Little update but not much going on due to time and money.
I want my pack to be as durable as possible, not cos im going to be wearing it everywhere but just because i want it to last forever which is one of the reasons i decided to make it out of dibond. So i thought i would go down the allu tube route for the thrower handles rather than PVC pipe or anything.
I got a gun kit from Nick-a-tron and got the gun box sanded and primed, then started to wonder how the hell i was going to bond the resin box to the allu pipes cos from what ive read, it isnt easy. I went with trusty old bolts in the end
Here is the box with the rear handle fitted. The two tubes to the right are what will make up the twisting front barrel. I really REALLY want to have it so the clear tube pops out when you twist the handle but also when you pull the green lever, just dont know how the hell to do it lol. If i was doing one or the other then no problem but combining the two??? :shock:
Here is a look inside the gun box…
and here you can see how ive mounted the front “bracket” that the rest of the front barrel will slide into…
and how the front barrel looks if it was all put together…
Still no money to get the allu knobs or anything else i need but i did manage to get myself a clear bit of tubing…
Once i find a suitable spring to fit inside my barrel the end will pop out like this when twisted…
I might have to put the whole lever thing on the back burner for a while. I want my pack/costume complete for halloween so time is short. Started designing my light sequences last night too (start up, stand-by and firing). Once ive written down exactly how i want my pack to work, which i should have done by tonight, my dad is going to get busy with making the sound/lights for me
We just saw a pack of glow in the dark paint at Michael’s yesterday… they give you like 10 colors for $10.. not a bad deal at all, especially if you can snag one of those 40% off coupons.
Wow, havent updated this in a while. Aaaaaalrighty then, todays progress…
Got the wooden cosmetic bits cut and screwed/glued to the bottom…
Covered them in body filler to get rid of the MDF’s “fluffy” edges and to hide the screws…
Painted them silver, then black and fitted the hose barbs…
Fitted the hose and the little black sleeves. I like using the barbs because not only are they great for keeping hold of the hose (its impossible to pull the hose back off lol) but the little cosmetic bit of black tubing fits tightly over the base part of the barb thus not needing any glue…
Then i painted the red stripe around the N-Filter…
and also frosted over my red lenses by just scrubbing the back of them a little with some 600 wet and dry paper. Im glad i did, it makes the world of difference and will make the lights look much more screen accurate in my opp…
Before…
After…
Also twisted the ribbon cable some more and secured it into place (it was just tucked in the hole before). This is what the inside of my pack looks like…
This is where im at with the thrower. Ive fitted the knobs, green hose, some of the stickers, the bottom, dixie cup holder and the little hook bit on the end of the acrylic tube…
And here she is on my wall ready for some more to be done on her tomorrow…
Hey all. Been a chuffin’ long time since ive updated this thread but ive been doing some work on the popping mechanism on my thrower today…
First off i bought a £2 spring loaded loo roll holder from fleabay…
Next up i cut the ends off to give me a nice flat surface on each end and also open up the tube ends to enable me to feed the LED’s through when i finally get the lights sorted out…
There wasnt much travel in the loo roll holder. The difference between compressed and uncompressed wasnt as much as i would have liked but i noticed the part that stopes the smaller end from flying on out when you let go of it when compressed is situated on the far end of the inner tube so the outer tube could be cut back a bit to give me more travel. I used some 3mm fine line tape to make sure i had it nice and straight all the way around the tube and cut that sucker back a bit. This gave me an extra 12mm of travel…
So here is my idea. Attach the smaller end of the loo roll holder to the clear acrylic tube (its a perfect fit inside it) and the end of the larger end to the inside of my gun barrel. One of the bolts that holds the front grip on my thrower extends through the barrel and pokes into that elongated “N” shape cut in the acrylic tube so that when i twist the barrel upwards the bolt lines up with the long horizontal part of the cut out and allows the barrel to move forward. Then you twist the barrel back down and hey presto, its locked in place. To push it back in you need to twist the barrel again, push down on the acrylic tube and the twist the barrel back down to lock it back in…
I was wondering how to fix the loo roll holder to the clear tube and i came up with this idea. I didnt really want to go with screws as everything in my barrel is a tight enough fit already and theres no room for screw heads sticking up from the surface of anything so i got some of that wire they use to hold action figures into their packaging, drilled a big enough hole in the clear tube and loo roll holder for it to slide through and also cut a groove out of the acrylic tube so that the wire could be tucked away without sticking up from the surface and thus stopping the tube from going back in the barrel…
Then i slotted it back into my barrel to make sure it still fitted ok, which it did to my relief
Then came the task of fixing the other end to the barrel so it wouldnt move and also be strong enough to withstand me pushing on it to push the clear tube back in every time. I made a mark on the loo roll holder where one of the holes in my barrel ended up and then measured from the mark to the end of the holder…
This gave the the spot where the end of the holder would be inside the barrel…
Luckily it would end up half way down my outer tube (black one in pic above) so i would be able to remove the inner tube of my gun barrel and put a couple of screws through to hold the loo roll holder firmly in place but also hide the screws from view totally. I removed the inner barrel tube and marked the spot where the end of the holder would be…
Then marked where the screws to hold it would go. I put them as close to the edge as i dare because my screws would end up inside the loo roll holder and of course theres a spring in there and you dont want the screws stopping your spring from compressing/extending…
I drilled the holes using a 3mm drill bit as this was the correct size for the screws i would be using but i also got a 6mm dril bit and did this so that more of the screw head would sink down into the tube itself rather than sticking up…
I put the holder and clear tube assembly back into the barrel and screwed it into place nice and firmly…
Now came the fun bit. As i mentioned before all my barrel tubes are a perfect fit inside each other so there is no room for anything to be sticking up at all. As you can see though the screw heads still stuck up from the surface of the allu tubing which is no good. That would stop the outer barrel tube from going back into place so i had to file the heads of the screws down so they sat flush with the surface of the allu tubing. This is before…
And this is after about an hour with a file…
I now had to make sure my long “N” shaped cut in my acrylic tubing still lined up with the slot in my allu tube for the bolt to stick through. I cut that slot long before i had the loo roll holder idea so if the length of the “N” shaped cut didnt match the amount of travel i had in the holder then the slot wouldnt line up anymore and guess what, it didnt. Close though. After a quick stint with the dremmel the acrylic tube lined up again and all was well…
Then i put her all back together and it worked a treat smug mode
Been some time since ive updated this thread. She now has lights, sounds, the lot. Although she is still missing the odd little cosmetic bit (green lever on the gun for instance) i think im gonna call this finished and just add the little missing bits as and when. Next on my prob building plans is an R2D2
