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By julz
#4912671
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Hello All!

Last year a friend of mine invited me to an inspired gathering called Frankenstein. An excuse for friends to get together and drink beer. The rules of were simple, you could only attend if you had made your own stein and your stein was the only thing you were allowed to drink out of that evening, and it had to have a handle. There were prizes for lots of different categories including most creative, most accurate liquid volume and most handsome :walterpeck:

Here are a few of my favorites from the event!

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This one was made from an old school desk complete with graffiti and table leg for the handle
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Given the amount of ghostbuster props I've built over the years and the amount of spare parts I had coupled with the approaching date of Dragon con, my choice for a design or theme was kind of made for me :cool:

So I started out sketching a rough outline of what wanted to make. I knew from an early stage that I was going to build my creation around a glass, because A) I didn't want to poison myself and B) I could use the glass itself very much like a thrower wand and light it up.

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Once I had a roughish idea I moved into maya and made a quick mockup surrounding a 3d version of the real glass I was using. I knew I was going to use materials like plumbing/builders down pipe to surround the glass, using maya was a great way of figuring out where I might fit things. You can kind of see the design I came up with in maya carried through to the final product.

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I ended up designing to the restrictions I was working with...
- It had to fit around my glass and I wanted to be able to take the glass out to clean it.
- It had to have areas where the circuit boards would be kept and out of possible danger from contact with alcohol.
- It totally had to somehow fit a venting kit from the Magical Fincher Tech wizards.
- It had to have a handle with buttons where you could comfortably reach whilst consuming alcohol.
- It had to be light enough to hold... this actually ended up being my most brutal restriction.
- It had to fit a speaker and a crap load of wires :sigh::walterpeck:

So then I set to task collecting various sizes of downpipe and lots of random crap I was thinking might make the thing look more techy and futuristic... The idea of adding a kitchen timer of some sort was there from the beginning... you know... drinking challenges.

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One of the glasses I brought to test on had a tea infuser and I thought it looked cool with light shining through it... The idea stayed with me as I developed the stein and when I went with a different glass I decided to use the tea strainer as a portal view into the glass inside :)

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Testing out how the venting kit might sit below the glass... I was basically sticking a fincher nfilter on the bottom
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And figuring out how the hell the ecig kit was going to fit in the design. :blush:

At this point I contacted Fincher Technologies and enlisted their aid, I explained my Idea and either Charles or James started figuring out how to make their design work for a mug and started mocking things up.
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Once I received their wonderful creation in the mail I started my build, As my design ended up being larger than the nfilter kit they designed I had to figure out how to replicate what they did and then transfer the fan and electronics over to my version. No easy task as what they created was very ingenious ... I just needed it to be bigger!

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Originally I started off with the idea of having the batteries on my belt and having the power cable connecting it like a thrower... very glad my friend talked me out of that so I ended up fitting the batteries to the bottom section of the mug.
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You can see where the tea strainer found its final resting place! I knew the mug wasn't going to be the lightest thing in the world so I needed the handle to be strong enough to support the weight. I bent an aluminum bar and riveted it to bands of aluminum wrapped around the top and bottom of the down pipe. Then I bulked out the space with wood and epoxied it into place so the whole things never coming off!

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Then I finished the rough design and added the kitchen timer. I wanted the end of the mug to look like an after burner so I hand cut lots of little pieces of styrene and clued them in place making sure to leave an area clear so you could drink with out impaling yourself :cool:

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Here you can see the reconstruction of Finchers kit, I followed the same setup they created for connecting the 2 halves together and allowing the cables to thread through.

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Added the speaker and made a bottom plate with speaker holes - I hate driller speaker holes.

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Then I moved on to fitting the electronics inside the styrene boxes id made.

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The ecig and main electronic board boxes were the biggest pain in the ass to figure out... Not much room for anything else apart from air. Also had to make room to fit the relay that triggers the ecig kit :walterpeck:


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All wrapped up!
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I built a side panel out from the top of the handle where I could put my switches for firing the mug
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I made a custom switch that would split the battery to the main circuit board and the ecig kFit.
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Then I installed all the leds and and added a few ghostbuster hatlight covers for good measure. I mounted the barrel led on a piece of transparent acrylic which would also act as a barrier for any moisture getting down to the fan below.
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ready for install...
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Ok obviously I skipped the part where I painted the thing but I was rushed for time... Finally it was ready to attempt to install everything and figure out if I could indeed squish all my wires inside :wrongforum::walterpeck:
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Buuuuuut it worked and what do ya know... here's one I prepared earlier...
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And a test drive!
https://youtu.be/f9j_B9cMK4o

I took it to the beer stein even and it was a huge success :cool:
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In August I flew over to the States to see my friends at Dragon con and took it with me. It seemed to be a huge hit, people I didn't even know seemed to be quite taken with it... a costume prop that you can drink from! - what will they think of next?
When I left I was honored with an award from the PKE Surge - Spengler and Stantz best gear award. I'm still humbled by it and it sits in a place with Honor next to my Proton pack! Big thanks to the PKE SURGE crew for organizing all of that!

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As amazing as the award was to get, it had nothing on all the amazing new friends (old and new) I met at Dragon Con 2018 . Seriously Creative, talented, lovely funny bunch of friends a Kiwi could ask for. You know who you all are! <3

And finally footage of the thing in action at Dragon con
https://youtu.be/opA2y1dL3lo

CHEERS!
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Sir Julzy - The White Knight
Last edited by julz on January 27th, 2019, 6:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
twmedford23, Theoderic, Christof and 5 others liked this
#4912700
Three words: OH - MY - GOSCH...!

This is SO insanely brilliant; i can hardly find words for it :shock: I'm somewhat stunned beyond the ability of rational thinking i guess :wink:

I totally LOVE IT; it's imho extremely well designed and carries the spirit of the classic ghostbusting-gear in an "on-the-spot manner". Stephen would be proud i guess - congratz on this dude!
#4912765
Ok - i feel tempted to call this "The holy-moly Proton Grail" :mrgreen:

I'd really love to see some more photos of it from different angles, for all those who weren't able to see it irl - e.g. like in the very first action-shot, where some of the outer wiring and the locking-dial knob can be seen.

Well, could/would you?
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By julz
#4912770
Thanks everyone :)

Yeah sure I can add more photos... I'll add some later after work
User avatar
By julz
#4912803
Here you go Theoderic

Without the tea strainer in place you can see the glass inside
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When you fire the mug you can see light through the portal and if it's full you can see illuminated beer bubbles rising up.

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You can see how the circuit board boxes rest up against the glass inside the boards are kept well away from the glass itself
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The larger dial is the Volume switch.
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The little danger panel allowed me to feed in the audio wires to the main switchboard.
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Little hole near the Ethernet cable to allow access to the sd card.
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#4912928
julz wrote: January 23rd, 2019, 1:30 am Here you go Theoderic

Without the tea strainer in place you can see the glass inside

When you fire the mug you can see light through the portal and if it's full you can see illuminated beer bubbles rising up.

You can see how the circuit board boxes rest up against the glass inside the boards are kept well away from the glass itself

The larger dial is the Volume switch.
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The little danger panel allowed me to feed in the audio wires to the main switchboard.

Little hole near the Ethernet cable to allow access to the sd card.

This is just pure awesomeness, thanks a lot! :shock:

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