LEWISTON — It started as a paperweight.

That was Thomas Lemeiux’s modest idea sometime in May. He started building a replica arc reactor — the blue, glowing chest piece that kept inventor Tony Stark alive in the “Iron Man” and “The Avengers” movies.

“I was just going to leave it on my desk on a stand or in a little glass case like in the movie,” Lemieux of Oakland said.

So he built it out of steel fins, copper wire and bright white LEDs hooked to a micro-controller.

“Then I looked around online and I came across people that were building cosplay suits like this,” Lemieux said. “I decided, why don’t I try building a whole frigging suit to go around this?”

Now Lemieux, a 28-year-old sanitation technician at Waterville’s Thayer Hospital, is finding his Iron Man suit in strong demand.

Organizers of the New York City Maker Faire flew him in on the weekend to be a walking display.

He’ll play that role again this weekend as one of the featured guests at the Lewiston-Auburn Mini-Maker Faire and producers of the Discovery Channel Canada’s program “Daily Planet”  are calling for interviews.

“And when Halloween comes around, I think I’ll be pretty busy,” he said. “I’ve never had anything really cool to wear for Halloween. Now, I have something awesome.”

Lemieux’ suit is a replica. It’s not made of metal and can’t fly.

But it’s much more than just a plastic suit. There’s a lot technology in there, all designed to make the thing look and act as close to movie-reality as possible.

“The more I’ve looked into it, the more I’ve learned that my suit may be the most complete,” he said. “Even the movie suits weren’t this complete. I was kind of disappointed to find out how much of the suits in the movies were actually computer generated effects.”

A voice digitizer deepens Lemieux’s voice, letting him sound like Iron Man. A control pad on the front plays selected audio clips from the movies as well as some music. Lemieux favors AC/DC and Black Sabbath.

Of course, there’s the arc reactor glowing blue in his chest. But the coolest thing may be the repulsors in the hands of the suit — even though they don’t fire pressurized energy. They are controlled by EKG leads attached to his forearms and monitored by a pair of Arduino micro-controllers.

“When I flex, it fires the LEDs in the my hand and the sound effects in my shoulder,” he said. “I don’t have to push a button or anything, I just flex. It’s kind of neat.”

All of it is embedded in a poly-foam suit that’s shiny but light enough to walk around in without robotic help.

“It’s warm, too,” he said. “I figure for Maker Faires in New York or Lewiston-Auburn in the fall, I’ll be OK,” he said. “But if I ever do a Maker Faire in San Diego, for example, I’ll be in trouble.”

In all, the suit is controlled by four Arduinos and powered by nine rechargeable USB batteries. The suit is fashioned after the version in 2012’s “The Avengers” movie, and most of Lemieux’ tech lives in the suits’ ample shoulders.

“I wanted to base it on the newer suit, the one in (2013’s) ‘Iron Man 3’ but that’s too slim,” he said. “It’s too streamlined, and I need that room for the micro-controllers and the batteries and the speakers.”

He figures he’s devoted more than 400 hours to building the suit. Much of it was carving out the pieces in foam, assembling them and painting them. Each piece is covered in a mixture of glue and water, then painted several times to give it a metallic appearance.

“The bulk of the time is really prep work, trying to figure out what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it,” he said.

Do you know a creative person with a technological bent? We’d love to talk to them. Contact Staff Writer Scott Taylor at [email protected], on Twitter as Orange_me or call 207-689-2846.