- September 4th, 2020, 10:15 am#4938920
"Yet another trap build?!" I hear you cry. Well, yes, yes it is. There will be photos, lots of them.
Since there doesn't appear to be any build threads for Ben's kits I thought I'd do one myself. After reading some of the amazing build threads on here (shout out to bromie, damster117, Filandrius, noslliT, barison82, mburkit and a few others) I was inspired to take Ben's kit a step further, and upgrade a lot of parts where possible. It's not modelled on any one trap, more a general homage to the GB1 traps.
Trap Parts list
Trap & cartridge - Benofkent
Aluminium trap side plates, bargraph plate, cartridge front plate, battery box cover, cartridge base, rails, side rods and handle - Click Metal
Trap Vector plate - Charlesworth Dynamics
Raytheon pointer knob and skirt - eBay (I Frankensteined an MS91528-1P2B pointer knob together with the skirt from an MS91528-1F2B round knob)
Heathkit knob - user gbmichael
CAL-R MC250 resistor - eBay (maybe someone on here, seller asked me if they were for GB props rather than "proper" usage)
Cartridge rectangular side vents - Wickes
Cartridge round side vent - eBay
Front knob KN500A - RS Components
Front knob KU4025B - user gbmichael
Front slider knobs - RS Components (not 100% happy with the side of these, but couldn't find anything closer to the dimensions I wanted)
Male Foster 22-2 Connector - Radwell
M3 x 6mm countersunk socket screws - Westfield Fasteners (for side vents, cartridge base and side of trap body)
M3 x 8mm countersunk slotted screws - Westfield Fasteners (for track rails)
1/8" and 1/4" potentiometers - Farnell
Imperial socket cap and button cap screws - Modelfixings.co.uk
Flat toggle switch - Farnell ( think I might replace this with the correct Alcoswitch, as it'll cost about the same as getting a finishing nut anyway)
D-sub male / female - Farnell
On to the build!
There was some of the usual clean up, priming, sanding, priming, sanding of any 3D kit. You know the drill, I won't bore you with that.
Out of the box Ben's trap has a removeable cartridge, happy days. But, I wanted to do a rail system, and add side vents. Adding rails would cause the cartridge to sit too high in the trap body, and look a bit weird. The cartridge is also quite a snug fit in terms of width, so adding vents was a no-go. So I did what any sensible person would do and took a razor saw to the cartridge to reduce the height by about 5mm, and the width by 3mm.
Glued the two halves back together, and whacked on some P38 body filler to fill the gaps where my cut wasn't quite parallel.
After sanding back the filler
The front of the cartridge also sat flush with the edge of the main trap body, with the door mounting lugs being flush to the back end of the cart, which didn't look quite right to me (maybe it's accurate to GB2? I dunno), so I glued some 4mm styrene sheet onto the back of the cart to lengthen it a bit. This will also give me the added bonus of being able to add the welds onto the door lugs. Should also mention I wanted to include a d-sub, so I chopped out some of the back of the 3D print to mount it through.
Before clean up. The top nearside corner got cut slightly wonky, so I had to build that back up with filler later on.
Lots of careful marking up for the d-sub and I chain drilled out the hole for it.
About an hour of careful filing, testing, filing, more filing, even more filing and I had a pretty snug fit for the d-sub! Hurrah.
Quick test fit of the doors. I replaced the M3 bolts in Ben's kit with #6 hex head bolts from modelfixings.co.uk too. As I'd narrowed the trap body there was some sanding of the doors to get them to fit nicely, they had quite a noticeable gap previously, so I need to consult some reference photos and possibly make them a little narrower still.
As I mentioned before, I want vents on the cartridge body, so following damster117's lead I got some soffit strip from Wickes and cut them down to size, filled the unwanted gaps with more body filler, countersunk some holes in the corners and had some nice side vents. I didn't have quite enough space in the trap body to do a double layer like damster did, so they're glued to 0.5mm styrene sheet to make them a bit thicker. Looking at one of the reference photos it does look like the vent cut outs might not be quite the depth of the whole vent anyway, although that might be a trick of the light in the photo? The eagle eyed among you might notice they don't have the right number of vent slots, because I made the cartridge height shorter they came right up to the very edge if they did, so I reduced them by one. +100 geek points if anyone ever calls me out for it! For reference, they're all mounted with M3 countersink screws, and I've got the circular one on the way from eBay as a 33mm diameter / 1.5mm thickness aluminium disc for something like £1.50.
Where possible I wanted to use aluminium too, as painting 3D prints to look like real metal sucks, and the real deal will gradually weather nicely if it's painted. I was a bit nervy about getting a large sheet of 2mm aluminium and being able to cut it accurately/straight enough, so I got all the aluminium parts cut to custom sizes from Click Metal, and despite them stating they have a +/-2mm tolerance the parts I got were pretty much spot on!
Added the front plate, again with #6 screws from modelfixings.co.uk. It's very slightly too narrow, so I may yet replace it if it keeps bugging me. Still need to drill mounting holes for the front knobs too, and planning on mounting them on potentiometers so they turn.
Then added the bargraph plate, with more #6 screws. The bottom two were slightly off where they should be, but I think I can probably live with it for now.
Some drilling and much filing later, I had a pretty perfect fit for one of Spongeface's beautiful bargraph bezels! Still need to drill a hole for the LED to the right of the bargraph, but until I know what size I'll be using I'm going leave that.
Now I'm waiting on a new smaller countersink drill bit to arrive tomorrow so I can drill the aluminium base plate and mount it with countersunk screws. Having a removeable base plate also means when I work out the way forward on electronics I can easily get in to add them in. Then I need to decide on where the front knobs will go, and get the mounting holes for those drilled out too, after which I can think about paint!
Since there doesn't appear to be any build threads for Ben's kits I thought I'd do one myself. After reading some of the amazing build threads on here (shout out to bromie, damster117, Filandrius, noslliT, barison82, mburkit and a few others) I was inspired to take Ben's kit a step further, and upgrade a lot of parts where possible. It's not modelled on any one trap, more a general homage to the GB1 traps.
Trap Parts list
Trap & cartridge - Benofkent
Aluminium trap side plates, bargraph plate, cartridge front plate, battery box cover, cartridge base, rails, side rods and handle - Click Metal
Trap Vector plate - Charlesworth Dynamics
Raytheon pointer knob and skirt - eBay (I Frankensteined an MS91528-1P2B pointer knob together with the skirt from an MS91528-1F2B round knob)
Heathkit knob - user gbmichael
CAL-R MC250 resistor - eBay (maybe someone on here, seller asked me if they were for GB props rather than "proper" usage)
Cartridge rectangular side vents - Wickes
Cartridge round side vent - eBay
Front knob KN500A - RS Components
Front knob KU4025B - user gbmichael
Front slider knobs - RS Components (not 100% happy with the side of these, but couldn't find anything closer to the dimensions I wanted)
Male Foster 22-2 Connector - Radwell
M3 x 6mm countersunk socket screws - Westfield Fasteners (for side vents, cartridge base and side of trap body)
M3 x 8mm countersunk slotted screws - Westfield Fasteners (for track rails)
1/8" and 1/4" potentiometers - Farnell
Imperial socket cap and button cap screws - Modelfixings.co.uk
Flat toggle switch - Farnell ( think I might replace this with the correct Alcoswitch, as it'll cost about the same as getting a finishing nut anyway)
D-sub male / female - Farnell
On to the build!
There was some of the usual clean up, priming, sanding, priming, sanding of any 3D kit. You know the drill, I won't bore you with that.
Out of the box Ben's trap has a removeable cartridge, happy days. But, I wanted to do a rail system, and add side vents. Adding rails would cause the cartridge to sit too high in the trap body, and look a bit weird. The cartridge is also quite a snug fit in terms of width, so adding vents was a no-go. So I did what any sensible person would do and took a razor saw to the cartridge to reduce the height by about 5mm, and the width by 3mm.
Glued the two halves back together, and whacked on some P38 body filler to fill the gaps where my cut wasn't quite parallel.
After sanding back the filler
The front of the cartridge also sat flush with the edge of the main trap body, with the door mounting lugs being flush to the back end of the cart, which didn't look quite right to me (maybe it's accurate to GB2? I dunno), so I glued some 4mm styrene sheet onto the back of the cart to lengthen it a bit. This will also give me the added bonus of being able to add the welds onto the door lugs. Should also mention I wanted to include a d-sub, so I chopped out some of the back of the 3D print to mount it through.
Before clean up. The top nearside corner got cut slightly wonky, so I had to build that back up with filler later on.
Lots of careful marking up for the d-sub and I chain drilled out the hole for it.
About an hour of careful filing, testing, filing, more filing, even more filing and I had a pretty snug fit for the d-sub! Hurrah.
Quick test fit of the doors. I replaced the M3 bolts in Ben's kit with #6 hex head bolts from modelfixings.co.uk too. As I'd narrowed the trap body there was some sanding of the doors to get them to fit nicely, they had quite a noticeable gap previously, so I need to consult some reference photos and possibly make them a little narrower still.
As I mentioned before, I want vents on the cartridge body, so following damster117's lead I got some soffit strip from Wickes and cut them down to size, filled the unwanted gaps with more body filler, countersunk some holes in the corners and had some nice side vents. I didn't have quite enough space in the trap body to do a double layer like damster did, so they're glued to 0.5mm styrene sheet to make them a bit thicker. Looking at one of the reference photos it does look like the vent cut outs might not be quite the depth of the whole vent anyway, although that might be a trick of the light in the photo? The eagle eyed among you might notice they don't have the right number of vent slots, because I made the cartridge height shorter they came right up to the very edge if they did, so I reduced them by one. +100 geek points if anyone ever calls me out for it! For reference, they're all mounted with M3 countersink screws, and I've got the circular one on the way from eBay as a 33mm diameter / 1.5mm thickness aluminium disc for something like £1.50.
Where possible I wanted to use aluminium too, as painting 3D prints to look like real metal sucks, and the real deal will gradually weather nicely if it's painted. I was a bit nervy about getting a large sheet of 2mm aluminium and being able to cut it accurately/straight enough, so I got all the aluminium parts cut to custom sizes from Click Metal, and despite them stating they have a +/-2mm tolerance the parts I got were pretty much spot on!
Added the front plate, again with #6 screws from modelfixings.co.uk. It's very slightly too narrow, so I may yet replace it if it keeps bugging me. Still need to drill mounting holes for the front knobs too, and planning on mounting them on potentiometers so they turn.
Then added the bargraph plate, with more #6 screws. The bottom two were slightly off where they should be, but I think I can probably live with it for now.
Some drilling and much filing later, I had a pretty perfect fit for one of Spongeface's beautiful bargraph bezels! Still need to drill a hole for the LED to the right of the bargraph, but until I know what size I'll be using I'm going leave that.
Now I'm waiting on a new smaller countersink drill bit to arrive tomorrow so I can drill the aluminium base plate and mount it with countersunk screws. Having a removeable base plate also means when I work out the way forward on electronics I can easily get in to add them in. Then I need to decide on where the front knobs will go, and get the mounting holes for those drilled out too, after which I can think about paint!