Arc Reactor Prop

[Dudemcfly]

So I've been wanting to build an arc reactor for a while now, but having Iron Man 3 come out has convinced me to get started. I'm going to have about 20 LED lighting this thing, and wanted to know what the best way to power them is. Obviously, it needs to be as thin as possible, so here isn't a lot of room for batteries. The work light I bought with the LEDs has it set up with three AAAs, which is blindingly bright. Can I use some coin batteries? Maybe the CR 2032? Any suggestions? Thanks guys.

 

[Gav1985]

LED's suck a lot of juice out of a batteries life, hence why most torches or stick on lights use AA, AAA, or C batteries. You may get some success using a few coin cells, but you will probably be forever replacing them.

AAA batteries are probably your best bet. If your using 20 LEDs you could easily squeeze three of four AAAs in the middle of your ARC reactor.

 

[GreenGiant]

I always dislike turning people away from DIY projects but you may be better off just buying one of these.

If that is out of the question then I would say go with what Gav said, find a way to use AAA, though using smaller, lower power LED's should only use a few milliamps (20 would be around 200-400), and a decent AAA battery is usually around 900mAh so with 2 of them you should get a good 4.5-9 hours out of it.

His chest piece does stick out quite far (like 1/2-3/4 of an inch) so you may even be able to get away with AA batteries

 

[donkey]

just to help out on this a friend and I made an iron man costume not too long ago... well he did most of it I just laughed when he got it wrong.
anyway what we found was that for something that looks pretty real you actually have a bit of room to spare.
El wire is good if you know how to use it and find room for the inverter and batteries we found it in the helmet but some people are against having the power next to your face...... increasing the size slightly to allow a bit of room lets say 1 cm gives so much room to play with and the areas that you don't use can be filled with foam for comfort.