Gawd I hate it when people bring pics of their so-called newbie stuff, and it ends up looking freaking sweet. :lol:
Puts my first, second, AND third packs to shame.
WOW! i didn’t expect to see the railroad stuff…cool 8)
Much thanks for the nice comment fifth beatle. It´s great to recvieve such positive resonses to my first posts in this forums. Awesome community!
And here we go with the progress:
It wasn´t easy to make, but I´m totally happy with the frame now.
Edit (16 Sep ) :
Thats how it looks now.
Some brand new pics of my progress:
What you see here was done with a combination of hot glue, epoxy and bondo:
It´s primered and partially spray painted black because the area between the booster tube and crank generator would be very difficult to reach with the spray cans I´m using when everything is mounted together. …oh and also because the Ion arm was already completely painted and I had to fit it to the booster & EDA box.
…lol, I just saw the booster looks kind of distorted in the last pic. Must be an issue with the camera, its pretty straight when I look at it.
I´ve got almost everything done on the upper half of the pack now(except for the hga), so maybe I can start the spacer next week.
Thats a gorgeous piece of work!
Dang man! That’s looking very, very good. I hope mine looks half that good when I get through with it.
-Tyler
I hope to start mine sometime before halloween '08, I just hope mine looks as good as yours!
It’s looking good.
I’m hoping to get a hold of some styrene this week so I can try to build an Ion Arm.Figure I would start with something very simple.
Thanks a lot guys. I just wanted to share some pics of the progress I´ve made over the last week. Maybe it could be useful for other first time builders, and I personally love to see progress pics of other peoples pack builts.
But please tell me if I´m overdoing with the pictures. 
Thats a good piece to start with, I built the Ion Arm as the first piece too. You should have no problems with that little thing and I´m looking forward to see something of it.
nice work mate! looks very clean, i especially like the detail on the frame. good to see another way to do the brick pattern. thats using your noodle!
WOWSERS!!! Excellent job!!! It really looks fantastic!
Thanks for the compliments staticbuster and greatgallina. Glad you like it.
It was a lot of work over the last weeks but now my constuction is starting to look like a proton pack 
The power cell is not permanentely glued on at the moment because it has already the injector tubes epoxyed on, so it would be almost impossible to build the center cover with the tubes blocking the way.
Yep, its going to have sound, but only the two “basics” aka power up and wand firing. The big circular hole in the spacer is exactely the outer diameter of the cyclotron so this saves me a little bit of trouble with the fitting and building of the actual “pan”.
Some spacer details:
My dusty Gearbox & Booster:
The PDD is a wooden dowel with two layers of 1mm styrene wrapped and laminated around it to get the correct diameter and a nice surface with no wood grain:
Booster Frame and tubing in place (I couldn´t resist to paint several areas of the upper pack to see how everything turns out) :
My HGA which I just finished and primered today:
Yeah, some pics are a bit dark but I couldn´t get them any better today…
I think I´ll post some new pics when I´ve got the center cover & motherboard done and almost all the big parts on the pack are getting together.
You…you’ve earned it. :crunch:
The pack is looking awesome man.Can’t wait to see it finished.
okay so i know you styrene builders use the score and snap method primarily, but what about creating curves? do you still use the score and snap? or do you cut with a jigsaw (can that be done) ? :?
Holy snikies!!! clean is an understatement!!! :shock:
How does styrene work. The gear box etc. looks like one solid piece: please explain.
What beautiful work. Please keep posting pics as you get closer to being finished.
Joe
Wow! I’m tempted to yank all my pics, your’s is so clean! : ) But, mine is supposed to look beat up and experimental with wires coming out of everywhere to monitor levels on everything (since the Mac Pack is a LICENCED nuclear accelerator (gotta keep Dept of Energy, OSHA, EPA, and the Dept Homeland security happy) : P Keep posting your progress. I think you are a “ringer” --a professional disguising himself as a noob. (Ha, Ha!)
@all:
Thanks again !!! I fogot to say that with my last post but some constuctive criticism is also always appreciated. Tell me what I can do better ! (I´m already aware of some little “flaws” 
)
I just finished a round piece for the base of the clippard on the pack and tried to document it with pictures. Here is what I´ve done so far:
First step is to scribe a circle with the actual diameter you want to get at the end. Then I scored a deep groove with an x-acto knife slightly outside of the circle into the styrene sheet. After this I snap it off with a bit of bending applied to the styrene.
After ginding the excess off with a dremel tool the edge will look like this:
Then I used a file to round the piece and gind even more of the excess material off until I get very close to the circle line:
The next tool after the file is some sanding paper fixed to a solid and even wood block. I´m using it very often to clean up all the pieces and get nice edges and straigt lines. You see it looks a lot nicer now:
Final deflashing done & piece put in place:
This method worked for all pieces with relatively small diameters, where the edge is exposed and can be seen on the final product. When the edge will be covered by fake welds like on the injectors you can skip most of the cleanup of course. For larger circular things like the spacer I scored (almost) directely the diameter I wanted, snapped it off and did only a minimal cleanup before the assembling.
Always keep in mind: Thick styrene like 3mm (which I used for the above described pice) will snap not as easy and clean as thinner styrene. You´ll even notice a really big difference between 2mm and 3mm sheets (or the equal measurements in inches).
I hope this could help a bit.
@thegreatgallina:
It´s pretty much all about measuring twice, cutting once. …and of course a careful sanding of all edges which will be visible later is a necessity if you want it to look it really clean. After puting the pieces together all I can say is: bondo,bondo,sanding,sanding,bondo,bondo,bondo,sanding,bondo,…etc…repeat until it looks as you want it to look. Thats the basics steps I think Feel free to ask, if you want to know something about specific details.
@bradboss:
Since this is the first prop (besides the uniform) I´m building I would really consider myself as a newbie to the whole prop-building hobby. I only finished a Millenium Falcon Model two years ago, and that was the first model I built since my childhood. You can see some photos of it here: 5,000+ Free Desktop Wallpaper Photos · HD & 4K | Webshots
Wow thanks for posting that lil step by step section.That actually gave me a decent idea of how to do it.
I did pick up some styrene from my local hobby store,but I haven’t had time to work on my Ion Arm yet.Been really busy with work.But I guess my bust Javamonkey Ion Arm will have to work for this year,the way it got busted was my upper shell fell off my work table and the Ion Arm took the brunt of the fall,it’s split right down the side and I don’t think there’s any repairing it,so I’m just gonna make a brand new one.
Ouch, sounds not good what happend to your shell… but I´m glad to help you out. You´ll see the ion arm is a LOT easier to do than any round piece. When doing the score´n´snap method you´ll also notice a little rim along the score line that has of course to be sanded. Oh,…and dont forget to reinforce the new Ion Arm !
Oh I am,I plan on putting square dowels and some bondo resin inside it to reinforce it.