User avatar
By Fienen
#4971715
jonogunn wrote: July 31st, 2022, 4:21 am From your experience when you are out and about with your pack do you usually leave the hum on or turn it down? I imagine that leaving it on for the majority of the time would get annoying? (Especially if it’s the afterlife version)
I don't even think about it. Most of the time if I'm out somewhere, it's more than noisy enough that the pack hum is mostly just white noise to me. I tend to just set it and forget it. Even more true if I'm inside somewhere rather than outside.
I’m surprised to see that the gbfans soundboard is only 10w and the speaker is only 40w. I guess that is loud enough? Sounds like my 50w amp and 4-way 160w speaker may be overkill? If so this is good as I want to keep costs down for future packs.
Yeah, you'd be surprised how much sound you can pump out with a simple setup. A good way to think of it is that you're not building a stereo. You're not trying to fill a 500sqft room with sound. You want people 10 ft around you to have fun and get a kick out of it, and it doesn't take that much power to do that. A good way to think about it is to compare it with something you might be familiar with, like a wireless bluetooth speaker. We've all used them. You can get a good one pretty cheap that can get loud. How about a REALLY nice one? The Bose Soundlink Revolve for example - it's only 8 watts.

Another way to think about it is that wattage is easy to relate to heat. A good example of that? Lightbulbs. It'd get pretty uncomfortable over time walking around with a 60 watt lightbulb right on your back heating things up. Hopefully those examples help paint a bit of a picture of how much power we're walking around with on our backs.
48hrs that’s insane!!
That's full idle. It only take milliamps to run a handful of LEDs and a quiet hum. Real world usage, I get a few hours at an event. Last time I was out, I actually managed to run my pack down. But, I had volume cranked, ran in party mode a few times, and was hitting my smoke a lot (which doesn't run long, but does draw a lot of power for a short time). I'm gonna make some circuit adjustments soon to see if I can extend that. Everything runs on one battery currently in my setup, but different parts have different cutoffs. The mainboard and LEDs, and the smoke circuit will basically keep going all the way down to 5V, but sound starts to cut out if I'm turned up too loud and my voltage starts dropping. Smoke usually cuts out too, because I'm using a buck converter to step the voltage down, but the current draw tends to shut it down around 10V.
Thanks for that info. My amp has a built in potentiometer but if I plan to separate the volume control for the pack and wand via the mixer I can just leave the amp turned on in the pack and not bother using the built in potentiometer. I’ll just connect the 2 potentiometers from the mixer to the pack instead. I was just afraid I would need control over switching the amp on/off but if it’s not a big power drain if leave it on I’ll just go with that.
Feel free to sketch it up and send it over to me, I'd be happy to take a look at what you're planning and let you know if there's anything you're missing or should be concerned about.
jonogunn liked this
#4971717
I can't help myself from asking-

How did you mount the decased battery to the motherboard? I can see in the pictures you posted way back in the thread that it's raised off the motherboard.

If you said somewhere and I missed it- my bad.
User avatar
By Fienen
#4971718
Velcro! Just a big piece of high strength velcro. I wanted to make it relatively simple to pull and replace if I ever needed to. Also made it easy to attach and remove while I was prototyping and installing the rest of the electronics.
in_the_city liked this
User avatar
By Fienen
#4971848
jonogunn wrote: August 12th, 2022, 6:32 pm Did you run into “elephants feet” with your 3D prints?
Nope, but I've been printing for a while and am pretty good at dialing in my temperatures and stuff large prints. Make sure you use some hairspray or glue stick on your print bed for adhesion, turn the temperature down on your bed a little, and turn up the cooling fan. Those steps will usually help with curing the first few layers well enough that the weight won't press them down.
jonogunn liked this
#4972124
Fienen wrote: July 31st, 2022, 12:56 pm Velcro! Just a big piece of high strength velcro. I wanted to make it relatively simple to pull and replace if I ever needed to. Also made it easy to attach and remove while I was prototyping and installing the rest of the electronics.
I'm going to solicited another answer out of you, because your pack is awesome and because you're one of the few people on here I've ever seen use the 3d printed brackets to attach it to the motherboard- What sized screw and nuts did you end up using? I feel like I could get away with M6's but that's just because I have A LOT of them on my bench. :)
User avatar
By Fienen
#4972355
in_the_city wrote: August 26th, 2022, 1:29 pm I'm going to solicited another answer out of you, because your pack is awesome and because you're one of the few people on here I've ever seen use the 3d printed brackets to attach it to the motherboard- What sized screw and nuts did you end up using? I feel like I could get away with M6's but that's just because I have A LOT of them on my bench. :)
I'll need to check. I'm about to do a tear down for some repairs and I should be able to get you a definite answer. I want to say from memory that I think they are #10-24s, 1.5" on the motherboard and 2" on the shell.

FWIW, I haven't had an ounce of trouble with 3D printed brackets, though I did print them at 100% infill, so they are pretty much indestructible.
in_the_city liked this
User avatar
By Fienen
#4972356
Image
Prepping some tweaks and repairs before my next event. I blew out the waist strap quite some time back, and had been making due with a hacked together mess. I got lucky and came across a NOS LC1 strap.

Image
Super easy to install. Just pull the old LC-2 strap out of the tensioner, and loop the new one through the hole on the ALICE frame. Boom. Instant Up-downgrade.

Current to-do list:
  • Ion arm needs reconnected. Hard bump broke it loose and had to Gorilla tape it in place.
  • Need to replace the coupler for the front of the neutrona wand to the wand body. This gonna suck, yo.
  • Sound's stopped working, no clue why
  • Last trip out, I managed to drain the battery. Granted, it was a busy event, but I'm considering adding a dedicated battery for the smoke with an improved cutoff when turned off
User avatar
By Holydohnut
#4972552
Hello mate. Your pack looks amazing! I'm just about to embark on a Qpack build myself and I'm wondering where you got the plans for the motherboard? Unless I'm being blind I couldnt find them in the folders.

Many thanks!

Rik
User avatar
By Fienen
#4972621
Image
So, this was one of the first big breaks I had. I dropped the neutrona wand and snapped this collar clean through. When you print this, PRINT IT SIDEWAYS (like you see it sitting in the picture), not straight up and down. You want your print layers perpendicular to the shear forces if something happens (think about watching martial artists breaking boards, and how they always break WITH the grain for a reason). You'll have to use supports and do some extra finish work as a result, but the structural integrity is a must. This is the new collar, sanded and painted. I also used my Dremel to notch out the side a little extra where the wires come through, just to keep them from getting too smashed. This is invisible once installed, and ensures the wires don't get pinched off.

Image
Similarly, on the gun box, I sanded out the matching notch here a bit more. All the paint loss is from JB Weld I'd used to hold the broken collar together. Replacing this part was a NIGHTMARE, because once everything's together in the gun box, it's not exactly made to come back apart. Plus I'd reinforced it with hot glue inside that I had to carve away. I still recommend doing that, FWIW. That's just the price you pay.

Image
Moving on into the pack, I needed to replace my charging plate, check my sound, and fix the ion arm. If you're like me and have electronics in both the shell and on the motherboard, do yourself a favor and get a label maker so that you can mark your wires. I didn't do that originally, but did while I had it apart just to eliminate any chance I'd put something back together wrong.

Image
Not the best shot, but you can see here where I wrapped my printed labels around the wires. I just labeled them A, B, C... etc.

Image
Unloading the pack one day, I knocked the ion arm against my truck and broke it loose. It basically pulled the screw heads through the plastic. I was short on washers, so I just doubled them up on the back so that I could spread out the force, and cover the larger hole. Down the road, I might fabricate a metal backing plate for this.

Image
I used the opportunity to also add some hot glue onto the nuts in the mounting brackets just to be sure they don't fall out. I'd originally super glued them in, but have had trouble with them popping out from the forces.
By MandoMcCoy
#4974297
Found these files a few months ago and I'm on my journey now with my first true proton pack build. You have no idea how helpful this thread is to me right now! Thanks for sharing your steps along the way. This reference is truly invaluable!

The one issue I'm hitting is that the printed front wand piece doesn't fit the GBfans acrylic tube with frosting. So I'm trying to get around that at the moment. *edit* I’m doing the pop mech and it works just fine now. Other than that, my wand is all but complete and I'm moving on to the pack parts.
Last edited by MandoMcCoy on November 7th, 2022, 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
#4975003
Fienen wrote: July 17th, 2021, 4:00 pm
Image
Next I hit parts of the pack with some Vaseline. This will act as masking fluid for my paint weathering. DO NOT DO THIS IS DIRECT SUN IN THE SUMMER if you live anywhere hot. It'll straight up melt off.

Image
And here she is, textured and blacked. Giving it a good bit to dry before wiping off the edge masking. Details start going on very soon now.
Tested with the vaseline method on a spare part. The results are really good. However, I'm having issues getting the residue fully off after wiping. Any tips/advice?
User avatar
By Marte
#4975337
First of all THANK YOU for your wonderful work.
Following your work we have understood many things and solved several problems.

We are having difficulty assembling the “Gun_mout_box”.
We don't know how to securely tighten the bracket to the piece.

Some questions:

1) Should the bracket be fixed to the motherboard FIRST or to the “gun_mount_box ?

2) We don't know how to fix the two M3s anyway: we can't reach the back to tighten the bolts.
Are we missing something?
Wouldn't it be better to use M4 or M5 to ensure greater strength?

3) Moving on to the Wand we have vibrations between “Body_to_fronGrip.stl” and “Gun_body.stl”.
It seems to us that a single bolt does not guarantee a good grip.
Was it necessary to glue it ? (for us now it's too late having already placed all the electronics)

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help

Marta

Update 24-12-2022

We found a solution in point 2.
We built rear supports for all 3 Brackets.

https://www.printables.com/it/model/344 ... for-ghostb

https://www.printables.com/it/model/344 ... tb#preview
User avatar
By Fienen
#4977232
Marte wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:22 am First of all THANK YOU for your wonderful work.
Following your work we have understood many things and solved several problems.

We are having difficulty assembling the “Gun_mout_box”.
We don't know how to securely tighten the bracket to the piece.

Some questions:

1) Should the bracket be fixed to the motherboard FIRST or to the “gun_mount_box ?

2) We don't know how to fix the two M3s anyway: we can't reach the back to tighten the bolts.
Are we missing something?
Wouldn't it be better to use M4 or M5 to ensure greater strength?

3) Moving on to the Wand we have vibrations between “Body_to_fronGrip.stl” and “Gun_body.stl”.
It seems to us that a single bolt does not guarantee a good grip.
Was it necessary to glue it ? (for us now it's too late having already placed all the electronics)

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help

Marta

Update 24-12-2022

We found a solution in point 2.
We built rear supports for all 3 Brackets.

https://www.printables.com/it/model/344 ... for-ghostb

https://www.printables.com/it/model/344 ... tb#preview
  1. Yeah, connect it to the motherboard first.
  2. You can certainly use upsized screws. Those two aren't really load bearing though, they just keep the top fixed against the motherboard
  3. I DID have to glue it for the same reason. I just went around it as best I could with some hotglue. JB Weld would work too. But you're right, one screw just isn't enough, and it's a tight space
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