A couple of weeks ago, my 9 year old son and I watched Ghostbusters together. It was his first time to see it. Well, just like all the other “vintage” movies that I share with him. He has gotten obsessed with all things GB. He has custom built all the figures with Legos, built an Ecto-1 from Legos… etc…
Well, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Dad, let’s build a proton pack.” Well, being a builder, I said sure son and we started to build a simple pack and gun. We used some stuff I had laying around the shop and then using my small vacuum forming machine, I made a quick mold of it. Then we started on the gun….
Then the fever set in. Yes, the fever that I speak of just won’t go away… You see, I am not one to do things just half way, so this just won’t do. I decided to scrap the first pack and this time, use the club plans at a 80% scale to build a new pack. Something that he will be proud to wear. And I have just 18 days to complete it. It has to be done by June 25th so that he can wear it to the San Antonio Comic Con. I probably won’t have time to re-do the gun by then, but I am sure sooner or later I will have to re-do that too. Here is my progress photos so far. This is the mold I will use to vacuum form it.
And the gun as it is right now… but that will be rebuilt after the Con.
Thanks, I am having fun with it… and my son is getting excited. I have the lights all worked out and ready to install. I am using an Arduino to power them as well as sound using a small 8 triggered sound board. I just hope the vacuum pulls work out. I’m still learning the combination of heat to suction.
The uniform is pretty much worked out as well. I had to go with green as I couldn’t find a khaki suit anywhere for kids. I think it looks pretty good.
Nice!!!, I’ve been doing the same for my son, but with a RGB pack. Repainted it and building a thrower for it. Next up is to buy a flight suit. Where did you get this one?
Thanks. I picked up the suit from a local Army Surplus store. They happen to carry these kid sized flight suits. And it was only $20.
I decided to see how a vacuum pull would look. It’s not too bad. I am going to work on it a little and see if I can get the next one to be a little more defined. I really need more suction! My little vacuum just doesn’t cut it.
Thanks, I am going to put some relief holes in the cyclotron rings to see if I can get them a little sharper, especially on the inside, and I was thinking of adding a little to the thickness of the plating to make it stand out even more.
Ok, Friday night status… just about all the main pieces are done as well as some of the tubes and misc detail pieces. Need to prime them all, get them nice and smooth and try my luck at pulling some vacuum forms…! Hopefully by Sunday night, I will have it pulled.
Oh no. There is no way I would get a good pull with those attached. I just put them there for the photo to see how it all looked together. What I have to figure out now is how many of the sections on top I can pull together. My former is only 12x24. So I will have to break it up into sections.
Ok, after spending most of the day Saturday finishing the mold pieces this is what it looked like.
Then most of the night Saturday and most of the day Sunday was spent tying to get the vacuum forming done… what a pain in the ■■■■… I had a heck of a time trying to get the molds out of the plastic. Please keep in mind, I am pretty new at vacuum forming and my table is only 12x24" and runs off a shop vac. But after many failed attemps…
I ended up with these pretty good pulls.
At least this should be a pretty light pack for my son to carry around all day. Now hopefully I won’t mess up the pull trying to cut it out.
Ok, so should I cut out the cyclotron where the N-Filter goes, or should I cut the N-Filter to fit on top of the cyclotron? If I cut the cyclotron it could weaken it a little and I really don’t want to mess it up… But, cutting the N-Filter to fit could be more work… any recommendations? I guess the good thing about cutting the N-Filter is that it’s just 2 PVC fittings glued together so it’s cheap to replace if I mess it up.
