[Tvenk]

Been lurking around for a while and me and a buddy decided it's finally time we tackled a proton pack. I've done a number of other cosplays over the years, but this is one that's been on my list for a while. Decided we wanted to mold our own and do fiberglass shells, but that there were enough resources out there we shouldn't start from total scratch.

Pack is going to be 3D printed in pieces using the MK4 files and then we'd clean up a few areas and tweak some stuff. This forum is an amazing resource. Been at it long enough now I can share a few pics of the progress.

[Tvenk]

3D printing all the parts took well over 100 hours on my small printer and a ton of cleanup work to do.

[Tvenk]

Sanding is my least favorite part of costume/prop making and it's SO much of the effort haha








Doing test "fits" as we go gives us motivation to keep working

[Tvenk]

First layer of filler primer gives us an idea of how much work we have left but also shows how far the pieces have already come.







Any back to the filler and sandpaper...

[Tvenk]

Progress continues







And just in case anyone is curious what the underside looks like

[Styrofoam_Guy]

Looks great. I know how much fun it is to bondo and sand (again and again)
Where did you get the 3D files?

[Tvenk]

Thanks - yeah so much bondo and sanding haha.
I got them here on the forum after reading through a few threads trying to put together an updated set of plans. I believe the thread was titled: NEW GBFANS PACK PLANS

[Tvenk]

The work continues, slow and steady progress - the last 20% takes 80% of the time...








Any now for another coat of primer - finally getting close here with finishing the buck.





And for some reason I got this weird crack and a bubble in a terribly inconvenient spot, so now that needs to be fixed...

[Demon Vice Commander]

Your master is looking good! I would recommend filling the cyclotron holes and power cell instead of molding it with them recessed; this will give you greater control over the thickness of said windows when it comes time to lay up the fiberglass and resin - otherwise you may end up with really thick windows.

[Tvenk]

Thanks! That's helpful insight, though if I'm being perfectly honest, I don't know if I have it in me to go back and fill them in at this stage and refinish those surfaces haha. I'll have to address it with how I lay up the fiberglass on the back to make sure I can sand it down without compromising the surfaces around it.

[Tvenk]

Been a while since my latest update - too many things happening, but progress continues:



Ready to start adding clay - put a little jig together to try and ensure consistent thickness








Had to redo a bunch of the keys and double check several of the walls to make sure I didn't have overhangs ahead of the fiberglass. It's amazing what you see after you walk away and come back.

[Tvenk]

Fiberglass time








All trimmed up, ready for the next side. This stuff is messy (been a while since I fiberglassed). Also polyester resin is cheap which is great, but man the fumes are overpowering. Each time I took the respirator off it was wild. I'm not great at this (still some air bubbles) but was good enough to get the job done.

[Tvenk]

The fiberglass jacket came off (with some effort) and I had more bubbles than I wanted (and created some additional overhang risk) so decided to fill those with clay. Also - since I used plastic between the clay and fiberglass, there were a number of spots where it bunched or creased that created larger impressions that would just be annoying after a silicone pour so I filled some of that stuff with clay too in order to make removal simpler later.

Oh yeah and drilled fill and air vent holes (more lessons learned on that later)












Then it was time to clean off the buck and bolt everything up properly.

[Tvenk]

And now the fun part. I definitely didn't have a large enough opening to fill over the Crank Gen which was a mistake because when the silicone would start to thicken, it didn't flow into that space well anymore. Thankfully, my vent holes were just barely large enough to be useful, though the pour was slow. I was really nervous and my vacuum pump failed on me about 2/3 of the way through so I was nervous about air bubbles, but I went slow enough I think it's going to be ok.
Used Smooth On Moldstar 30 which seemed to work great.



Vacuum chamber at work


Progress was slow at first




All finished up - very messy but I think it went pretty well. Was touch and go there for a bit - reusing containers I think spend up the catalyst on some of the later batches which had us nervous about being able to get it all in there. Would have been a lot easier with an extra Crank Gen fill hole.

[Tvenk]

Well, the results are IN!
You can see some places where not having that third pouring hole cause some air gaps, but it was thick enough it didn't hurt anything









Two very small air bubbles, but otherwise turned out beautifully

[pchrisbosh1]

Amazing job on the mold! Looks awesome and I'm sure its going to dish out some clean casts.

[Tvenk]

Been a while since my last update, but progress is being made. First cast was a good learning experience (definitely came out rough) - left some air bubbles in the gel coat because I put it on too thick and resin kicked faster than I wanted leaving some poor gaps in a few corners. Structurally it'll be fine but going to need a bit more love than subsequent attempts. Other than those initial mistakes though, the casts come out real nice.



Gelcoat going in:


Fiberglass wasn't pushed at all into the corners at the top here and it kicked real quick. Going to have to go back and fill those gaps with resin/bondo.


And then, put the gel coat on too thick so not all the air bubbles worked themselves out. Not difficult to fix, just tedious.

[Tvenk]

When I read other people taking a year or more to do their packs from scratch I thought "That seems like longer than it should take"...
Welp haha - I ended up putting mine on hold for the first chunk of this year in favor of a Mandalorian armor project. That one now complete and cleaned up, I have returned to the pack project!

I have finished pulling my packs. I did 8 pulls in total, the first one (shown in the previous post) I've decided isn't good enough for use (it could be cleaned up, but really isn't worth the effort given the mistakes I made). The rest are taking turns getting trimmed and cleaned.

[Tvenk]

Ok so learned an important lesson here which is worth chronicling:

I'm not a prop maker or anything so when I bought materials (and I wanted them to be good materials) I sorta had to buy in the volumes they come in, knowing that'd be way more than what I needed for my project. And, I'm not using them for anything else in life so I decided it would be a good idea to mold out however many I had gelcoat and resin for and then see how many came out good enough to use.

Without thinking, I then offered the extras in the FS thread imagining a real benefit of it helping me cover my material costs - but this was my mistake. Obviously others have put great work into the Qpack and that's what I've used as the foundation for my build with only minor adjustments to enable easier casting. Me molding and selling those felt innocent to me because the alternative was throwing them away, but it also was without permission from the people who did so much work on the foundation I used - the Qpack files. I didn't think that through the way I should have. Several others called this out and I reached out to Belli to apologize for my error. He was gracious enough to understand. Hoping to continue this thread focused on my own build which is slowly making progress as I clean up my shell.

[Tvenk]

It's been quite a while since my last update, but progress has been ongoing. If I'm honest, I felt pretty embarrassed by my mistake above and I stepped away from the project for a good couple months because it was a reminder each time of that lousy feeling. But, it's also a really fun project and with a little space I jumped back in more wholly during the winter months.

The next step was really cleaning up casting issues inside (fixing a few small air bubbles and reinforcing an area where I over-sanded inside) and then beginning to drill holes - my goodness there are a lot of holes to drill haha. Getting the cyclotron lights and powercell light holes cut cleanly and to the right depth for the lenses was a work in patience and more sanding.






And then it was on to some of the more intimidating elements of the build for me - the aluminum work. I knew the motherboard I wanted in aluminum but also decided to make my injectors from aluminum as well.





I experimented with various epoxies to give me something I could make look like weld lines as I haven't felt like the hot glue method was giving me what I was looking for.

[Tvenk]

Cutting the motherboard mostly was an exercise in patience as I was using a simple jig saw and there were quite a few tough angles.



Got there in the end and used some files to clean up the edges and corners


Welding aluminum myself wasn't an option, but a friend of a friend offered to help so I went to work using pieces I got from a local metal supply store that sells discarded excess by the pound. I was able to get the correct size booster tube after a number of visits, as well as some box material that I could cut into all the brackets I need for both mounting the shell and matching the Phoebe wand cable port.


Unfortunately it wasn't the cleanest weld job, but I'm not going to complain about someone being willing to help. I had to go in and clean up a few areas where it was interfering with the pack shell.



Also made the injector tube bracket and got tubes for the wand with hopes of designing my own pop mechanism.


Next up was working on the booster tube, frame, and ion arm assembly