This has quickly become one of my favourite pieces. It’s a Mando Productions 1:1 replica kit of Tony Stark’s ARC Reactor from the first Iron Man movie. Designed to be a replica of his first ARC Reactor that he crudely built in the cave, it also comes with the display box that Pepper Potts gave him midway through the movie.
The kit is lit by a cleverly hidden USB power source.
Out of the box, the kit is probably 80% accurate to what you see on the screen. I went ahead and added some small features like red electrical tape, and 12 capacitors that are sandwiched in the middle. The centre emitter ring was the wrong shape, so I designed a new one and had it 3D printed and painted to match. The grating was also incorrect and replaced with something more accurate. When comparing to the screen used prop, I added some silver weathering on the edges of the 10 copper wired areas.
The 10 copper wire areas come pre-wound, so that saved a lot of time, however this was the area that differed mostly from the screen prop. The pre-wound “cores” come with a single strand of copper wire that you are supposed to feed through black “nubs” on the surface of each core. This looked very poor compared to the original. So I sanded off the nubs, and cut off the individual strands of copper. I cut 40 brass plates, 4mm by 2mm and attached them to the cores. Then the strands were sloppily glued (like the movie) to the brass plates. A dab of Mr. Dissolved Putty on top of each connection point was left to dry, and then covered with a chrome paint pen to mimic the look of solder.
The only other glaring error, was the display box came with a glossy black acrylic base. This base was sanded, sprayed with a chrome paint, and then sanded VERY lightly with a scouring sponge in straight lines to give it the brushed metal look from the movie.
This piece is now proudly displayed on the desk in my home office.