Tony Stark had to tinker with his Iron Man armor repeatedly to get it just right. He should have just hired Honus. The builder is skilled when it comes to animatronics, and he helped his friend Greg add all kinds of fancy functions to his Mark III fiberglass suit. They had to brainstorm and figure out how to handle effects that weren’t done practically in the film, so they broke down the suit into three areas: left side, right side, and the boots. From there, it gets complicated and also amazing.

As an example, here’s what they did for rigging the helmet so it would open wirelessly:

Figuring out how to make the helmet work was pretty tricky. We definitely wanted it to be wireless so it could be easily taken off but there’s barely any room in the helmet for servos, let alone electronics. The first system that was implemented used two identical high voltage digital mini servos with a rod system that moved the faceplate and chin at the same time. As the servo pulled the rod the arm raised the faceplate and a second pivoting rod pushed the chin section open. The top of the faceplate had two small pivoting links that slid in tracks in the top of the helmet. While this system worked really well it was eventually scrapped as it took up too much space around the sides of the helmet, especially in the temple area where the arm pivots were located.

Get all the details at Instructables.

Thanks for the tip, Jerome!