This is for other Ghostbusters Props that don't fit into the categories above.
#4792204
My group Southland Ghostbusters have been invited to have a fan table at an upcoming convention later in the year. This will be a first time for us and we would like to get started off on the right foot. We have a few ideas in mind for our booth, but one that we're absolutely committed to is building a 1:1 working containment unit w/ custom sounds. The goal is to get the prop as close to screen accurate as we possibly can. However, we also have a deadline to make as our event is in September. Regardless, we're going to have to get something together by then and hopefully working. Sadly, it seems inevitable that corners are going to have to be cut in order to meet our deadline. We want to find all of the right parts, but that's probably not going to happen in just 4 months. The unit may not be close to accurate by then but our build will continue beyond that much like a proton pack.

First, here is a small gallery of containment unit screenshots I took from the 4k blu-ray. Just to show you guys what we're working with. Some of the parts are a little easier to see, but still offer challenges in figuring out what they are.
http://imgur.com/a/mULe5/embed

We know what the tubing is and the brackets that go next to the ribbon cable. The tube brackets that we can't i.d. are the ones to the right of the rectangular relay push buttons. The ends are at a very fierce 90 degree angle and are giving us a very hard time locating something similar. They almost look like the end of a tire pressure gauge with a threaded coupling around it attached to a screwable cable clamp. Well, the parts search continues...

One thing that we have been able to do is ID the microamperes meter. It's made by Midland and is model #23-208. The same manufacturer as the CB radio located in the Ecto-1. However, the part seems to be very rare and we cannot locate one or find a device it was commonly used in. So, we've taken an alternate route. We purchased a similar model and are photoshopping the correct design into it.

Here is what we purchased:
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It's the same size and shape as the 23-208. Here is what we created that will go into the meter.
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Not completely exact but it's pretty close?

While we were watching the containment unit scenes, we noticed that when the containment door opens, the brackets holding the door in place weren't hydraulic closers (like what you see on the trunks of cars). The metal rods are actually part of a guide rail setup. We took a step back and wondered if the frame of the containment unit was a found part where prop makers just added the electrical components to? We asked ourselves, "What does the containment unit look like?" Well, we came to realize that it might be an industrial size laundry chute possibly used in prisons or hospitals. Doing a Google image search yields some possible clues but nothing perfectly matching. What do you guys think? It would be cool to find if it actually was and we found one! However, we will be doing ours out of wood to start.

As far as the custom sounds go for the unit, here's a sample of what i've been working on so far.

https://soundcloud.com/ojf/southland-gh ... re/s-mmIKJ

Tomorrow will be our first build day, but it won't be anything exciting. Purchasing some of the wood materials and measuring everything out. We will update this build thread regularly and there will be pictures to follow in the upcoming days.
o0Ecto1A0o, barison82, bluejoker and 2 others liked this
#4792438
Our first build day was a successful one! There were a few hiccups, but we we're able to complete what we had set out to accomplish. Let's recap our Cinco De Mayo, shall we?

First, we took a trip to Home Depot to look for the wood we were going to need. Our plans were to have the wood successfully cut to size of the frame and to have it assembled. We wanted a depth of the containment unit frame to be 6", but the wood they had labeled as such was in fact shorter at 5 1/2". We came to the conclusion that all brick and mortar hardware stores are all out to get you. The wood is either way too small for a "home" project or way too big. It's either clever marketing to screw the consumer out of more money or its simply all a conspiracy. Haha! Anyways... We ended up purchasing larger pieces of wood which we had to cut to size.

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We began by cutting the boards to the lengths that we needed. We also had to take off the excess from the sides using my table saw. About three fourths of the way through, I noticed that the saw was making an odd noise and got worried. We cut through two more pieces of wood before it started to smoke. Upon further inspection we noticed that this had happened:

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Whoa! That could've ended badly. Thankfully we caught this before it could've got worse. I'm guessing the housing must have broke halfway through us using it because we did inspect the saw before use. Despite this hiccup we still wanted to continue with our build. I called up my neighbor who then let us use his table saw.

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We were able to get our cutting done which enabled us to start assembling the frame and spacing the support beams.

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The spacing of the beams is slightly different from each other. There's more room at the bottom of the door then there is from the top. The plans we're using are a little off so we had to make our own changes to them.

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Once we were satisfied with the spacing of the support beams, it was time to tack it together.

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We seemed to have found a few more discrepancies with the plans and we had to play around with some measurements.

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After making sure that the inner box beams were straight and where we wanted them, we tacked those up as well.

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Now that the basic frame was built, it was time to strengthen everything up. We pulled out the drill and added screws and brackets to it. We still need to add some more support to the frame, which we held off for the next day.

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Now, that we had the basic frame out of the way, we decided to move onto the next part of our plan which was to cut out the angled bottom pieces.

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Yes, we know that this type of saw is not the ideal tool to use for that job. The blade on our jigsaw was screwy and the hardware stores were closed at this point in the build. Basically we improvised and the results were decent. We just need to do some sanding to the pieces.

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...and some more sanding...

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...then a lot more hand sanding...

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...and we finally got the pieces to the shape we wanted them in. Now we had to figure out the spacing as the plans were way off. Something like 14" which was way too big. We ended up going with 11" for the width of the piece (Yeah, I know that the placement in this picture is crooked. It was just a quick pic taken to show our progress).

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Now we needed to add the supports for the frame and to accommodate for the bolts we're going to need to add to it. We busted out this saw again to cut the excess wood we had earlier into 9 1/2" pieces.

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We strayed from the plans and did things differently. We cut out the ten pieces we needed and began figuring out our own spacing for them.

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Comfortable with where things were rested, it was time to tack it all together.

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Once everything was spaced, flush and tacked to where we wanted it, we then did some drilling and adding more screws to solidify and strengthen it.

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We were where we wanted to be and we reached our goal. Here's an upside down picture of what we ended up with (Yeah, it's still crooked. So what. Big deal! Want to fight about it? It's not attached yet...).

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The frame was very light which is what we were going for. Here's Onlyalad19 holding it up, which gave us a better idea of scale.

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Now, that we successfully reached our build goal for the day, it was time to celebrate! It's Miller time!

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Well, maybe not Miller time, but since it was Cinco De Mayo it was close enough.

Stay thirsty, my friends! (More to come...)
o0Ecto1A0o, Dougger, barison82 and 1 others liked this
#4792478
I love it, but I just got a crazy idea.
Have a certificate next to it saying it has been inspected and up to code by "Nuclear Regulatory Commission" or something similar. Also keep a copy of all the paperwork from the EPA.
#4792483
You don't mention wood glue. If your looking to attach the wood together, use wood glue and tack it. It is very strong. Maybe you already are, but if not, I wouldn't overlook it.

I'm anxious to watch this progress. You keep mentioning plans. I've never looked online, are they plans floating around somewhere?
#4792634
PssdffJay wrote:You don't mention wood glue. If your looking to attach the wood together, use wood glue and tack it. It is very strong. Maybe you already are, but if not, I wouldn't overlook it.

I'm anxious to watch this progress. You keep mentioning plans. I've never looked online, are they plans floating around somewhere?
The plans are posted here http://www.gbfans.com/community/viewtop ... =7&t=29269. Keep in mind that since the real ECU has never been available to measure, the plans are not 100% accurate, however mikenelson1982 has done a pretty good job with them. Once we have this thing finished we will be posting some of the updated measurements that we have come up with based on our own research... so stay tuned.
o0Ecto1A0o, 910dohead, SPJ liked this
#4792702
An update is soon on its way. There are close to about 60 pictures that i've got to go through and slim down. I thought I was going to have the time to do it this afternoon. Unfortunately, i've got to head out the door for band practice, so I won't be able to get it posted until either later tonight or tomorrow morning. The build is looking great so far and I can't wait to share our progress with you guys.
o0Ecto1A0o liked this
#4792773
Big update! Brace yourselves...

Build day 2 was full of many problems, but we got a lot done. First, we wanted to add some more support to the frame and then sand down any imperfections.

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Next we needed to measure out the backboard and prep it for cutting.

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This is where we ran into our first problem. My circular saw was last used to cut concrete and wasn't cleaned off. Plus, the blade on there wasn't meant for cutting plywood. While changing out the blade we discovered that the blade we had was too dull to use.

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Our backup saw was also not working.

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Frustrating? Ab-SAW-lutely!

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We took a quick trip to the store and bought a new blade. Went to Home Depot and they had a terrible selection. They seriously didn't carry any of the name brand replacements for the brand saws they carried. It was stupid. Seriously, F that place. Plus, they only had two different sized blades and my old blade was in-between them. The closest next stop was Wal-Mart, which they only had the two sizes as well. We went with the larger size because the small just looked undersized to us. We bought a two pack and got out of there. Came back and discovered that the blade was too damn big. HAHA! However, it fit in Onlyalad19's circular saw, so we were now back in business!

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Got the backboard cut out and put the frame on it to look at our progress.

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After test fitting everything, a deep hatred for it started to grow in us. Something wasn't looking the way it should. It was a sense of it looking only good and far from it looking spectacular. Ignoring the voices in our heads, we decided to press on. We wanted to cut the front cover board for the angled bottom. Once it was cut, we were having some trouble getting it to bend to the frame. We figured that water was our solution to loosen things up.

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This is when disaster struck! Dampening the wood led to the discovery that it had a thin veneer on each side. Which made the so-called wood bubble up, making our frustrations and anger bubble up as well. There was no way we were going to use this stuff. At this point, it was time to quit for the day and come back to it fresh the next day. This was how we left things that night.

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We didn't work on anything the next day. Remember those voices we ignored? Well, they got louder and convinced us that we needed to revise our work. We came to the conclusion that the scale of the bottom angled piece was wrong and that we needed to redo all of the previous days work. That meant buying more wood and a new backboard piece. Comparing the plans to what is seen on screen made us go back and revise scale. We found a good reference of scale and made our corrections based on that. We picked up the new wood and had plans to work the next day.

Build day 3 wasn't very productive. We got a late start and we were short on time to work, but we got the new angled piece cut out and assembled.

Comparing scale and fine tuning...

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Satisfied, we pieced it altogether and compared the two.

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Yesterday was build day 4. We got a lot done!

Basically we had to redo everything we did in build day 2. While, we were taking two steps back, we planned on taking three steps forward. We bought a better piece of wood this time. It was either between plywood or MDF. We chose the plywood only because it was much lighter than MDF. Remember, we have to transport this sucker to a convention and back. Anyways, we started with measuring out the cuts we needed to make to the backboard and began our cuts.

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Once the backboard was all cut, we sanded the edges and began to prep the edges to round them out.

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Cut. Rounded. Sanded.

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Added a little easter egg, which was going to be covered up after we mounted the bottom frame.

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Here is ZuulTheGatekeeper with the right wood for the front of the angled frame.

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Measure twice, cut once.

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Before we mounted and tacked on this piece, we needed to cut out the little handle in it and sand it.

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Luckily, one of the support beams acts as the latch to the handle. We noticed this tiny detail from the scene in the movie just after the containment unit is shutdown and smoke begins to burst from the bricks in the wall. It's also the only time in the movie where you see the bottom half of the containment unit.

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The build day was coming to an end, but before it did we tacked the front to the frame.

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Here it is looking all pretty.

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Build day 5 wont take place today since Southland Ghostbusters have an event to go to tonight. In fact, i've got to get suited up... Anyways, we need to add some more screws to the front of the angled bottom. Need to make sure it sits flat against the frame. Then we're going to cut out the piece for the front of the upper frame. We're also going cut out some access holes in the backboard to get to the electronics. This will also take some weight off of the backboard. We look forward to the next build day as well as the next update. Until then, i'll leave you guys with this.

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#4793131
I wonder how many people here actually know what Oingo Boingo is... I could be wrong and everybody knows... =P
#4793630
Glad you guys like Oingo Boingo. One of our favorite bands! Southern California's favorite party band since 1979!

Anyways, time for an update...

Build Day Five:

First we wanted to get the face of the frame cut out and sanded down, which is what we did.

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While we were sanding, we had a malfunction happen. The nails we used to tack down the front of the bottom half gave. So, we needed to reinforce it with glue and screws. We also began to bondo over the holes.

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We put on the second coat of bondo and began figuring out the placement of the instrument panel plates.

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That's about how far we got with the build for this day.

Build Day Six:

We spent this first half getting placement of the panels right and then moved on to getting the door cut out.

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Then we moved onto the side piece, which we needed to cut out and sand.

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At this point we hit a speed bump. While messing with the scale of the door, we realized we made the inner door opening too small. Therefore, we needed to remove the support beams and reattach them farther away from each other. That also required us to make the frame cover more wide.

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Then we started to use this wood filler/sealer that was really terrible to use. It was supposed to dry 24-48 hours, which to this day hasn't. We immediately stopped using this crap.

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At this point parts had started to arrive!

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Used the rest of the time we had left to play around with the placement of some of the parts to the panel pieces.

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Build Day Seven:

Oh, boy! The night before this build day took place, I discovered a few more details about the containment unit that I wish I hadn't. Particularly in this picture:

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Take a look at the bottom handle... errr, I mean sticker! Damn, it's a stupid sticker!

Day 7 had us fabricating a new bottom piece and sanding down the frame. Pretty boring, really.

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Let's make things a little different and exciting! While those tasks were being done, I started cutting into the main instrument panel and fitting one of the parts.

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Remember the first post where I created a file in photoshop? Well, it turned out great!

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Pretty!

Build Day Eight:

This leads us up to today, which we only had an hour to work. Figured out the placement of the bottom frame bolts then got the frame assembled and screwed together.

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Third times a charm, right? Tomorrow's build will get us back to where we should be without the setbacks. Scale is really no longer an issue anymore. We have a few more tweaks to make, but we wont dwell on them in the thread. We'll have to revisit scale when we get to the inner working of the trap housing. Anyways, more parts have arrived but you won't be seeing any of that until later. We're at a point now to where there shouldn't be anymore surprises (hopefully).

I'll try and make the updates happen more frequently and I will update tomorrow with our progress.

Stay tuned.
o0Ecto1A0o, barison82 liked this
#4793845
syckotheklown wrote:Looks awesome and damnit you leave us with the same thing as last time ahhhh lol
I know... Sorry about that. I wish we were further in the build, but it seems we keep finding something we can reference scale from which results in us having to take a step back and revise. Don't worry though, this build will start getting good real soon. We just need to get all of the boring stuff, like sanding, out of the way first before we get to the meat of the pie.
#4793850
It hasnt been dull at all sir. Very exciting watching this come together. Iv thought about doing a small scale version for my kids room. But sourcing some of the parts would be difficult. Mostley the containment handle. But never the less, awesome progress
#4793956
Build Day Nine:

We did a good amount of work that day, but I forgot to take more photos than just the three. Therefore, i'll make this day short and just go over what is in the pictures. Anyways, the day was mostly filled with more sanding and adding bondo to the right angled piece.

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While that was put aside to cure, we measured out a new piece for the instrument panel. The meter was higher then it was supposed to be in the previous attempt, plus I wasn't too thrilled with the cut I made. Once we figured out where everything went, we put it aside.

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We spent a good amount of time cutting out the smaller wooden pieces that attach to the frame and trying to get scale worked out. At the end of the day I realized that I really hadn't taken many pictures, so I snapped this to show what progress we made.

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Build Day Ten:

We got a lot of work done today! First we wanted to revisit the angled right piece now that the bondo was dry. What did we end up doing? Sanding...

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Once that was sanded we simply moved onto the next step; mounting the lower frame piece and getting the cover bolted down.

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Finally, a day when things actually go smooth with no problems arising! Got the front bolted perfectly and it sits much more flush then our previous two attempts. Once that was finally done we sanded the sides and took a picture of our progress.

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Then we used bondo to cover up the screws. We are now officially satisfied with the bottom piece. Third time is a charm! No more going back.

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While that was being done, I took the opportunity to re-cut the hole in the instrument panel for the microamperes meter. I was much more satisfied with my cut this time and I think we nailed the placement. Just waiting on one more knob at this point before we move forward on this piece.

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Now that the bottom piece was done, we revisited the small wooden pieces to get the aluminum pieces cut out.

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This piece needed a little TLC and sanding before we got to the aluminum.

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Now here's the aluminum cut out and comparing our reference piece for scale. If you notice the 'ribbon connector' is just some Lego's. This isn't what we're going to use. I put the Lego piece together in the same length as the real part. Since those are on the way, the Lego's were just a stand in for visual scale.

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We then moved on to the top box that connects the ribbon cable with the two electrical cables. Matched up the scale with the wood we cut out but realized it was a quarter of an inch too short. We ended up just using wood glue to attach a small piece to it.

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Getting closer to the end of the day, we began to round out the corners on the main frame. We cut out a 45 degree cut on the ends and then sanded them.

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From there we used wood filler to fill up the holes and imperfections on the sides. We want to make sure that nobody that can tell the containment unit is made from wood.

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Then once everything was dry, we sanded the crap out of that thing. Cleaning up was a bitch.

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More to come, stay tuned...
barison82 liked this
#4794279
Build Day Eleven:

Mostly we've been slowing things down to concentrate on sanding the visible outer parts of the unit. We started with the sides by adding wood filler to any holes and giving it a smooth finish.

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Basically just spackling it on the sides.

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Then just sanding the crap out of it.

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Then moved to the lower portion.

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This piece is just about ready for primer.

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Some more parts arrived today. Here's a little sneak peak just to show how accurate we're going with this build.

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Almost getting to the good stuff...

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o0Ecto1A0o, barison82 liked this
#4795171
Build Day 12:

This update wasn't progress made all in one day, but really just a summary of all the build days since the last update. Not much has changed as far as exciting progress goes. Just a lot more sanding and fine tuning to the frame and backboard. It's taking a lot of time to get the surface to where we want it. Right now, every surface feels like glass with very little imperfections left to correct. We're almost at the priming process! Seriously, we're so over having bondo boogers.

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Right now, we're still looking for the right parts for the door mechanism. We know what the parts are, but the problem we're having is either finding the right size or the right price. We have a few pieces in hand, but that's really what we want to tackle next in the build before we prime.

While I talk of having to prime, we've done just that with the frame block piece.

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We really got this piece to look amazing!

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The piece was ready to be installed onto the frame and that's exactly what we tried to do. I mean, look how great we we're able to get it. Keep in mind, this was a crappy piece of wood.

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Crappy piece of wood is correct. Tragedy struck while we were preparing this piece for mounting. We drilled four holes into the back to add these special wood nuts. They're threaded on both the outside and inside which allow a threaded bolt to go into the wood. Well, these didn't work so great. When we screwed these into the wood, the whole f#@&ng thing split in half. Seriously, there's no better excuse than this to just go wild with anger and to just punch or break something. However, while the urge was great, we were able to contain and suppress our rage. While the piece could've been fixed and salvaged, the scale was slightly off which bothered us. So, we took a deep breath, let out a soft and gentle sigh (because at this point we were defeated) and succumbed to the fact that we needed to make a new one.

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Moving forward, we cut the door handle out of wood. If the handle on the containment unit is real (not fabricated by the prop makers) then it is real elusive. Found a couple close matches but no dead ringers. Until a match can be found, wood will have to do. Here's a picture of comparing scale.

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After it was cut and some wood filler was added, some adjustments were made to get it to look the part.

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Once it looked the part, we hit it with a brown primer to see where we need to make corrections and find tune the piece.

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We also received the right push buttons today! They are missing a small outer piece that will either be a miracle to find or we're going to have to make it out of acrylic. I took the time to practice cutting out the opening needed and mounting one. Turned out pretty good.

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The right ribbon connectors also arrived and luckily the pieces we pre-cut were to scale. These will be painted black and mounted once the part is sanded and mounted.

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Last but not least, we just may have found what the black "knob" on the meter panel is. It looks right and fits the scale. If you look closely you will be able to notice that's the top is also recessed.

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Playing around with the screen shots revealed this detail.

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We also noticed that our red knob is correct but it was too small. A replacement for it will be here shortly and we can get the meter panel squared away. Now that all of the parts for the panels are in hand (minus the red knob) we can get all of that knocked out soon.

Well, that's all that we've got to report for now. Stay tuned...
barison82 liked this
#4795244
pyhasanon wrote:I wonder how many people here actually know what Oingo Boingo is... I could be wrong and everybody knows... =P
I thought everyone knew what Oingo Boingo is. :wink:

Joie de vivre, mon amie
onlyalad19, monolith21 liked this
#4795893
910dohead wrote:
As far as the custom sounds go for the unit, here's a sample of what i've been working on so far.

https://soundcloud.com/ojf/southland-gh ... re/s-mmIKJ
That sounds effin' fantastic! Another one of my favorites is from LOST...
This Post Contains Spoilers
There's something magical about a mysterious and powerful system making failure sounds... I dig it!
910dohead, longpar5 liked this
#4795913
Build Day 13 is another summary of the last few days of work, but most of that work was done yesterday.

The next few things we wanted to tackle was getting the rivets put onto the lower portion of the frame. We drilled out holes for the bolts that we bought.

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Unfortunately, after comparing screen shots we realized the bolts that we bought ended up being too small. Before we could go back out and buy larger bolts, we decided to prep the backboard to mount the top half of the frame.

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After careful measurements were made and holes were drilled, we wanted to prime the backboard to look for any imperfections.

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The imperfections were few or so we thought. We came back to work on it the next day and discovered the wood expanded due to the heat and left a lot of nasty surface cracks. Damnit! I didn't want to take a picture of them, but I did spend the majority of that morning going back over it with some heavy duty crack filler. Then came a lot more sanding, but i'll spare any of that. We moved on to finishing up the replacement right frame piece.

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This piece has also given us trouble. Not only did this piece of wood expand from the heat, but sap also started to come out of the cracks. At this point, we're all frustrated with the build since it seems like it hasn't been going right ever since we started. To add disappointment on top of that, we received the new "red" knob. However, it was just a tad too big.

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Sunday we all took a break and our group made an appearance at the 2014 Long Beach Comic-Con Expo. It was small compared to the normal one they put on, but fun nonetheless. My only gripe is that I missed out on the Tim Burton Batmobile which only appeared on Saturday. At some point we took a break and I snapped this picture.

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Now, back to the garage. We made a visit to the hardware store and came to the conclusion that we didn't want to use real bolts on the bottom frame. We decided to go with wood that we would just glue onto the frame. It would just be easier, lighter and less expensive. We're seriously getting tired of throwing money at this thing, especially after all of the setbacks. We ended up having to fill the holes that we drilled and sand it back down again. Once that was out of the way, we measured carefully to make sure the pieces would line up perfectly.

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At this point I was done with sanding the backboard and Onlyalad19 went over a few spots that I may have missed.

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Next we glued the wooden domes to the bottom frame.

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Then we moved onto the ribbon boxes and had the holes drilled onto those.

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If this picture doesn't show that we're within scale, I don't know what does.

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Now, we're at the end of the day (which was yesterday) and we're making last minute adjustments. Dusting off the backboard because we're getting ready to prime again. Hopefully, the backboard and bottom frame will no longer need any fixes.

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With the exception of a few tiny spots that I missed, we were content with moving forward after this. Seriously, we should have been way past this point by now, so this was a huge relief for all of us. We're very happy with the results this time. We're finally getting closer to the good stuff.

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barison82 liked this
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