I Was Overweight... So I Built An Iron Man Suit

August 31, 2026 · 11 min · 2k views

A full 3D-printed Iron Man suit, the Mark 7 by Walsh3d, printed in PLA over five months in my workshop in Phuket and assembled with belt buckles, nylon straps and more hot glue than I'd like to admit. It's wearable. It's not painted, it's not motorized, and some of it is held together by optimism. On the final day of the challenge I put it on, sat down, lay down, and stood back up.

The challenge

In January I announced a challenge: 120 days to lose the weight AND build a wearable suit. I had neither. Announcing it publicly was the whole point. It was a trap for my brain, so I'd have to figure it out. The weight loss story has its own video, linked below. This one is about the suit, and how I barely worked on it for months.

Everything except the suit

Printing started on day one on my Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus and basically never stopped. Thailand's humidity kept clogging hotends, so I ran the AC around the clock and bought a dehumidifier. Meanwhile, as parts piled up, I did everything except build a suit. Shelves for the printer. A workbench. In April I gave up on the failed prints, bought a Bambu Lab H2C and turned a small room into a mini print farm.

When I finally touched the helmet, I realized I was just following tutorials without understanding anything. So I extended the challenge by six weeks and spent 16 days learning electronics by building a Factorio sub counter. Then I spent another couple of weeks turning the workshop into a cave, because Tony Stark had a cave. I regret nothing, except that I had 15 days left when I was done.

The real build

Then came the actual suit: a list of the roughly 150 parts, reprinting the missing and broken ones, and the first stress test. I tried to sit, and the codpiece and pelvis broke. I reprinted them in sections, reinforced the load-bearing parts with fiberglass (very itchy, don't recommend), and got it to hold.

The electronics plan (five ESP32s, screens, LEDs, a web interface) stayed in ziplock bags. The paint cans are still sealed. Sanding killed what motivation I had left, and I burned out on a suit I'd barely worked on.

The printers were the easy part

The printers were the easy part. What actually mattered was the room: dry air, dry filament, and starting assembly before everything was printed. And cosplay armor needed skills I didn't have at all: magnets, buckles, elastic, heat inserts, and picking between looking good and being able to move. And painting, the part I know how to do, is the part I never got to.

Five months of PLA

5+ months of challenge
$1,500+ spent on the suit
About 30 rolls of PLA
Roughly 150 printed parts
120 days was the original deadline, extended by 6 weeks

Watch it

Watch the full build on YouTube.