Carbon Age Systems and Mfg, LLC

Greetings again followers. This week we have the first post in a feature I am including on our company page here, namely small tips and tricks for crafting. This week we are going to be featuring a transfer and paint sealing method. I know others have talked about or shown elements of this before but it is a convenient set of shortcuts I have used and apply to initial prototypes in wood, plastic, metal, or really any material you can scribe.

Our example for today is the process I used for making a plastic cutie mark patch for a cosplay and is durable enough to go on some of the shooting gear I use when testing or competing

Now, these wings were an interesting set to help fix. These had a remote control to help them expand and contract and a decent aluminum rear plate to support and distribute the weight. This plate only had one flaw: it was a bit too short and thus put all the weight on the upper back and shoulders, a factor we suggested they fix with either a new plate when they can or at least add more support following the spine to spread the weight.
They had done a great job on using bolts and standoff pieces to connect the wing elements but forgot blue thread locker to prevent the bolts from walking out. Being fair, they were middle teens, this was their first big build, and had never known about the thread locker solutions so we fixed it up with some of ours to get the wing function back to full.
Another factor of the fix was that the backpack straps that were inside the jacket had come off of their frame due to the holes popping around the bolts which did not have large enough washers to prevent the nylon from being torn through. Luckily, we have many sizes of washers and rivets to help rework things like this so after 3 rivets while suggesting 2 more near the shoulders....

This fix is a quick, permanent one, vastly improving over the sewing used in the original attachment while keeping with the usual appearance one would expect given most of these rigs we have seen use aesthetic/faux rivets in their construction.

The fix we implemented was on that we developed in 2013 when the show had greater popularity and tons of cosplayers with failing straps. It is also one of the fastest fixes we have done. As seen here and in the next picture in this sequence, we employed a center punch to pop through the 3 straps here to fix a 1/8" rivet with a washer on each side to secure the ends together and in line with minimal runout.

The gear attached is in the show used to traverse heights with speed by firing anchors much like Batman's grappling gear and helping the user swing with their hands free to use the blades that are stored in the larger side boxes. The blades are used for attacking the titans that invade the towns, killing or incapacitating them with a strike to the base of the neck.

This fix even inspired the cosplayer to take a picture of our tool and decide to buy one of his own to keep in his own kit for field repairs and when he remakes the armor.

The fiberglassed shots, numbers 3 &4, show where the cosplayer tried to reinforce the print but the fixes they performed did not go far enough so we broke out our heavy-duty staple gun and stapled the layers back together along the seam of 2 segments of the print. this allowed for the user to be able to glue the layer along the seem and hold well as bracing that will not easily pull out or break.

The armor was powered with rechargeable packs in both the helm and chest pieces with the shell being printed in PLA.

Robotics Projects

In addition to our main prototyping/product development work, we have started producing displays and accessories for fi****ms. These products are currently available locally and soon would be in our store here.

As we work on rebuilding our capacity, we have moved our prototyping and general projects work into a personal garage. Currently working more with hand tools and small drill press/ rotary tool set up for fabrication of our projects.Additionally, we have soldering and brazing capabilities in this space as well as 3D printiing equipment on site in our environmentally controlled office at this location.