Iron Man Armor



Tony Stark has designed and built a variety of armors which he uses as Iron Man. Their appearance and capabilities are continually evolving as Tony modifies and upgrades his technology.

Overview
Though Stark's wide array of armors have many different abilities, they are alike in that they are made of incredibly strong materials bolstered by a force field. Every suit has a self-contained environment, assorted on board weapons systems, enhanced strength, flight, and various communications arrays and sensors (such as radar and radio). Furthermore, they typically have multiple power sources including a secondary solar energy collection function in the event that conventional recharging methods are unavailable. Older versions of the armor could also fold virtually flat, allowing Stark to store them in his bullet-proof briefcase.

The defining ability of Tony's armor are the repulsors situated in the gauntlets. They originated as a hand attachment, but have since become standard armament. They have been referred to as being magnetic,a blast of charged particles, and as a force beam.

A later variation on this are the Pulse Bolts, bolts of concussive energy that actually gain energy the further they have to travel, up to a limit of roughly three football fields (about 329 meters).

Another defining trait is the chest-mounted "uni-beam."

Construction
Contrary to its appearance, most of Stark's armors are not metal suits. His standard armor suit consists of approximately two million grain-of-sand-sized discrete units, which are shaped to have as large a surface as possible to optimize their effectiveness. The basis of the suit's structural integrity is the powerful force field which permeates the armor's "cells," as well as the whole configuration when active. Each of the "cells" is a tiny unit in its own right, contributing energy and computing power to the entire armor; this is also why the suit can remain functional even after having sustained considerable damage. The basic principle of the suit is holistic; each part contains the whole, as it were. When inactive, the entire suit can collapse on the microscopic level, the cells "folding" in on themselves to take up a smaller volume, like a three-dimensional accordion pleat.

While Tony Stark designs every aspect of the armor, the complexity of the design requires that production be entirely automated. Each cell is constructed by using specialized bacteria — the bacteria consume minute amounts of specific metals, arrange themselves on pre-tagged areas on the "chip wafer," then die, leaving a very small amount of iron, or gold, or gallium-arsenide. This method allows great precision in determining the thickness of circuitry.

All the details of the armor's construction listed above are laid out in the Iron Manual. However, some armor which appeared after publication of the Iron Manual may well use entirely different methods of construction.