- October 21st, 2014, 8:25 pm#4815600
Since September of 2013 I've been helping mburkit with his GBTVG pack build. If you haven't seen it yet, where the hell have you been? Go read his build thread and be amazed! I'll wait...
...pretty neat huh? He's set the bar high and isn't done yet as he still intends to add motion to various parts of his build. All along as we made masters and cast pieces I've been saving parts for my own build. Since Matt had a deadline (Dragoncon 2014) I kept putting off working on my stuff to help him get all the parts he needed ready in time. Around June 2014 we got the last of the major parts cast up and I could start working on my own build.
I've waited until now to post my build thread both because I didn't want to steal Matt's thunder and because much of my build is similar to his. The main difference being, while Matt's wussing out and only making two of the four pack modes "functional", I intend to go as far as physically possible to bring a game pack into reality. The only things I'm not going to do other then physically firing something out of the barrels is the moving ion arm rods for the meson pack and the Jacob's Ladder. The moving rods would require a machine shop and precision engineering to accomplish and the Jacob's Ladder is just a bit more dangerous then I'd care to be liable for. Technically I'm also skipping the slight bump out motion the cyclotron does when venting. I don't feel like making another mold for a taller cyclotron just to accomplish something most people don't realize happens anyway and it'd make the venting process even more complicated then it already is with a moving bumper and n-filter. This also means I won't be doing the boson emergency venting motion which would require a major machine shop, precision engineering and potentially breaking the laws of physics.
I guess that could be considered four things I'm not doing, three of which are technically possible. So sue me.
So here's our modified game pack shell, fresh out of the mold:
Except when I cast mine, I went a little different. Remember that spare cyclotron we cast up so Matt could plug his n-filter hole?
Instead of waiting and glueing a chunk into a finished shell like he did I decided to cast a piece directly into my shell while laying it up:
Turns out the cyclotron isn't perfectly round (no surprise there) so the piece didn't fit exactly in place but it was close enough. The area would need to be filled, sanded and cut to hinge the n-filter anyway so I'd just as soon have it all as one solid piece.
Remember all that work I did cleaning up the ribs on the master?
Well since I want functioning stasis ribs they all had to be cut off again. This was the first point where I questioned my sanity in regards to this project, that has now become a regular occurance as work has progressed. In-game the outer edges of the powercell, crankgen and side box are flush when the ribs are open. Through the magic of 3D game physics the ribs pass through the shell and sit halfway into the pack in their normal "closed" positions.
Since that's not physically possible in the real world it meant I needed to not only remove the ribs but install a recessed pocket into the shell for each rib to sit in. Since the ribs will be moving as a group each recess needed to be the same depth, otherwise they would not look right when closed, and as close to parallel as possible or else they would bind when closing. I used styrene to build identical slots that I could then glue into the pack shell.
Once all the recesses were installed I secured them in with plumbers putty, blended the exterior edges with the shell and cut the central slots in for the rib arms.
With that done I could then go about building replacement ribs. I quickly realized that building each rib individually would be way too time consuming so I built a single master that was the longest length rib I'd need and made a mold of it. I could then cut casts down to whatever length I needed and cap the ends.
As it turns out this was an even better idea then I'd originally hoped. After looking at Matt's pack with his electronics installed I wasn't entirely happy with how his overheat and health bars came out in his gun mount box. The edges of his cutouts were fine but the varying thickness of the shell and lack of baffles between the segments made the whole effect look not quite as clean as I want. I also want to install clear lenses flush with my shell to enclose the lights to make them look that more professional and replicate what they look like in-game. At that point I realized that the overheat bars are essentially exactly the same as the ribs with the health bar being a scaled down version of the same. I cast up two more ribs and built two smaller versions for the health bar and installed them in the gun mount box.
I now had uniform, enclosed recesses with a built in mount for lenses. I'm planning on using the same technique for the blue LEDs on the thrower.
...pretty neat huh? He's set the bar high and isn't done yet as he still intends to add motion to various parts of his build. All along as we made masters and cast pieces I've been saving parts for my own build. Since Matt had a deadline (Dragoncon 2014) I kept putting off working on my stuff to help him get all the parts he needed ready in time. Around June 2014 we got the last of the major parts cast up and I could start working on my own build.
I've waited until now to post my build thread both because I didn't want to steal Matt's thunder and because much of my build is similar to his. The main difference being, while Matt's wussing out and only making two of the four pack modes "functional", I intend to go as far as physically possible to bring a game pack into reality. The only things I'm not going to do other then physically firing something out of the barrels is the moving ion arm rods for the meson pack and the Jacob's Ladder. The moving rods would require a machine shop and precision engineering to accomplish and the Jacob's Ladder is just a bit more dangerous then I'd care to be liable for. Technically I'm also skipping the slight bump out motion the cyclotron does when venting. I don't feel like making another mold for a taller cyclotron just to accomplish something most people don't realize happens anyway and it'd make the venting process even more complicated then it already is with a moving bumper and n-filter. This also means I won't be doing the boson emergency venting motion which would require a major machine shop, precision engineering and potentially breaking the laws of physics.
I guess that could be considered four things I'm not doing, three of which are technically possible. So sue me.
So here's our modified game pack shell, fresh out of the mold:
Except when I cast mine, I went a little different. Remember that spare cyclotron we cast up so Matt could plug his n-filter hole?
Instead of waiting and glueing a chunk into a finished shell like he did I decided to cast a piece directly into my shell while laying it up:
Turns out the cyclotron isn't perfectly round (no surprise there) so the piece didn't fit exactly in place but it was close enough. The area would need to be filled, sanded and cut to hinge the n-filter anyway so I'd just as soon have it all as one solid piece.
Remember all that work I did cleaning up the ribs on the master?
Well since I want functioning stasis ribs they all had to be cut off again. This was the first point where I questioned my sanity in regards to this project, that has now become a regular occurance as work has progressed. In-game the outer edges of the powercell, crankgen and side box are flush when the ribs are open. Through the magic of 3D game physics the ribs pass through the shell and sit halfway into the pack in their normal "closed" positions.
Since that's not physically possible in the real world it meant I needed to not only remove the ribs but install a recessed pocket into the shell for each rib to sit in. Since the ribs will be moving as a group each recess needed to be the same depth, otherwise they would not look right when closed, and as close to parallel as possible or else they would bind when closing. I used styrene to build identical slots that I could then glue into the pack shell.
Once all the recesses were installed I secured them in with plumbers putty, blended the exterior edges with the shell and cut the central slots in for the rib arms.
With that done I could then go about building replacement ribs. I quickly realized that building each rib individually would be way too time consuming so I built a single master that was the longest length rib I'd need and made a mold of it. I could then cut casts down to whatever length I needed and cap the ends.
As it turns out this was an even better idea then I'd originally hoped. After looking at Matt's pack with his electronics installed I wasn't entirely happy with how his overheat and health bars came out in his gun mount box. The edges of his cutouts were fine but the varying thickness of the shell and lack of baffles between the segments made the whole effect look not quite as clean as I want. I also want to install clear lenses flush with my shell to enclose the lights to make them look that more professional and replicate what they look like in-game. At that point I realized that the overheat bars are essentially exactly the same as the ribs with the health bar being a scaled down version of the same. I cast up two more ribs and built two smaller versions for the health bar and installed them in the gun mount box.
I now had uniform, enclosed recesses with a built in mount for lenses. I'm planning on using the same technique for the blue LEDs on the thrower.
Chace, alphabeta001 liked this
Jack Doud
http://www.bloody-plastic.com/costumes.html
My Oddball props:
Statue of Liberty Controller, Slime Scoop, Keymaster Colander Helmet, KUD Meter.
http://www.bloody-plastic.com/costumes.html
My Oddball props:
Statue of Liberty Controller, Slime Scoop, Keymaster Colander Helmet, KUD Meter.