From idea to Ghostbuster in 30 days, a scratch built pack

Equipment Proton Packs
1

From idea to costume in 30 days more or less, will flesh this out in the next 24 hours.

Thanks for looking!

Gary

Alice frame, $12 plus shipping

Working out the “boxes” three sheets of birch at $4 a pop

Motherboard was scrap plywood from out in the barn.

Test fitting the boxes, the blue LED flasher was from local mall, $7.99

Test caps from hardware store (.66 cents each) with pill bottle for Clippard valve.

Here you can see the inside of the pack, the plastic is leftover wall protection with wood from a scrap 2 x 4

The gearbox was the first completed “box” the knob was from a shower chair at work! Was an “in joke” during the company contest.

Here you can see major pieces in primer being tested fitted.

Here you can see me working out the ladder- It was done in one piece with pencils and carpet trim.

Future Kit 118 with LED’s extended with network cable wire, $18 shipped

$4 cake pan, plexi washers and .94 cent lens from Wal-Mart

Backside.

The thrower makes me cringe, tossed together in an hour to make trick or treat with the kids.

The wood pattern shows up like crazy so I took some smooth cardboard…

Added foil tape to it and painted, no more wood grain!

After todays work of adding the bumper, sorting out the hoses and doing the motherboard trim.

Side pic.

Posing at work- Won first place in contest here!

Here you can see the changes as work progressed.

2

Not a bad budget build at all! The end result of the pack is pretty clean!

3

Well shoot, I can’t edit the text in the main post! I’ll go over point by point everything that was done tomorrow.

Gary

4

Wow, that’s a really good looking budget build. Fix the thrower and you’ve got something pretty great there.

5

Here is a better breakdown-

  1. Motherboard and random pieces; lopped off from 2 x 4 & scrap wood stored in the shed.

  2. Generator sides; acrovin wall protection cut down to 3", scrap from work. The top was from old door aluminum kickplate also used in band construction.

  3. Cyclotron; cake pan from Bennies.

  4. Band: old door aluminum kickplate with an 1/8" x 1" aluminum flat piece behind it (rivited together) from Lowes to make it stout, Stack of washers was from the shop. The raised edges are door gaurd molding from Wal-Mart $3

  5. EDA, Crank generator, ION arm, Attenuator and gun mount are all cut out of 1/8" small birch sheets from mitchels hobby store. Knowing what I know now, I think I could find a bigger sheet at Lowes and paid less. From trim I started out with basswood from the same place but swapped over to harder wood trim from Lowes and just ripped it to size with my table saw.

  6. The booster, injectors, ppd and other “pipe like objects” were made from scrap PVC floating around the shop. Stuff that needed the end closed I just used hot glue and acrovin, then cut and sanded to finish. Acrovin is tricky to work with though, doesn’t always stick well with hot glue. Test caps were used at the end of the booster and HGA. I was liberal in use of items from anywhere though, the top of the booster has a water bottle cap I found at work! It was the perfect size.

  7. The ladder was made from one piece of birch sheet, cut and filed out to which I glued two pencils and a piece of door/carpet trim cut and filed to fit.

More tonight, have to get ready for work…

Gary

6

That came out great! I love scratch builds. You can always upgrade things like your thrower now that you have time. (Our guns were put together overnight as well, a last minute thing.

7

Youve done a great job! Reminds me of the scratchbuilds back in the day before production related shells and aluminium throwers.

8

  1. The cable is old SCSI hard drive cable, aluminum scrap from the garage. I really need to change the cable, it is so off in the weeds but what I have on hand at the moment.

  2. I was unable to find red/blue 1/4" PVC hose locally in time, so I used old coax cable with heatshrink from local shop, cost $6

  3. All the brass is fittings I had kicking around the garage, being a former mechanic and gearhead I have a bucket of the stuff collected over the last 20 years.

  4. The ion brass arm just a piece of 1/4" copper line from work, the aluminum plate on the end aluminum tape.

  5. Electronics- For sound there is a set of battery power PC speakers (free!) running off an mp3 player. Had the power up / off / firing sound effects from the game pack and three songs from the two movies. I intend to change the setup with a soundchip from GBfans when they are available again.

The blue flasher was from Spirit-

http://www.spirithalloween.com/product/gm-blue-led-battery-op-strobe/

Has on/off switch with speed control.

The LED chaser kit was from bakatronics-

FK118 Rotating Chaser Kit, 16 LEDs

I plan on keeping both for now but when I upgrade the wand will wire both to operatte at different speeds when the gun is fired. A simple matter of figuring out the required resistance and adding a relay to flop back and forth between the two.

9

I suspose I have to mention the wand- Its two $1.50 electrical boxes joined with a bolt and spacer, a dead keypad from work with a gamewell fire alarm coverplate on top. I powered up the 3 LED’s on the keypad and the gamewall plate, then added 4 LED’s from the chaser. Wiring is two CAT5 cables which carry the juice from the board to the LED’s and the power for the circuit board which is switched at the wand. a 9 volt battery resides in the wand for the circuit. The handles of the wand are 3/4" PVC with wheel chair handgrips and some aluminum tape on the snout.

The uniform is a flight suit from local army/navy store $24, belt $12, $4 gloves from Ebay, $8 patches from Ebay, $12 hat from Ebay.

I think I’m going to finish the pack and keep it. I ordered resin dale resistors off ebay for $6 (cheaper than me coming up with something) and build a “proper” wand/thrower.

Eventually I’m going to build a second pack, perhaps with a 'glass shell for reduced weight. I’m considering doing a project with my son and building a 25% smaller pack for him this winter. Should be a fun father and son project! He is excited about being a Ghostbuster next year.

10

very nice build. well done

11

I forgot the video for the lights!

No idea why the video won’t imbed guys, sorry!

12

I swear this thing is worse than working on a car- Now I know what guys are thinking when I hear the phrase “I’m going to upgrade my pack again” if left to my own devices I think I could spend a lot of free time tinkering.

However I do wish to move on to a second pack of different construction so I’, going to stop ( I SWEAR) after the following changes.

  1. Correct size decals- I was in a hurry when I printed these (on the pack 1/2 hour before leaving to go to trick or treat with kids at work) and went through the windows printer driver instead of Photoshop. Windows was nice enough to “resize” them for me to fit the page. So I’m going to reprint the decals the correct size and attach.

  2. Finish the gun- I was considering a kit, but will make the gun mostly following the plans hosted here by Paranorman & Green Guy. Mostly. Will be constructed of wood and plastic with the majority of items found in hobby stores or other off the shelf items. With lights of course.

3 Generator finish- Want to countersink the cover screws and bondo over so it matches the movie packs.

  1. EDA discs

  2. Cable- Will make something or find.

  3. Dale resistors- Purchased a resin set for $6, waiting to come in so I can detail and install. Cap screws on ion arm too.

  4. Pull the current speakers- Not happy with the output or battery setup, did serve its purpose though.

  5. Blue lens for powercell and remote batteries for light assembly.

Thoughts?

And then… its on to pack number two. And two “kid size packs” for next year :wink:

Gary

13

You can cheaply make a blue power cell lens with those blue plastic “paper plates”.. target usually stocks the blue ones. I went with a few layers of them to get the tint I wanted.

14

I honestly like the screws on the generator I think it adds character :). Also if you want cheap eda disks you can just use some appropriately sized washers :). The only thing I would really change is the ribbon cable, and maybe do something with the crank knob, I like the shape but its to big or maybe to shiny, subduing it might make it better. But those are just my suggestions, but I really do like the pack :slight_smile:

15

Just got back from Target, I.party and local Mitchels, nothing! Next time I’m at Walmart I’ll have to look.

When you don’t want them they are everywhere!

16

They might be a summer seasonal thing. maybe check party stores?

17

I did, at least the ones in the local area.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled, something will pop up. Were heading to IKEA for bookshelf brackets tonight, perhaps I’ll spot something there :wink:

18

Fooled around a bit today.

Yesterday I picked up some silver/metallic paper from Staples ($4) and tried printing out some Clippard valve decals, not bad. Clearly I made extras for the kids packs this winter =)

Could have had a better shine to them but will do in a pinch. After I printed them I took packing tape and carefully went over the top to seal them and add shine and then cut out.

You have to do this with some care as the tape likes to wrinkle and if it happens the piece is ruined. Start on one side and slowly roll the piece up to the tape.

I changed out the decals on the PPD, HGA and bumper. The one on the gearbox is there to stay though as I had a hell of a time getting it off the PPD. This time around I used 2 sided tape which is much more forgiving than spray glue.

I may add four small cap screws to the HGA to make it closer to screen packs…

19

On the first picture it looks like the pack is mounted too low on the Alice-frame, but on the pics with your son it looks okay.

And like I said before, great job for something build in such a short time.

20

Keep in mind the shoulder pads on the alice frame are adjustable to accomodate different body builds.My wife and my packs are mounted identically, bu the strap adjustments are completely opposite, because she has a short torso, and I have a long one.