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Keep wrote:

We don't know what ceramite is exactly, but i think it's safe to assume that it has comparable properties to ceramics.
Ceramics are very hard but also very brittle and not flexible. And that is not a good property to make an entire suite of armor with it. Medieval armors and weapons where not hardened to maximum hardness, because they would break like glass after an impact. They where tempered(reduction in hardness for more flexibility). The ceramite could be in little hexagons/plates/discs which are embedded in a metallic body (plasteel), to prevent them from easily splintering/breaking apart. It also increases the strength of a brittle material if its encased. If you think of armored glass, a part of its durability is because of its frame that holds it together and prevents broken parts from moving apart. So in theory it would make sense to encase small ceramite disks with metal (e.g. Plasteel). This allows the armor to be more flexible (relative to glass/ceramics), and not become useless after just a few impacts. This technique is used in some modern composite armors...

Yep. I always imagined that there was a layer of some sort of a metal on top of the ceramite, to stop it from chipping away, and while the ceramite cannot trust that metal might.

 Psienesis wrote:
Power armor is made out of ceramite, which is a ceramic material (ceramic and adamantite, iirc).

Never heard of that. It's just described as a form of ceramic material, this implies certain traits, like high resistance to breaking by pushing but low resistance to pulling, high hardness, brittle behaviour and extreme heat resistance. It is used in conjunction with plasteel and adamantium (which makes sense from realworld perspective, because different materials have different properties and combination gives the best compromise out of both worlds).
Adamantium seems to be a metal with superior metal properties... kind of like Titanium to the power of 2. And that's all we need to know. If its inside something, its better. The more is inside it, the better it is. Simple as that.

From the description available, the materials like plasteel and ceramite are alot less magical than you try to make out. The base properties of metals and ceramics won't change in 38k years. And since they are still mostly fighting with regular kinetic, chemical (explosive) and direct energy weapons, armor fundamentals wouldnt change all that much.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Considering it's made of ceramite and adamantanium, with only the under layers being made of plasteel, no, it wouldn't rust.

I'm wondering, is "adamantanium" just your way of saying adamantium? Or is "adamantanium" a seperate material to adamantium?

 Psienesis wrote:
Power armor is made out of ceramite, which is a ceramic material (ceramic and adamantite, iirc).

Really? I'd always thought/heard that Power Armour is made primarily of adamantium and plasteel plating, which is encased in a layer of ceramite due to the latters extreme heat and shock resistence.

as someone else said it's possiable that by the year 40,000 our understanding of material sciences has been revolutionized. I mean people used to KNOW that there where 4 elements. earth, fire, water and air.

 Anfauglir wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Considering it's made of ceramite and adamantanium, with only the under layers being made of plasteel, no, it wouldn't rust.

I'm wondering, is "adamantanium" just your way of saying adamantium? Or is "adamantanium" a seperate material to adamantium?

 Psienesis wrote:
Power armor is made out of ceramite, which is a ceramic material (ceramic and adamantite, iirc).

Really? I'd always thought/heard that Power Armour is made primarily of adamantium and plasteel plating, which is encased in a layer of ceramite due to the latters extreme heat and shock resistence.

I have a habit of typing a random "a" into adamantium due to a Californian valley draaawl in real life.

Adamantium is an alloy of unobtainium and hand-wavium.

It probably doesn't rust - since "rust" is a property of oxidation of iron. It might corrode though or otherwise oxidise (like aluminium or Tin or lead) and who knows what it will do when it comes to the magic of chaos?

Keep in mind, oxidization, or rust, is a chemical reaction in materials that are able to bond with oxygen under certain circumstances in an oxygen environment.

There are other such reactions between materials resulting in all manner of colorful combinations. Add to that extremes of temperature and pressure and any manner of things can happen.

So in short, use whatever colors you want with a dry brush technique and make up a story about some exotic environment in which they were stationed.

"Yeah that bluish green corrosion on their armor is from being stationed on Devron 7. The rain contains low levels of hydrobromic acid and when it mixes with the cobalt chloride in the blue electroplating on the armor it forms this greenish blue salt compound. It's a pain in the butt to get out without completely stripping the armor down and re-electroplating."

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Well, presumably Ceramite is some form of ceramic armor. So no. We don't know what admantium is either but if it's not some Iron alloy then it won't rust either. These compounds may oxidize/corrode in their own way but probably not in the same Iron does.

Ceramite is a metal. It's one of the hardest metals known to man, but it's also light enough to be made into Power Armor without having to make it thin.

 dusara217 wrote:
Ceramite is a metal. It's one of the hardest metals known to man, but it's also light enough to be made into Power Armor without having to make it thin.

Source?

Again, I was under the impression that it was adamantium and plasteel plating (thick) that provides the protection, while a ceramite layer (thin) envelopes the metal due to the extremely high shock and heat resistent properties of ceramic materials.

The only possible answer to this question is:
We don't know, because power armour is made from materials that we don't know.

The only thing we can do is make guesses based on the little we know of the materials.
We know for example that the outer layer of power armour is made of ceramite, which is a ceramic material according to the Inquisitor rulebook (quite obvious, based on the name).
Ceramic materials do not rust.
Other materials used are adamantium and plasteel. We don't know what kind of materials those are, but in other fiction works adamantium is usually some kind of metal alloy.
Plasteel actually exists in the real world, it is a composite of fiberglass and steel used in the construction of cars.
It also appears in Dune as a kind of metal and in Star Wars as a kind of plastic.

Based on this information we could say that Space Marine armour does not rust on the outside, but that it is possible that it could rust on the inside if it wasn't maintained, which in the case of Space Marines is highly unlikely considering their equipment fetish. Space Marine armour is sacred, and Space Marines would therefore always make sure their armour looks like it is new, even in a warzone.

Of course, this should not stop you from weathering your Space Marine miniatures with rust, because this looks cool and in fiction the rule of cool trumps all logic