Exoray, I just have to say how impressed I am with your attention to detail on this pack in getting it accurate. A herculean effort imo. I think of my methods for building my pack and I just have to laugh.
Seconded. I can’t wait to see the V71-X in person 
Ok, well it sounds like honestly your Cyclotron Rings are probably the closest we’ll get, given for variance in the actual packs themselves.
Obviously you have a high level of confidence that your measurements are closer to reference material, for the sake of knowing - how do you feel they compare to Stefans and Seans, and what are the measurements (and placement if possible) so I can add them to the top of the thread?
(also, why do you say the ID should be slightly larger? And why didn’t you make them that way?)
To be totally honest I don’t recall the measurements I used, it was all done literally on the cyclotron not on paper, but I know Stefan’s plans were pretty damn close…
What I did as I said was to literally take a full size (scaled) blow up of a reference photo and mark the locations of the holes, then I measured/calculated a vertical center line for the cyclotron and pulled horizontal perpendicular lines off the horizontal center line…
At that point I had a squared up grid on the cyclotron, and I also had tick marks were the overplayed reference photos showed them to be, I also referenced Stefan’s measurements at this point, and averaged it all together an idealized it…
A little math, a little geometry and a little winging it…
Because the more I looked at it over and over again I feel they ‘could’ be a little larger…
The reason I kept them that size was explained, it’s real easy to drill them out bigger, but if I made them bigger to start with and you wanted them smaller you would have to putty and fill all around them…
Here is an overly exaggerated example… Notice if I drill a bigger hole like depicted on the left, no problem, but if I drill a smaller hole like on the right, I need to fill the green area…
Also in regards to the holes, look at these three reference shots, three different screen used packs… Unfortunately the angles don’t match in the photos, but from my best observations and conclusions the holes are not entirely consistent in size…
The middle pack (PH Minnesota) one appears to have smaller holes, then the other two (PH New York left, Sony Studios right)
Hmmm… the blue label is even on the wrong side on the bumper of one of those packs!
Makes you wonder if that was a restoration issue, or if they just didn;t take as much care on maintainin g consistancy on the packs during filming.
*Nevermind.
nevermind what?
True - the goal I guess isn’t to reproduce a specific pack, but to get as close to a “definitive approximation” of all the packs.
Isn’t that pack on the left the cruddy replica pack that NY has? Certainly looks completely different to the other two (and newer).
Yeah! and the sticker is on the wrong side of the bumper!
actually the entire bumper is on upside down
Nah, Its just the sticker on the wrong side. The sticker is facing the right way up
And the ion knob is mis-aligned.
It just looks a mess that pack…
Is the Ion knob misaligned, or is it just the angle of the pack in the picture? I can’t really say for certain. But yeah, that pack has certainly seen better days
It’s mis-aligned - you can tell by looking at the base.
Anyhow - back on topic…
Anyone have any more insights? Or are better at searching the forum for this stuff than me?
Would anyone be intrested in me redoing the blueprints, based on the Stefan Blueprints, but with the newly discovered details?
I could have them done by the weekend if we want to go ahead.
Awesome Idea!
Power Cell and Injectors Sheet located here.
What is this showing us that’s new, and why don’t the end ribs have “caps” on the top and bottom of the box?
I will preface this with the fact that it’s a nice drawing, but I have to agree with the above…
The whole point of this thread is to improve on Stefan’s plans, not simply make another set of plans… Nothing wrong with another set of plans though if you are going that route…
For starters, I know that the rest of the world uses the metric system, but these packs were made in the US in the 80’s and even today the US is firmly entrenched in the Imperial system… Thus we have every reason to believe they were built using imperial dimensions, the fact that many of the measurement directly coincide with common imperial fractions also supports this as being the case…
To see measurements like 6.97" and 2.01" just screams forced and rounded Metric to Imperial conversions, IMO it should be the other way around if we are heading for accuracy…
Also I note that in your plans you have a at least two 13mm dimensions that are then converted to 0.49" and 0.51" respectively, again this screams forced and rounded and even inaccurate conversions… That is a 50th of an inch (half a mm) difference for what is labeled the same in metric, a quite measurable difference even with a standard ruler…
There are still multiple inaccuracies in your new drawings, even newly introduced ones…
And last but not least I see multiple dimensions skewed from Stefan’s plans without basis, or at least I do not see a reason to change them just yet…
Now if you are out to create your own set of plans then great you are off to a great start, keep going forward there is always room for another set of plans…
But if like the topic of this thread you are out to help make Stefan’s plans more accurate then there needs to be more steps taken and more input given and understood…
Yeah, no offense Ramjet but I very much agree with Exoray here.
Of course - once we get details sorted anyone can create their own versions of Stefan’s plans. That’s not a problem. If they are better - sweet. If not, maybe they work better for a certain group - Norms plans are inaccurate and ugly, not especially easy to follow either, but they are still popular as they do several things really well.
One thing that always bugged me about stefan’s plans was actually the decimalization of Imperial fractions. 1" 1/16th is a LOT easier to read than 1.0625, let alone something like 6.1875 (6" 3/16ths).
Also - to that point, there are few places where something is ALMOST a fraction, but has obviously been approximated in decimal by the 3d software he used. eg - 0.628 or similar.
Those kind of measurements are very odd in some places (though more expected in others), and I’d suggest moving to fractional notation when re-doing the blueprints. It makes a LOT more sense given the units in use.