My second scratchbuilt Pack

Equipment Proton Packs
1

Hi everyone :slight_smile:

…it´s been a while since i made something Ghostbusters related but since i´ve sold my old pack i sorta knew i´m going to make another one some day. Its fun to make these things and i feel like i can do it better than last time. Sure the old one wasnt that bad but it had its inaccuracies ^^

So i´ve been collecting parts all the time before i was actually going to start working on it and now that i have most of the stuff i need it´s time to start something.

Styrene is the material of choice again (of course :slight_smile: ) because i really like to work with it and its pretty easy to get straight angles and lines. But the ultimate goal for this built is making a fiberglass shell, so what im making now is just the master or buck or whatever you want to call it.

Anyway…i know you guys want to see pics so here we go with a little parts shot for the beginning:

Lots of goodies from jpa35, masteryoda, AJ, irricanian and some radio shop in nyc :slight_smile:

Now on to the actual construction. This time i made the crank generator first to get that damn thing out of the way. I think its the hardest piece of the whole upper part of the pack. Here it is in its raw shape already together with the gun mount box:

Looks a bit dirty because i touched it with glue on my hands ^^ Oh and the grey part is just some pvc pipe cut to the correct length.

This looks better i guess:

I added almost all of the ribs and sanded the corners and edges. And as you can clearly see ive also included some details that arent in the plans. the bottom strip being one piece is a good example. I made the grooves with a very small round file just like hooker did it in his really great build thread. Also…I´ll be keeping some of the flaws on this intentionally, like the seam between the strip and the gearbox body and also one of the sections on it being smaller than the others. Maybe its not as small as it is on the screenused ones but i still wanted to add this little detail.

Another shot of the gearbox and gunmount:

I rounded all the edges and corners a lot more than last time to match the original a bit better. Still missing the corner plate but you can already see some of the eda box which i made yesterday.

Pretty much everything i have done so far:

The grey stuff on the eda box is some pvc pipe again, but i had to heat it up and bend it a little to get it to the correct diameter. Gotta make sure the pdd likes it in his spot :smiley:

I also wanted to include another detail thats not in the plans:

And this is what all the boxes look like from the inside:

I´ve always added some styrene strips in the corners for some extra support and also some L-shaped profiles on the outer walls of some boxes.

Now something completely different:

I´ve soldered this together from aluminium already two months ago. Turned out suprisingly well…especially in comparison to the aluminium gun i tried to make. It wasnt a complete failure but some measurements were off. Anyway…there´s no need to worry about the gun anymore because Cpu64 makes one for me :slight_smile:

So that´s it for now, hope you ghostheads are going to like this thread.

More to come…really soon.

2

damn good lookin scratch build you have going on so far

3

Hell yes! This will be a top notch scratch building thread. Great work as usual Bigi.

4

great job on the crank gen! I love those curves :wink:

5

This already looks incredible. Keep us posted! :slight_smile:

6

Awesome job so far. This exactly how I built my mat-board packs on the inside..

Is that instrument bar a solid piece of aluminum? Sure looks like it. And if so, might be hard adding lights.. No?

I have extra ones I can add to the gun if you want.

7

Damn that is brilliant. What are you using for filler?

8

Wow, beautiful work, I can see a very nice pack in the making here

9

Thanks for the nice comments :slight_smile:

Only the piece it was resting on is solid, the actual trigger box and the instrument bar are made from square tube. So i´m going to keep this one, that way i can say that at least something of the gun is selfmade :wink:

I took a pic of the bottom of the trigger box so you can see the access panel i added there:

Its a polyester filler for yachts and boats and its similar to bondo i think. The can said its white and contains up to 20% styrene so i wanted to try this one instead of the red autobody filler i usually use. I hope this one little can i got is going to be enough for the whole pack, im trying to use as little as possible.

I need to continue working on the powercell ribs now, so there will be an update within the next couple of days i hope. :slight_smile:

10

YES!! Bigi I loved your last pack build thread and am very excited about following this one too!! Fantastic work so far :slight_smile:

11

Thanks a lot Nick :smiley:

I got a lot of things done this weekend…actually pretty much everything of the upper part of the pack like putting all the boxes together and filling and rounding seams between them.

…and then i started the corner plate:

Straightforward construction, i just bend a styrene strip and glued it to the already cut out shape of the plate. Then I glued a smaller plate on top of it and filled and sanded the angled part between these. I hope this description makes sense, lol…I forgot to take a picture of it. But if you wanna see how it´s done look at hookers styrene pack thread :slight_smile:

So this is what the finished corner plate looks like:

Next thing on the to do list was the discs for the EDA-Box:

I used my dremel tool to give them a slightly concave shape while leaving the little nipples in the middle of them. So actually I didnt have to use any filler at all on them. Im not sure if this shape is 100% accurate, but it should be close to the real ones…umm…if my eyes didnt trick me while i was staring at reference pics.

Here they are on the EDA-Box:

Also added the missing fins on the left side of the crankbox:

I filled the seam between the crank generator and the EDA-Box before doing this to get a clean look. Then I just rounded the part of the fins which are touching the seam and simply glued them in place. There are still some imperfections in the seams but eventually ill take care of this.

Another pic of that:

As you can see theres the little shelf on top of the powercell too.

Speaking of the powercell…i also did something else to it:

The bottom is tapered to allow the fins to be tapered too while the top fin is at a staight 90° angle.

Its starting to look like something:

I´ve never thought i could do this so quickly, lol. Im for sure not in a hurry with this pack but i had a lot of spare time the last two weeks. And doing nothing but plannnig everything and buying parts over the last few months REALLY made me want to start working on it :slight_smile:

The next step will be assembling this thing:

More pictures coming soon :slight_smile:

12

Beautiful. You, sir, are an artist. :slight_smile:

13

Smooth, clean and beautiful. Sooooo nice.

14

Awesome Bigi glad to see you back, your previous scratchbuild was one of the best scratchbuilds ever hands down and all around one of the best packs ever, definitely in my top three :-). What you have so far is nothing short of amazing, glad to see your going the extra accurate route with the powercell fins, this looks like it’s turning out to be my favorite pack ever. Looking forward to more of your updates buddy.

15

Absolutely amazing.

The way you are able to blend the plastic is phenomenal!

16

Thanks for the kind words, i really appreciate it :slight_smile:

Last time you have already seen the bottom and top plate of the spacer…and this is how it came together:

Self explaining picture i think :slight_smile:

I choose to make a bottom and a top plate to add some strength to the whole thing, mostly because i knew i will have to sand it a lot…especially on the cyclotron. And here you can see why i have a big hole in the middle of the top of the spacer:

Its because it makes adding the cyclotron a lot easier :slight_smile: Its one piece of styrene which pushes against the spacer.

The seam of the bend styrene strip of the cyclotron is where the N-filter will be later so it doesnt really matter that the cyclotron is not perfectly round there.

A shot of the inside with lots of little styrene pieces everywhere for reinforcement:

As you can see the top part is only a very rough shape. I didnt bother making this 100% smooth because the edge will be rounded later anyway:

Its made of two rings and two solid styrene sheets to give it some strength and also to make me able to sand the edge a lot without sanding right thru it and leaving a hole. There are also the little square pieces already glued in place which will come in handy when adding the rim around the cyclotron.

Bending the styrene strip for the rim:

I just left it like this for ten minutes.

And now glued in place:

Its starting to resemble the lower part of the pack :slight_smile:

Now on to the N-filter. I glued two pvc couplers together for this one:

After some sanding it turned out to be very nice and seamless, im happy with it:

Here im dremeling the cutout for the N-filter:

A little action shot, lol

I used quite a lot of filler to get a nice and smooth rounded cyclotron:

And now some pics of whole thing after about 10000 hours of sanding and glueing everything together:

I still need to add all the cosmetic plating and make the center cover but im glad that most of the lower part of the pack is done now.

More progress coming soon.

17

My mind has been blown! This is phenomenal work.

18

Wow thats godly, you do amazing work with styrene and plastic, kudos!Cant wait to see more :smiley:

19

wow great work! i am building mine in a very similar way, using ABS sheet instead of styrene.

20

You’re a natural… yours is a level of craftmanship that’s been missing for too long from this forum.

Nothing else I can say would do it justice.