Mannequin armatures

[Creepy Works]

What kind of wire armature is used in pose able foam mannequins. Specifically the arms, legs, and bendy parts?

[Mike Goff]

If you are asking about making your own, I like to use rebar. If you want them to be poseable I weld a bolt to the shoulder and a nut to the end of the arm. You then thread the nut onto the bolt add another nut and tighten it down when you have it where you want it. I like to use 1/2 x 13 nuts and bolts for this, I put them anywhere that you want a joint. If you soak the nuts and bolts in muratic acid for a couple of minutes it will strip the zinc off of them, and they will be much easier to weld. Use safety goggles, rubber gloves, a respirator, and a pair of pliers to retrieve the parts from the muratic acid. Hope that helps.

[Dreamreaper]

I use hog wire, its the wire that is ran at the bottom of chain link fencing.

[Allen H]

In flexible foam mannequins the wire is often romex electrical wiring or something like 8-3 wire. What ae you wanting to make, we may have better options.
Allen H

[Creepy Works]

I was watching the show How It's Made and they had a short clip on anamatronics. The also showed 30 seconds worth of body forms being made. Start with a mold, spray it with latex for an exterior skin, stick in a steel skeleton for a frame, and then attach chains for the elbow on down, then spray the whole cavity with foam.

I would like to cast a mold and do everything from scratch for the learning experience. The advantage of the wire is you bend it how you want and it stays instantly as opposed to the method Mike described. Yup as a kid I threw swimming pool tablets in with muratic acid. Created some good chlorine gas and got a strong enough whiff of it. WWII trench warfare came to mind pretty quickly...