View new posts | View your posts MDF/Styrene Build FINALS 8-31-10 Lights and Sound added!

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Thought I'd throw a few pics up since the Trap Forums are always so quiet...

- Panels are cut from MDF with solid wood handle
- Wheels, Vector Plate, Rods, and both Side knobs from Zombie Amusements
-Front knobs will be Resin cast Nic-a-tron parts.
- Side Plates are Thickest For Sale Sign Styrene I could find painted in Hammered Aluminum Paint. That stuff is amazing..how the hell can they make a paint that puts dents and dings on a piece of plastic?!
- Cartridge will be Removeable with Side Vents. A Wing nut and bolt will pin it in to place and be removeable from inside of cartridge
- Electronics will be homemade circuits with LED's. 2 Power Supplies will be needed due to removeable cartridge for rear FULL TRAP light and front panel.
- A battery powered Halloween strobe light will be inside the cartridge and will flash when the trap is rolled out with open doors. Nothign special, I'll have have to turn on the strobe and open the doors before I roll it out.
-Doors will have reflective tape for stripes because I liked it so much in pictures of my old crappy trap.

No pedal in the works yet. I plan to be done with the trap before Mechacon Saturday, and then add electronics some time before Dragoncon/PKE Surge.

So far:



Did a little weathering after I put n the side panels last night...it was painted with the Hammered Aluminum first, then a later of Flat Matte Clearcoat, then some Flat Black paint. Then I sanded some of the edges.






More later...

G

Looks great! Love how "used" it looks.

It's amazing. The side panels look just like galvanized sheet metal. :O

Another 2am night. I've learned first hand what others have said...the doors are a BITCH to get to match up and still work. I see why so many people forego the doors, but I'm a hard-headed obsessed SOB. The cartridge HAS to come out and the doors HAVE to be able to open and close. And the thing HAS to be able to roll, and somehow it still HAS To be able to mount onto my MMM belt trap holder.

And so I spent forever on one or two little details: Get the wheels on and turning. I STILL can't get it to roll straight after sanding and resanding the dowels and attaching and reattaching the skate bearings. I'll figure it out eventually....

For now the doors open and somehow I got my electronics up and running too...AND managed to finish some Proton Pack repairs and upgrades (See my Pack thread a little later if you're interested in seeing a pack further evolve from cardboard to something presentable.)....definately a productive evening! But boy are my arms tired...have two burn blisters on my hand from touching hot screws that I cut the heads off, or soldering irons...or dripping hot glue...

anywho...It's not as good as stuff I see on the forums, but I'm glad to be mostly done, and like my Proton Pack, it's not the best, but it's mine, and it's got some features you don't see in every trap.

I even got the decals on...what a night in the foggy build zone...I hardly remember last night when I woke up. I get that much on autopilot when I work...

showing here:











Doors Open and Decals Added...







Now I just need to clean up a few details, touch up some bare wood that got exposed, put on the knobs if they make it in time on the front, and get those famous stripes on the doors. I'm undecided on paint verses reflective tape...I might do the reflective, I just don't know how good it'll look on a better trap. It was the best thing about my old crappy trap, but not it might not hold water on a "real" trap.

Some of you have noted how "used" and "beat up" it looks. That's only partially intentional....I want it to look used up, but I'm afraid I lucked out on how it got that way. Sanding and filing parts while they're actually ON the trap causes a lot of wear, and all that dust from plaster and sawdust from the MDF sort of coats the trap in that "workshop haze" you see. I think between that and the HAMMERED paint, that's how I got it to look this way.

A note on the some trap details for builders who are insane enough to try to emmulate my amateur project:
This trap's cartridge comes out and is held with a bolt and wingnut that's tightened from inside the cartridge. The bolt is inserted right in front of my V-hook mount, which is shimmed out just enough to catch on my trap holder, but not so far it impedes with the wheels when I roll it.

The electronics, because of the removeable cartridge and my wanting the readout to light up, had to have 2 sperate power sources. One is in the battery box in back, and the other is in the cartridge with a switch you can reach by opening up the trap doors and turning it on.They're all LED so I can leave it on all day if I want to.

I also put a touch of velcro on the doors so as they wear and get looser and looser, the velcro will make sure they stay closed. The power supply for the readout lights is also velcro'd into the cartridge interior. I haven't figured out a way to mount the switch in there yet but it's the least of my worries at this point...

So stripes and knobs hopefully tonight after a WoW raid I've been looking forward to all week! Finally a little relaxation...it's amazing I've managed to do all this work and not miss much time at all with the wife and baby. It cuts into my sleep to start work so late after the baby's down, but I feel like I'm doing the daddy balancing act quite well...and it's rehearsal for when he asks me to build him some gear!


G

Sweeet bro !

Pics for Gareee and those of you who did similar wheels. Why does my trap roll hard to the left? And why do the wheels feel like I threw out a bearing? Are the screws too tight?

As you can see, the wood is splitting, so much more messing with this and I'll have to start over....not that big a deal but I'm out of time before the Con this weekend...

A few "finals." I still have work to do here to get the vents on the cartridge and try to get the strobe in there, but here's a look at what I'm bringing to the con....

I'm pretty happy with it considering my lack of skill at these things...







Here you can see the switch inside which turns on the display and will hopefully later turn on a strobe light inside. It's housed in the cartridge so the back light for the trap holder can run independently. The wing nut is the pin that holds the cartridge in place.









Couple short vids showing how the lights work:


And just a pan around...

Looks great! Love the reflective tape

Looks like your drilled holes for the wheel bolts are crooked, making your wheels not roll true. If you drill the holes in the block on a drill press so the drill bit doesn't wander then you can get a straight tapped hole to mount the bolt.

Getting the holster on is a bit tricky as well, you may need to space the one end up so it is angled while still not above the level of the axle, you can also bend the female bracket on the holster out slightly so it engages easier.

Nice work!

Very pretty. The electronics sound intriguing.

Thanks for the compliments folks!

Colin I think you're right. I don't have access to drill press and I bet I drilled my holes in at an angle...

I didn't think there was much room for play on the V hook but if Bending the female end out is an option I'm all over it.

It took me 30 secs or more each time I holstered it a Mechacon. I need to get that down for aggravation's sake!

G

Thanks, Nick! That's my first crunch bar, and coming from a craftsman like you it means a lot!

I preached all weekend to the other GB's at Mechacon on how you really can't count on glue. You must bolt everything down or you'll be replacing or repairing parts all damn day, especially with our humidity. Well what happened this weekend, can ya guess?

The one thing I didn't bolt down, my display, ya know, the thing that holds the entire door assembly together?, well it fell off and with it my doors.

The ONE thing I tried to count on glue to hold! I'm done with glue! It's all bolts and screws from here on out!

G

looks amazing... i love how you used 2 seperate power sources and the reflective tape for the doors on the trap.


only problem i have with those pics is the off topic part of the patch having the black border.. to each his own

Thanks FeinD!


I don't think that Taiwanese patch will wind up on my uniform. I actually have a patch silkscreened onto my Olive Drab one and will get an accurate one for the khaki suit I'm putting together for Dragoncon.

Here's where that patch wound up! On my Grandfather's old leather knife case which makes for a great Belt Gizmo/Toolkit for emergency repairs!

I think that trap is awesome! Well done.

If you don't have a drill press, would VENKMAN71's idea work? Make an "X" with a ruler at the side of the beams that the wheels attach. Use a punch to mark dead center and then drill. Forgive me if you've already tried this approach.

Ted.
Prefect42.

Thanks for the compliment and suggestion Prefect. I believe the square wooden dowels I used to hold the wheels in place simply weren't cut square. So even if I drilled the holes in straight with a drill press, I've got 2 things working against me. Possibly angled holes, and possibly angled edges I'm screwing in to.

I'll just have to trial and error those wheels till I get em right or redo the axel dowels from scratch. I didn't cut them myself, so I kinda left it to blind faith that they were cut straight, and they clearly weren't. I've tried sanding them straight but the wheels are still crooked. I'm up against sanding and testing over and over vs wearing the screw holes out, but I figure I can use anchors in the holes when that starts happening.

G

I finally saw the pics you posted, and yeah, the wheels are at an angle.maybe overdrill the holes, and put a drop of gorilla glue in, and align them by hand till the glue sets up? Your washer look a bit too large as well, but so long as they aren;t running against the wheels, thats really a non issue.

For glue, I'm mostly sticjing with super glue, and small amounts of gorilla glue, and usually roughing up the surfaces first. It takes getting used to because it expands, but it also doesn't let go I'll put superglue on around edges, and gorilla glue on in the center. press together, and the superglue cures right away holding things in place. Then after two hours, he gorilla glue has cured, giving me a more secure bond.

But as you mentioned, if I can screw or bolt something together, thats usually, my first choice.

Thanks Gareee, I'll try the glue in the hole method if they start to strip when I do my repairs. I'm a bit of a procrastinator so I probably won't get to it till a week before my next event. I think we have one gathering before D-Con...

G

Hell, my pack has been sitting in parts for a month now. I'm the king of procrastinators!
(Actually we've just been dealing with SO many real life issues that it hasn;t been a priority. Since we are on our own up here, our next events will be DC, and then halloween oriented things.

Finally got her repaired from Mechacon. She's ready for the LAGB TV appearance coming up this friday...

I decided to go with blue on the display since the yellow LEDs I have are behaving oddly...two AA's and it won't light up, 3 of them and it acts as though it's overloaded. So I asked my wife, Blue or Green and showed her both. This is her choice:



So the gear is ready for the road Friday!

Gorgeous set-up you have there.

And I like your wife's choice for blue lights on the trap. It ties in nicely with the powercell lights on the pack.

Ted.

Thanks, I'll let her know!

G

My trap made it's TV debut this morning...

Thought I'd share a pic of how MMM's trap holsters work and how I'm using it:



I've got to get around to making a pedal for this thing....

G

I never did make pedals, even though I bought most of the parts for them. No one notices if you have one or not, and I figured it would be one more potential thing to get broken at events.

Amen on that "something else to break" notion.

Something ALWAYS breaks, no matter how hard I try to prevent it from happening. I just keep fixing stuff and making it better than the first time and hope that I'll eventually get past the weak links.

It's amazing what approaching conventions can do to motivate a guy...

I put flashing lights and sounds into my trap cartridge tonight. The video distorts the aspect ratio and makes the trap look squat, but you'll get the idea. I like what I wound up with! I have something worth rolling out for a presentation or for skits and such...and the cartridge is still removeable!

The video doesn't do the sound justice but you basically hear moaning and chains. Ghosts.

Here's a look...



And a closer look at the inner workings...



G

A more friendly Youtube version. Thanks Vince for showing me how to get the embed working!

wow that looks amazing!
Nice job!

I LOVE the sound effect you have running in the trap! Can you post that, or give me the link for it?

Welcome to the next level. And from up there, you can look around at all of us jealous types.

That is incredible. Well done .

Ted.