By bauer00
#4970831
I want to let everyone know that I finished my proton pack. I started a few years ago, working closely with Demon Vice Commander and putting all I could into it. I wanted it to be a Venkman inspired movie accurate proton pack and within the past few months, that deviated from the plan.

I started off by purchasing a fiberglass shell from Demon Vice Commander and working with him on the look and feel of the pack. He was a great help and even though we parted ways due to political reasons, I want to thank him for his help and his friendship.

Besides the shell and the electronic parts, only a few other pieces were purchased from the gbfans shop. I had my brother-in-law 3D print a large number of items in a 'honeycomb' style, so that there was structure but not so much weight. This meant that the 3D printed items could get painted and assembled. I used super glue to glue these pieces together, since it was just gluing plastic to plastic.
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Using my previous experience with foam work (ie: I made a 7 foot tall Warhammer 40k Space Marine cosplay using all foam), I then made the booster, N-filter and a few other pieces from hardened foam. This kept the shape and function with almost a tenth of the weight.
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Below is an image taken from my notes as I was weighing each piece.
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Some of the parts needed to look right and while I do know that some people sell 3D printed R75 valves and then have metallic stickers to make them look real, I just went and bought the real things. All of the hardware, is real. I just wanted to reduce the weight a bit from what everyone else was doing.

I had been working on this, by myself, for the past few months and had no contact with anyone last year about this build. I do have to say, as a noob and new person into the GBfans community, it would help people like me, if there was a tutorial on building these packs. I know that some may argue that it is up to everyone to find their own methods for these builds. But like a Lego creation, I think if there was a brief tutorial and then people could deviate from that in their own way, it would be helpful.

Similar to what other people do, when working with electronics, I mapped out all of the electronic kits onto the lids of some containers. This allowed me to plug everything in and test and work and have a good idea of where things need to go, in the pack. With all of the wires and lights and switches, this was a great help to organize.
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The speaker was attached using very hard foam. I screwed a bracket onto the other side of the bolts that hold the Alice Frame to the metal board. I then screwed these into the foam and then attached the speaker into the foam. This gave me an incredibly sturdy brace for the speaker, that wasn't a pound of wood or metal. I got the speaker wires from Ace Hardware, at 79 cents a foot and attached those with some of those shrink-wrap-plastic-tubing to cover the exposed wires.

I read about the Power supply post (https://gbfans.com/forum/viewtopic.php? ... 1#p4970371) and went with the great idea of the Talentcell. A shout-out to Spectregater, who answered my question about how to connect the Talentcell to the Sound Board. I remembered seeing a large, heavy, blue brick as a power supply in a previous build, by Demon Vice Commander. Since I was reducing the weight of the pack, I thought that there had to be a more advanced version of a rechargeable battery. The Talentcell is perfect because it has a power switch. I can plug it in, and flip it on or off, instead of having to add another power switch into the main wiring from the board. Spectregater answered my question and led me to some cords, where I eventually cut, stripped and attached to the board, allowing me to have the plug, exit from a hole drilled into the metal board, which is long enough to run down to my pants pocket, where I can carry the Talentcell battery. (Now that I think of it, I could create a foam box for the TalentCell, that looks like the lifeguard device and then clip that onto my belt.....)

Another shout-out goes to tobycj, who answered my question as to where one of the lights went to, from the pack light kit. The lights from the pack are attached into the shell, using foam and the wires have been hot glued in. The light strip was attached under the blue lens using some acrylic putty and the cyclotron lights were attached using more foam and super glue. The sound board was attached using a wooden frame, which was then screwed into the shell, with some rubber washers, allowing me space to get my fingers under it. This means that if I have to adjust the volume or unplug anything, I just lift open the shell and do it; easily.

Just before completing this pack, I had made from scratch, a four post loom, for my wife. From what she tells me, that was a very complicated and difficult feat. This proton pack was harder than that. I think while the arrangement of the wires into my thrower was very difficult, the most difficult had to be the metal braces. I didn't find anything online, anywhere, that showed where the metal braces attached to the metal and to the shell. Because of this, I went with trial an error. My metal board was starting to look like swiss cheese as I was measuring, marking, drilling and then still off somewhere and somehow. I would say that one of the parts that makes this not movie accurate, is the many holes that are left open on the sides and bottom where I didn't get a bracket/brace attached. Two of the braces are exposed from the outside. While that may make it ugly to some, it made it easy for me to line everything up.

Overall, I am ecstatic to have finished this. I don't think there is anyone else on this side of the river in my town or the next town over, whom has made a proton pack, making me the only one immediately East of the Mississippi.

I will do photos if anyone wants to see what my finished pack looks like. I found a lot of parts at my local Ace Hardware and if you were interested I can help explain which of the parts came from there.

For those who are interested in anything I did, please contact me and I'll be more than happy to share.
jpetrutis81, tobycj liked this
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