Comic book fan prints own super suit

One comic book fan from Halesowen has printed his own full-size Iron Man suit, worn by Marvel's self-proclaimed genius, billionaire, playboy and philanthropist Tony Stark.

Ross Wilkes, aged 20, of Laurel Lane, who is a flower wholesaler when not printing his own super-suits, bought a 3D printer in 2013 and did not waste time in putting it through its paces.

"I went into Maplins and decided I was going to buy one of these printers," Ross said. "They are still relatively new but 3D printing is something that has always fascinated me."

The printer that Mr Wilkes bought was a Vellman K8200, for around £700, which is one of the first home printers put out onto the market.

He printed the suit piece by piece over a span of 14 months.

"I would put the printer on in the morning before I went to work and it would be done by the time I came home," he said. "By the end I had around 600 separate pieces and it took me a month to solder them all together."

The printer works by layering reams of plastic to form a solid, 3D object.

The plastic, in a 3mm-wide strip, is fed into a cog in the printer from a 100-metre roll which takes around 12 hours to go through.

The machine melts the plastic before moving it into place according to the design that has been fed into the computer, building it up line by line, to within 0.25mm accuracy. Each segment is made up of between 500 - 600 lines, and there are precisely 598 segments. The plastic for the suit cost around £400 in total.

The former Windsor High School pupil said: "It's a slow process and, yes, it is frustrating because it can go wrong a lot. My printer is a very basic version and it went wrong about every three or four weeks - either the plastic got jammed or there was a power cut, which meant I had to start again. But it's been worth it. "

Now that his marathon project is over, he does not know what to do with the suit.

He said: "It's in my bedroom at the moment and I'm quite happy just looking at it. It's a prize possession."

Unfortunately he cannot paint it as the only paint suitable is nail varnish. "It would take me longer to paint it than it did to build it," said Ross, who found the designs for the suit online.

"There are all kinds of designs out there that people have made. This one was more complicated as it was a base file and I had to modify it slightly, but it is easy if you know what you are doing.

"There are simpler designs out there but they are not as complex. I think with 3D printing becoming more and more common, designers are putting out simpler plans."

He said his next venture will be the shield of fellow Avenger Captain America, although, it will not be made of authentic, bulletproof vibranium.

"I think this is the future," Ross said. "It seems like sci-fi now but in a few years, I think we will be finding plans for the things we want and then printing them at home."