Best printer for amatuer/halloween cosply?

I've tried pepakura and I simply don't have the time/skills/patience for it lol.

I'd like to try 3d printing some kid to adult size costumes for halloween/party type use.

I have zero knowledge about 3d printing at this point. What size printer would I need to do stuff like Ironman costumes, etc?

What type of material would I be printing with?

What kind of ballpark figure are we looking at cost wise to print something along the lines of an Ironman get-up? In my research I see everything from some sorts of plastic materials being used to I think titanium from Mythbusters lol? Obviously I'm looking at using plastic/cheap.

Any general guidance just to figure out where to get started in researching this stuff would be greatly appreciated.

for your proposed use, aim for the largest printer you can afford. Being able to print a full head sized object in one go means you won't have to chop it in pieces and glue it together after the print is done. On the flip side, if economy is your goal, consider that you'd have to chop a head sized object into at least four pieces to print individually, then glue them together.

PLA provides the easiest printing, but will distort if left in a hot motor vehicle. If you don't do that, PLA will give you good results, a variety of colors, lower temperature, faster prints. ABS is best used in a fully enclosed printer, but offers wonderful sanding results as well as acetone vapor smoothing for a glossy surface (with some loss of detail).

The Ironman project you've seen are probably multi-part prints with plenty of elbow grease involved after the printing is done. From a time standpoint, even thirty hour prints will seem short when you have two or three times that much work after the print is done.

Only someone who has completed an Ironman print can provide a ball park figure for the time involved.

I went searching for the largest cheap CoreXY printer I could find and came up with the TronXY X5SA 500 Pro. This printer has a build envelope of 500mm x 500mm x 600mm. Absolutely huge. I am setting it up with a huge nozzle 0.8mm and will print huge layer heights 0.4-0.6mm. This rig will print large things in a decent amount of time. I am taking my sweet time getting mine together because I want to jazz it all up. Here is my 500 Pro..

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/924/gmTbgg.jpg

This printer could have gone together in a few hours if i only followed the instructional video on it's assembly. And so you know what to expect out of assembling one of these large format CoreXY rigs here is the video from TronXY on assembling the X5SA 500 PRO..

X5SA 500 PRO Installing Video - YouTube

When I bought mine it was a grand. They have come down in price but even better TronXY has released an even larger printer the X5SA 600. 600mm x 600mm x 600mm build volume. And it is selling for the same price I paid for my 500 Pro..

TRONXY X5SA-600 3D Printer (tronxyonline.com)

Also the sheer effort involved in a full printed costume is phenomenal.

What i suspect most people do is to print things like the chest piece and helmet and make the basic arms and legs with more conventional methods.

The old - wrap yourself in clingfilm and then coveryourself if fibreglass to form the armour pieces, would be my main route.
A decent paint job and some 3d printed wrist pieces, helmet, simple armour plates and a lot of paint and elbow grease would be my method.
Although as I look like a viking anyway - 'fat thor' would be my go to cosplay character. hat, hammer, cloak - job done :-)

There are definitely full armour sets on thingiverse and gitt hub (I HATE gitt hub, no relevance, just thought I'd mention it)