[djsparky]

I was curious if anyone tackled trying to spin the inner cyclotron like in Frozen Empire. I thought it would be cool to have it spinning with the cover off. Maybe even repurposing the rumble motor. Before I dig into it, just seeing if anyone else has done it yet.

[egon901]

Funny you should want to do this, because the pack you're referring to is a Hasbro pack. Adam Savage did a series of vids on set and in the prop dept. of Frozen Empire and that little tidbit came up. That vid is on the Tested channel on Youtube.

[prodestrian]

The video in question:


Lots of reference photos here too: https://www.theghostbustersreferencelib ... -pyro-pack
This includes screenshots from the above video which give clear shots of the electronics, so you don't need to keep pausing.

Note that the motor is actually located outside of the pack but you might be able to fit it inside if you go with a smaller motor.

[RuthBailey]

Proton Pack wiring can get messy, especially if you're adding custom features. Double-checking diagrams and using heat shrink tubing helps avoid shorts. What kind of modifications are you planning?

[Nomake Wan]

It has in fact been done already on a Haslab pack:



Used a GPStar kit for the electronics, but the motor mechanism was all custom. I'm not the one with the pack nor the one who took the video, but I was involved with the code update to support this setup.

[One time]

I know the Phoebe brass supernatural pack had a spinning cyclotron in FE.

But I need to say that real cyclotrons (and in my headcanon the original GB1, GB2 and AF packs) do not feature a mechanically spinning cyclotron. The particles spin inside the cyclotron at close to the speed of light. Nothing on the machine itself spins mechanically.

The FE Phoebe brass pack features it and why not. It is a supernatural device.

But real cyclotrons (and I assume the normal packs) do not have mechanical spinning parts, as the particles are accelerated to high percentages of the speed of light.

It's one of those things that (in my opinion) were far fetched in FE. But then again it was a supernaturally boosted pack by Phoebe (using brass).

In any case, in the overall GB franchise the spinning red lights do not represent anything mechanical spinning underneath (if we consider the GB science to be believable). I'd always considered the red lights to be indicator lights of the 4 magnetic cylotron poles to be working as intended.

This is compliant to the scene that shows that the 4 led indicator lights are covered by the CRT emitter screens and are not line of sight to the circular cyclotron underneath.

I mean just logically, it's a particle accelerator, the particles are accelerated to close to the speed of light. No mechanical device would be able to spin that fast (like a quadrillion rpm), and it doesn't need to in the construction which uses magnetic poles to spin whatever is flowing through it, rather than spinning itself.

It looks pretty cool though.

[Nomake Wan]

While I agree with you conceptually, that isn't what this thread is about. It was simply asking if anyone had replicated the on-screen behavior of the "brass pack" using a Haslab pack. It wasn't really intended to nitpick the supernatural physics of such a device.

If you sincerely want to nitpick about cyclotron functionality then you would still be incorrect regarding the red lights. A real cyclotron has 2 poles, not 4. That being said, you could far more accurately decide that the "CRT Emitters" were intended to show a beam path, though this only makes sense for the Afterlife/Frozen Empire on-screen behavior (since the light pattern in GB1/GB2/TVG is far too slow to represent a particle beam path through a cyclotron).

In any case, the theory stuff might be best left for other discussion threads, such as the Frozen Empire thread or a thread about in-canon tech theorycrafting rather than threads about replicating props visually.

[One time]

You're right. I'm sorry about that.

I searched around for you to find a spinning cake build but found nothing.

The closest are people who have build the rotating arm inside the cover to mimic the Afterlife Ben Eadie construction (on Spenglers 1984 Workbench Facebook group).

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4606275 ... q=spinning

If I come across one I'll post it here.