound in the shopping list, which is actually a semi-rigid polyurethane plastic.  Perhaps in the future I will experiment with a rigid plastic compound also.