Technology Venturing Forward
Captain America Shield
This project began my sophomore year of high school. At the time there was no good metal shield replicas and the only way to get something movie accurate was to build one. I had to contact over 30 metal spinners in the country trying to get quotes on the prices for a spun aluminum disc with very specific dimensional requirements. Most companies gave obscure prices and quotes to scare me away. One even said it would cost me $10,000 for 1 or if I bought 5000 each would be within $250. After many weeks, I eventually found a small company in Florida, who rumor had it, actually made some of the movie props for the First Avenger production. He gave me a price of $250 and I received a beautiful disc two weeks later. This first picture was the taping off of the blue inner circle.
The paint I had used was Duplicolor anodized red and blue paint. This gives the nice undertone shine as seen in the movie. Also it is very resilient and made to spray on to bare metal. To help reduce droplets and spotting, I put the cans initially in a bucket of warm water before each coat. I put on 4-5 thin coats to obtain the deep color I was looking for. After allowing to dry for 3 days I tapped over the blue to paint the red rings.
While the red coat dried for a few days, I began to start on the star. The star design was first made and printed out on normal computer paper. From there I taped on the design on a thin sheet of aluminum from a local hardware store. I then took a exacto knife and scored the design deeply in to the sheet metal. I then scored the parameter edges as deep as I could then fled the edges until the metal broke free. This took multiple attempts to create the star perfectly. the main source of error was from my hand slipping and messing up the design.
The next item I focused on were the brackets to hold the shield. I custom designed the brackets in Solidworks. It was based of the original movie design but simplified to make it easier to attach. This design was then cut on a laser cutter from a company in Columbus, Ohio. After some research, I found the type of screws used to attach the leather straps. The straps were then cut to size and added to the brackets. The brackets were attached the disc with industrial grade double sided adhesive tape.
