[Necronaut]

So, do you ever look at your half-completed build, and decide to put it off for another day? You know, can't be bothered? Too tired?


Nah, me either.
Finished Pack by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Finished Pack by Brett Watt, on Flickr
So, please allow me to explain: it just sort of happened, and i didn't document it at all. The finish line was so close, that I had to just work on it until this point.

[Necronaut]

First, please let me preface this with a couple points:
1. This was intended to be a Halloween-finished sort of franken-Galvinator build. Perfection will come over the winter months. I'll upgrade the pack with proper lights, sounds, a real N-filter and a proper GB1 ribbon cable. I'll likely upgrade other bits, such as the thrower itself, real resistors and Clippard valves, and proper aluminized metallic decals.
2. I may chop up the shell and save the cyclotron and synchronous generator. However, I will properly scratch-build a new crankcase, gun mount, power cell, and PPD/EDA stack, just to get that sharper detail and relief on the upper part of the pack.

I epoxied in reflective markers in for the cyclotron red lenses. After sanding the fibreglass resin inside the shell to roughen it up for better adhesive adhesion, I epoxied in the reflectors using a putty epoxy.
I attached a second cable clamp, identical to the one on the Booster Frame, to the underside of the Clippard valve on the pack. This will hold the ribbon cable in place underneath the pack, and keep it out of the way of other components.
Most of the Clippard brass fittings were taped and screwed in place. Only the fitting atop the ion arm end cap had to be epoxied in. Even then, you can see that the blue air tube has bent the fitting out of its epoxy bond.
All my resin Legris 90 degree fittings are just friction-fit in place.
All of the 1/4 flex wire loom is tacked in place using some Blu-Tac on the fitting or tube. It's easily removable, but otherwise quite a permanent connection for such a small, light part.

[Necronaut]

Finished Pack by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Finished Pack by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Finished Pack by Brett Watt, on Flickr
As I have said before, this thrower body was scratch-built. I intended to use a Galvinator-recommended electrical enclosure, slightly modified, but I elected to just build it myself. It's made from 1/16" sheet styrene, reinforced at the joins with either 1/8" styrene square channel or styrene rounded tubing. All of the detail bits were cast by Hole-In-The-Ground Props, and they were ordered as a package with all of the detail Pack parts.
Basic assembly of the thrower body consisted of building the box out of sheet styrene, scored-and-snapped to the appropriate dimensions. It was glued together using Tamiya Extra-Thin plastic modelling cement. I filled here and there with a little polyester filler or leftover putty epoxy. Welds were sculpted (badly ) using techniques posted in the index thread.
It was primed and painted with the rest of the parts, using the same techniques of rubbing it down with steel wool between coats, just to maintain the smooth, metallic-like texture and finish.

Decals were applied then the parts started getting attached, either through screws and tapping threads, or just epoxy.

[Necronaut]

My sad little bar-graph is just a panel of clear styrene with some parallel lines carved into it. I brush-painted a coat of clear Orange Tamiya paint, then epoxied it in place. I also glued in a layer of parchment paper behind it, just to help diffuse the light. I think that I will place an LED at the bottom and sort of 'aim' it upward to create a gradient of fading light up the window.

[Necronaut]

Finished Pack by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Bathroom selfie!

[Alan Hawkins]

It's a good looking pack. It would be sad to rip it all up. If I may offer this idea -

Now that you are a pack builder, keep this pack as your "stunt pack" and either scratch build a hero or get a gbfans shell and use that as your base. The great thing about this hobby is that every pack is unique and have their own touches that make them spacial. I'm starting on #16 soon and it will be different than any before it and any after. It's a shame to loose that.

You can also always find someone that wants a pack and has the money, which could then be put into a new pack.

Just some thoughts. It's been a great build to follow and I look forward to your next project.

[Venkman's Swagger]

Such a nice build. Alan gives sound advice

[Necronaut]

You are both absolutely right! There isn't any law saying that I am limited to just a single pack!

Regardless, I could proudly wear this pack around at Halloween and be pretty good with it, but I think it needs lights, even if they are just static display lights...
Untitled by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Okay, so I have a bunch of stuff going on in this picture.
1. Top-left is the laser-pirate-sword found at most dollar stores in the Halloween section, or those pop-up Halloween stores. Thomas Galvin disassembles one of these and rebuilds it for gun-firing lighting effects in his Galvinator wand. They were $3 Cdn each, so I grabbed two, in case I screwed it up.
The first wand was disassembled and its electronic components were stripped out. That is the tangle of wires and mini-bread-boards studded with LED's on the left side of the frame.
The second gun is intact, in case I need to scavenge a part.
One disc has 6 LED's that flash in bright, multi-coloured patterns. That fits very nicely at the front of the barrel, before the clear part of the wand. The other disc has 3 LED's which will look good under the grill in the gun body.
2. The laser sword electronics use three 1.5V AAA batteries. At my local electronics store (MRO Electronics in the west end of Edmonton, Alberta), I picked up a few AA battery enclosures (no AAA stuff in stock). They are separate, which gives me a lot of flexibility in sizing, spacing, and stuffing them inside the wand body.
3. Top left-centre is a cheap string of battery-operated LED Christmas lights. These will be used for the cyclotron lights and the Power Cell lights. I'll simply extend the wires a bit here and there. I also want to extend the last 3 or 4 LED's through the wire loom from the pack to the gun, for use as 'hat lights' on the proton gun body. If they are wired in series, I may also wire in one of the toggle switches on the gun body to power up and down the whole pack.
4. Top-centre is a piece of 3/4" PVC electrical conduit that's been sliced in half. It's also been wrapped in aluminum foil hreat tape, to make a reflective curved surface. This will be the reflector backing for behind the Power Cell window.
5. The Googley-Eyes were other option I may have had to use for gun firing lights, if I couldn't find the laser sword. I bought a few, which at $2 each, wasn't too hard on the wallet. Surprisingly, the on-off switch kind of fell apart, and the button itself looks almost exactly like a hat light lens! Score!
6. The right side of the pic is of the Thunder Strobe light set. The lenses are fabled for their use as parabolic reflectors for the cyclotron lights. But check out the high-quality batteries that came shipped with the item! Just ignore all the corrosion...
Once again, serendipity strikes as the Thunder Strobe switch falls apart too, revealing an orange hat-light lookalike!

I'm taking off to play a gig in Hinton in the next hour or so, but tomorrow I'll spend the afternoon wiring up the Proton Pack lights. The flashing wand light electronics will need a re-solder to both extend and replace the thin, cheap, and unreliable 26-gauge wires they used in the original manufacturing. I have suitable lengths of ribbon cable left over, which will peel apart nicely into color-coded 2 strand and 4 strand wire extensions!

[Morfeusoneiros]

So many great looking builds. Looking forward to seeing your pack with lights.

[Necronaut]

Pack lighting 1 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Here's a shot of the inside of my shell. You can see the epoxy buds I used to attach the red cyclotron lenses; the wood dowel capped with a rare earth magnet in the crankcase, which links to the vacuum hose that has a matching dowel with a screw on the end. It holds pretty securely, but can break away if a wise guy decides to "test" the hose connections. I used fender washers under the nuts for all of the pipe-made parts (HGA, N-Filter, injector tubes, beam line, etc.). Being so wide, they help distribute the force a little better, and may prevent a break should I back into a door jamb, pole, or something. You can also see the cable clamp I am using for my excess ribbon cable. As well, the potentiometer is screwed into the crankcase at the top. The crank knob is attached to the potentiometer post.

[Necronaut]

Pack lighting 1 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
I'm back working on the motherboard here, installing bolts to attach the cyclotron lighting platform.

Pack lighting 1 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Here is the cut-up piece of PVC pipe. I drilled out some holes to insert the LED light string. The top has a tab for bolting the pipe piece to the motherboard. I had a matching tab and a bolt at the bottom, but they were interfering with the injector tube bolts, so they had to go. I will likely drill another shorter bolt under the bottom part and epoxy it in place somehow.

[Necronaut]

Pack lighting 1 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Here is the plastic platform I'm using for the cyclotron lights. It's not a perfect alignment, but it works pretty good. No lights are installed on the cyclotron light platform yet. I left a couple lights out of the power cell lighting bracket, but I have 7 or 8 lights left on the string: 4 for the cyclotron and 3 or 4 for the wand. The light string will need to be extended to reach both the lighting platform and down the hose to the wand. These lights are sitting on my bench...

Pack lighting 1 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Up next: soldering to extend the wires! I really hope that this works!

[Necronaut]

Success!
Pack lighting 2 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Pack lighting 2 by Brett Watt, on Flickr
Like I said before, the wire used for the cheap dollar store light string was around 26 gauge stranded wire. To extend it, I used some old XLR microphone cable and soldered the ends together, into 3 sections: 4 lights for the thrower, joined to a 5 foot length of wire fed through the wire loom hose, then joined to another 4 lights for the cyclotron, then extended by 3 feet, to the Power Cell lights, and then to the AA power pack for the lights. The lights are threaded through a small hole into the motherboard with the battery pack taped to the ALICE pack frame. I can easily turn the lights on and off from that spot.

I used two lights in the top of the thrower, one with my make-shift 'hat light' cover I found, the other just a bare LED. Another light was hot-glued into place inside the thrower body, aimed at my cheesy 'bar graph' window. The last light was fed into those small rectangular boxes at the back of the thrower, where the Slo-Blo light is. This last light was just friction-fit into place, then painted with a couple coats of Tamiya Clear Red acrylic model paint. One more coat should really make it look nice and red!
I won't be doing a light under the orange hat light on the thrower barrel. I will for sure glue in the orange hat-light stand-in that i found, though.

[Morfeusoneiros]

Nice!

[likesjellydonuts]

Forget the fact that this was a "rush" build, this is one of the nicest SC packs I've seen.

[Necronaut]

So, I used this as a costume last year with no change.

This year, I committed to installing proper light and sound. While some of you might cringe... (see this 7 page thread) http://www.gbfans.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34409
I chose the HeavyProps light and sound kit.







And I got it to work! Even with the 'idle' hum! (mostly; the particle stream button starts the sound effect, but a second tap on the button is required to activate the particle stream lights effects, AND it only de-activates when any other switch/effect is thrown/activated).

My results video is here (1 min long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK4TbNMCbVA

[Turbosnork]

Nice work on the pack, it looks and sounds great! I'm in the process of making my first pack, and I too went for the HeavyProps kit. Got it working on the first go with absolutely no issues, so I'm definitely not seeing what the fuss is all about - maybe I just got lucky I am modding it slightly by adding a separate on/off switch for the back lights, so that I can have them running continously and only power up the wand itself when I want to - just because I can't get enough of that charging sound

Also, if the firing sound doesn't stop when you depress the button you may want to have a look at the wiring on the sound board. I've had the same thing happen to me a couple of times while testing the boards, and it turned out one of the wires had come out. I believe it's the green wire from the wand board sound cable that controls the "turn off" sound