Okay so straight to the point: I got the idea to make a mold casing of a “general” shape of the pack giving me a lightweight, easy to manufacture, body of the pack; then add other “complicated” parts to it later. However I’m not sure what type of material I should use for this casing. Some sort of composite material that’s easy to shape and mold I would assume, but something that wouldn’t cement the physical body of the pack while making the mold (i.e not being able to take out the pieces of the pack out of the mold would cause problems, defeating the purpose of a lightweight pack). Can anyone give me an idea on what to use? :sigh:
I will start out by saying that if have no molding/casting experience a proton pack is not a good first project to attempt. Secondly, the cost to mold and cast a pack is not worth the investment unless you would be attempting to sell shells. Silicon rubber is what is used to make the molds and is very expensive. As far as casting you would be looking into resin/fiberglass which isn’t cheap in itself. I sounds to me that you are new to molding and casting so I would suggest learning more about it before you consider making a huge investment. I wish you the best of luck for whatever route you decide to go with your build.
i was going to go this way myself, however i realized that to do 4 packs and make them all fiberglass and mold it myself, yada yada would cost a small fortune. i quickly found out that to do this, would cost me well over 1500$, with no guarantees, because ive never done this before, and every “oops” can cost hundreds a shot. So i did some digging and i found this little gem.
http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/gb_protonpack/index.html
the shells are sold at at amazingly low price of 65$ a shot, and since im doing 4 of them, he graciously offered me free shipping, totaling 260$ for 4 pack shells, which can be re-enforced by just about everything from insulation foam to actual fiberglass on the inside.
not sure if this is the avenue you want to take, but for the cost effective, ive found nothing better so far. I scratch-built 2 not-so-accurate, 9 day rush jobs for over 200 per pack, and they werent really anything to write home about, this will save me untold amounts of time and cash.
hope this helps.
I’m not sure why you would want to mold it without the details anyway.
It’s not bad start for the price, the basic shapes are there but I am not digging the fins at all. If it were me, I would sand the inside of the fin areas with very coarse sand paper then fill it with auto body filler, then get myself an electric sander and sand off all of the fins from the outside so it is all flat and just rebuild the fins from wooden rods to make those shells better reflect the real deal.
If you’re gonna go through all that trouble you might as well just do it yourself for the same price IMO 
Thanks for all the tips folks… it came out just fine last October. Made it light up and everything! I’ll submit some photos at some point in time. Next step is the ghost trap 
I’m not a vac-former but I had a similar idea of someone vac forming a plain shell with no details then adding aluminum detail parts such as the spacer cosmetic plates, etc. You could use thin rubber (sheet) for the upper pack fins.