I’m new to the gbfans and Ghostbusters in general but I’ve been doing prop building semi-professionally for about 6 years now. I’ve started working on molds for a Vacuum formed pack. I think I can get better results than most of the vacformed packs I have seen. I spent the day working on a few of the key parts.
I’ll post updates as they come.
Construction skills seem pretty good though it does appear that your spacer is a little taller than it should be.
What kind of set up do you have for vac forming?
Not to be nitpicking here, but it also seems like your plates around the spacer are a little uneven?? Just trying to help!
To be frank you are not the first to come here in an attempt to bring on the second coming of Vacformed pack shells. Why the other attempts didn’t pan out, I couldn’t tell you. While I think what you have there is looking pretty damn good, especially if it really is a days work, like Jimbo above I would advise you to go for the gusto and not fudge the details.
Your over doing it. Make the spacer a single pull. Then the cyclotron another . That’s how you will get better detail.make the pack 5 seperate parts that the buyer can either glue or bolt togeather.
I’ve been doing some clean up to even out the spacers and get the gaps just right. I’m not promising the second coming, the fiberglass will always make for better detail, hands down. Just from what I’ve seen of other vacpulls I think I can do at least as good and better in some ways.
I have a home made vactable 24x24 that I spent about 2 years tweaking it and another 5 just useing. Beer Keg Vac Table is from the first month or so of build, there’s been a lot of changes since.
I hate assembly but love building molds, we’ll see how well I can do at it. My second choice would be to do vacuum bagged fiberglass lays. I’ve been playing with it a lot lately and like the results. getting super thin casts that are strong enough to stand on. Could do a fiberglass shell and have it weigh less than a vacpull yet be stronger. It’s just a lot more involved work to do it.
Talking with the local GB group here I think someone has a fiberglass mold that I may try a vacuum bag pull on. I only know the local guys from joint 501st events. We’ve chatted a quite a bit but haven’t gotten together with anything yet.
Well I do wish you the best of luck, as I too am waiting for someone to release an inexpensive but not outrageously inaccurate version of the shell.
Oh, and while you are here, familiarize yourself with the seller rules.
First test pull. I am still missing one detail on the spacers. So far it looks really promising though:
And because I’ve been accused of not documenting things enough, here is a quick video covering the first test pull Sorry the audio is really low, but I go over some of the changes I will make for the next pulls.
Wow, rewatching the video you can see my nice black and blue thumb. while driving a screw in the drill slipped and nailed my thumb and blackened up my thumbnail a bit.
Well hell, I’m sold.
wow, that looks awesome!
You might consider adding the holes for the tubes and where the ribbon cable goes.
Ohh, Just to be clear, I haven’t said at all yet that I was going to be selling these. (not that I wont) This project is specifically for me and a friend for Halloween. I have read through and have always practiced exactly what was in the rules for gbfans sales.
Now the real reason I am bringing this all up here and not just working on it in my back yard, I will be looking to use them as trade value so I can build out the rest of the parts. I will be looking to get a hold of as many original parts and pieces as I can. Just keep that in mind, once I have the molds complete and I can get 10-15 of these on hand I’ll start asking around a bit more.
Well regardless, this came out amazingly well, and for a day’s worth of work too boot! I’d still include intentions for the tubes and ribbon cable, like you have for the holes in the center rings around the cyclotron. Should make things easier for you later.
Yea, this was just a test to be sure that it was going to work at all.
I didn’t video the pack pull, but here is a sandtrooper ab plate being pulled on my table:
something is off, you have 16 cosmetic plates but they dont wrap around the spacer as far as they should.
You are right, I think I made them too small, I’ll have to redo them. Thanks a lot Kind2311. Give me more work to do.
Dont skimp on the details and accuracy. You obviously have the skill to make some VERY nice vac-formed shells so get the details right and you’ll have another buyer right here.
What’s the size of your vacuum motor? I’m on the process of building a vacation table. I think I meed to pick Your brain! Lol
I’m impressed with how it all turned out.
