Original armour

I have read that the original armour was pulled in ABS plastic but is this true? ABS is pretty robust and doesn't crack too badly, even when very thin, unlike some HIPS or similar materials. The original suits have many parts "knocked" off the edges , cracks etc and I am not talking about the 30+ year old stuff, there are lots of screen shots of damaged armour, maybe it was pulled in ABS and Hips,or whatever was lying around.

This is something that is coming to light again recently due to the recent loft find armour.

For years we have taken what people thought the armour was made from and have never question'd the ideas behind the reasoning.. but with the new owner a member here maybe we can do more research and find out more.

The thin abs suits available today are fragile and will split easily if not handled with care - and we know that the original suits were thin.

And lets not forget these guys in the films were hardly standing around posing for pictures - they were falling off ledges - running, jumping and swiming in trash compators...

Yes Mark, even taking the recent loft find armour into account it would take quite a lot of pulling/ripping to break the codpiece off a thin ABS ab plate.The originals all seemed to be very prone to cracking at the chest plate sides where they were flexed, hence the taped repairs, pretty much where any slight bending of the armour happened a crack occurred.

I have tried ABS , it is pretty strong until it is paper thin, HIPS on the other hand breaks cleanly , a bit like various screen caps seem to indicate. Thin HIPS is also quite flexible up to a point.I haven't really tried any other thermoplastics so am no expert in the different types but it would be nice to know for sure what the originals were pulled with.

I gues the main difference between abs and hips is the way in which it tears and breaks.

Looking at the loft find there are several tears and cracks in all the usual places. Something serious must have happened to the cod piece for that to be totally removed now.

On of the factors that can determine whether a suit will crack ( not regarding use or abuse ) is the ammount of return edge present on any part.

On suits that have a large return there is more of a tendency to crack, and on suits with a minumum return less so. Im talking about fan suits here not screen used. And of the fan suits ive seen crack, they crack in the same areas that we see on the screen suits.

I think another factor is the wearers height and size. This is an obvious one here but there is definately more stress of suits of smaller people where the parts clank together a lot.

Whatever the original suits were made from , you have to remember that Simons original suit is now 35 years old.
Plastic deteriorates with both age and uv exposure ..the chances are that most of Simons tears and breakages happened a fair few years after the suit was filmed, after age had taken its toll and made the plastic even more fragile/brittle.

Agreed Rob, the point I made about the breakages on the armour were all from observations of screen captures to avoid this age deterioration reason.