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By mburkit
#4802510
This post has been a long time coming. It took 2 trips to California and making contacts with multiple professionals just to learn how a 30 year old prop that 99% of people didn't even realize did more than have "blinkin' lights" worked. As many of my Facebook friends have already seen, my buddy Adam and I got a guided tour of Sony's Property Archives back in May on our second trip to California over the last 2 years. I was allowed to take photos of a lot of things, but sadly I am not allowed to share some of these photos. I am in good standing with my contacts and would like to keep it that way. Though I can not share the actual photos or explicitly state what I did or did not do on my visit to Sony; what I CAN do is replicate what I may or may not have seen and share my replications with you.

First, a few photos to show you I'm not pulling your legs:
Screen used GB2 Sign.
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The "Murray" Pack:
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And lastly, the other proton packs that Sony has in their possession (excluding the Semi-Hero still on display in their main lobby).
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Now if you still believe me, lets move onto what I've been working on.

We have been over engineering the popping mechanism for years now in this community. I have been working on helping a friend complete their proton pack for Dragon Con 2014, and I decided I'd use their pack as the "test" for this set up. What you will see today is the front handle assembly and the spring set up. I have not yet finished the spring loaded latch for the mechanism and I do not know if I will before Dragon Con with building this GB1 pack and finishing the scratch built electronics in my Game Pack. So I apologize if my next update won't be for a bit.

First up, the video of this set up in action:


What you see in this video is the exact same functionality as what is inside the Hero pack. The front handle consisted of 3 aluminum tubes stacked together; the outer most tube that could rotate freely about 90 degrees, the middle tube remained stationary, and the inner most tube of the handle was able to slide freely back and forth into the gun body without any rotation. Inside the gun body, the guide wire for the spring is attached to the rear of the gun body by one of the socket heads holding the rear cylinder on. As the inner most tube slides into the gun body, the spring just coils up inside the gun. There is a small square hole on the top of the tube that slides into the gun body for a spring loaded latch to grab onto and hold the extending tip. What you see in this video is accurate to the screen used hero props from the first film.

Now some pictures of what's going on inside the front handle. But let me get one thing straight first: I do not know how the front handle was assembled! This set up is my interpretation as to replicate the functionality of the handle that I experienced:
Extended
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Retracted
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There are 2 important details to take away from these photos. The first is the set screw holding the acrylic tube inside the inner most tube. It doubles as a guide screw to let the tube only move the distance it is needed to without rotating. The second detail to take note of is the square hole at the rear of the inner most tube. That is what the latch will grab onto inside the gun body to keep everything retracted.

One of the KEY details to make this set up work, is that the 2 bolts holding the front handle onto the gun body and the other bolt that is letting the outer most tube rotate around the other 2 have to be cut short; like REALLY short. They have to be just long enough to thread into the first 2 tubes, but not impede on the movement of the inner most tube that slides into the gun body. I believe this would be the reason for the stacked brass washers in GB1 as well as how many of the packs that have survived from GB1 are missing these bolts. They are so short that they could easily be stripped and/or lost.

Other than that, there is a latch that is attached to the brass bar lever. It is spring loaded to keep it held down. Eventually I will get around to replicating this piece as well, but as of right now, it won't be for a little bit until things slow down a little for me. Hopefully this bit of information is enough to get people started!

Thanks for reading and good luck!
jackdoud, Giant Slor, Cole Funstuff and 9 others liked this
User avatar
By julz
#4802512
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Omg that is awesome!!!!

Totally makes me think we have all been over thinking how to achieve the extension.

Less is more!

Thanks for sharing Matt!
jackdoud, alphabeta001 liked this
#4802514
Whoa :shock: Awesome!
User avatar
By mburkit
#4802561
PssdffJay wrote:
Wouldn't it get a tangled in the wires?
The wires for electronics in the thrower was a rat's nest, with wires either coming up the split loom from the pack and/or coming off of a wire wrap perforated circuit board that was mounted to the gun body wall via the socket head bolt between the 2 side knobs. There were even about 5 wires running up into the barrel presumably for the strobe in there. Interesting side note: they grounded the wand electronics to the gun body and only ran "positive" lines to all the lights.
Hijacker wrote:They didn't put a guide rod to keep the spring from bending up in the way?


No guide rod. The only guide the spring had was the wire attaching it to the rear of the acrylic tube and the rear of the gun body.
Lowberg wrote: Not to get off topic, but whats the deal with the shape of the bumper on the 2nd pack from the left?
That would be the Universal Studios Florida Ghostbusters stage show pack that they have that we have photos of when it was on display in the New York Planet Hollywood. Sony has the Hero pack, Murray pack, 3 semi-heros, the USF stage show pack, and 1 slime blower still.
Kingpin liked this
#4802598
I have too many questions to ask and not enough time...
mburkit wrote:Inside the gun body, the guide wire for the spring is attached to the rear of the gun body by one of the socket heads holding the rear cylinder on.
Do you know how the other end was connected to the acrylic tube?
mburkit wrote:Now some pictures of what's going on inside the front handle. But let me get one thing straight first: I do not know how the front handle was assembled!
When compared to the Spengler pack, would the inside of the gun be identical in your opinion?

Image

Image
mburkit wrote:There are 2 important details to take away from these photos. The first is the set screw holding the acrylic tube inside the inner most tube. It doubles as a guide screw to let the tube only move the distance it is needed to without rotating.
Was a larger screw potentially used for the guide rail rather than a set screw? (As shown in the Spengler pack above.)
mburkit wrote:Other than that, there is a latch that is attached to the brass bar lever. It is spring loaded to keep it held down.
I'm sure your future mock up will show, but how is the spring connected to both the gun and the lever?
mburkit wrote:The wires for electronics in the thrower was a rat's nest, with wires either coming up the split loom from the pack and/or coming off of a wire wrap perforated circuit board that was mounted to the gun body wall via the socket head bolt between the 2 side knobs. There were even about 5 wires running up into the barrel presumably for the strobe in there. Interesting side note: they grounded the wand electronics to the gun body and only ran "positive" lines to all the lights.
Did the circuit board look capable of driving the incandescent bargraph display? Any idea on whether shift ICs and timers were used from what you could see?

Seriously amazing information you've shared with us! Thank you very much for bringing this into the light Matt!
User avatar
By mburkit
#4802603
Cole Funstuff wrote:Do you know how the other end was connected to the acrylic tube?!
Nope! I personally drilled a hole all the way through the inner barrel right behind my acrylic tube and threaded one of the 2 holes for a #6 button head screw. Then I tied one end of the wire around the threads of the button head and threaded it from the inside of the tube. Once it was tight, I took my cutting wheel on my dremel and cut the excess thread off on the outside of the tube so it could still slide freely inside the other tubes.
Cole Funstuff wrote:When compared to the Spengler pack, would the inside of the gun be identical in your opinion?

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Yes, I'm pretty sure they were all the same set up. You can see the spring entering the rear of the handle and one of the blue wires going to the light in there.
Cole Funstuff wrote:Was a larger screw potentially used for the guide rail rather than a set screw? (As shown in the Spengler pack above.)
I used a #6-32 set screw as my guide for the inner tube. Looking at the reference of the Spengler pack, I would say it was either a #6 or #8 set screw. And just like my set up, it goes through the inner tube and into the acrylic tube.
Cole Funstuff wrote:I'm sure your future mock up will show, but how is the spring connected to both the gun and the lever?
Its a torsion spring holding the lever down. One end is against the lever and the other end is against the gun body wall.
Cole Funstuff wrote:Did the circuit board look capable of driving the incandescent bargraph display? Any idea on whether shift ICs and timers were used from what you could see?
The circuit that is in the gun body is running all the lights EXCEPT the bargraph. The bargraph literally has a ribbon cable soldered to the leads on the back of it. That ribbon cable ran down the split loom into the wand. As for the circuit board running the other lights in the gun body, I could not see the IC's on the board. It was bolted to the gun body wall, with a piece of foam between it and the gun body so nothing would short. The only thing I could see was the wire wrap leads coming off the other side and leading to switches and lights.

I hope that answers your questions.
Cole Funstuff liked this
#4802606
mburkit wrote:Yes, I'm pretty sure they were all the same set up. You can see the spring entering the rear of the handle and one of the blue wires going to the light in there.
It almost looks like the end of the tube is capped with a hole at the bottom and something attached to the end of the blue wire. Is the spring just wound through the bottom hole and not actually attached to anything?
mburkit wrote:I hope that answers your questions.
You most certainly have! Thanks again!
By cray
#4802630
WOW! This is sooo awesome! I'm so glad someone finally got to see the inside of the original hero throwers!


My question is, was that other white hat light on the top of the thrower actually wired up, or did they just glue one in there without connecting it to anything?

And how was the reflector for the grill light held in?
#4802647
Kingpin wrote:Man, how I wish we could see those photos. :(

Still, it's brilliant to finally have an answer for this long-sought after element. Awesome stuff. :)
No lie. I would have loved to have been a fly of the wall that day!
Kingpin liked this
User avatar
By mburkit
#4803008
cray wrote:My question is, was that other white hat light on the top of the thrower actually wired up, or did they just glue one in there without connecting it to anything?
It was just a hat light glued in there; no bulb or wires going to it.
cray wrote:And how was the reflector for the grill light held in?
It was glued in, like the bargraph and the recessed hat light.
By cray
#4803033
mburkit wrote:
cray wrote:My question is, was that other white hat light on the top of the thrower actually wired up, or did they just glue one in there without connecting it to anything?
It was just a hat light glued in there; no bulb or wires going to it.
cray wrote:And how was the reflector for the grill light held in?
It was glued in, like the bargraph and the recessed hat light.

So many questions answered. Thank you for sharing this awesomeness! :)
User avatar
By mburkit
#4803066
Galaxiejoe wrote:Any suggestion on the build up to replicate the 3 layers of tubes? For the ID and OD specs.
I'd say go for something like this:

Outer tube: 1.25" OD x 1.18" ID
Middle tube: 1.125" OD x 1.055" ID
Inner tube: 1" OD x 0.902" ID

You can get all of those sizes of Aluminum 6061 tube from http://www.onlinemetals.com. I went with slightly different sized tubing with tighter tolerances but I have access to a lathe and I was able to turn any of the tubes down a few 1000's of an inch if it felt a little tight when putting it all together. In theory, these should stack without any modification to the tubing, as long as they are straight enough.

Just seen this thread add me JudgeGerry to London

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