You know the scene. It’s from Spider-man: Homecoming. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker quickly runs from the street into a nearby alleyway to do one of his famous quick change routines. Only this time we see a loose-fitting, baggy Spider-man suit hanging from Peter’s body which incites a few laughs from the audience. Then, with one touch of the Spider symbol on his chest the suit shrinks to fit his body like its worn by a guy wearing a shirt 3 sizes too small, only this looks good. Wouldn’t it be cool to have this in real life? Those were also the thoughts of YouTuber Jlaservideo, only he decided to go a step further an actually make it.
You could say this isn’t the content creators first rodeo. He builds all sorts of crazy inventions over on his YouTube channel ranging from Yondu’s whistle-guided arrow to Mandalorian flamethrower gauntlets. To create the self-tightening Spider-man suit however, Jlaservideo was met with issue after issue. The root of the problem was simple, the movie uses special effects to shrink the suit and this material does not exist in the real world…yet. This wasn’t going to stop the YouTuber. He tried everything from sewing threads on the back of a shirt to vacuum shrinking but eventually settled on something called NiTinol. This material is like an artificial muscle. It can operate from memory. It works by remembering its shape once heated.
By incorporating these NiTinol springs into his suit he was able to heat them using electricity from a battery supply and Voila! A self-tightening Spider-man suit (Mark 1). You can watch the full video for yourself below:
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