Back in 2009 some friends and I did some SteamPunk Ghostbuster costumes. That pushed us to work on GB84 packs so we started to gather stuff for the costumes as well as the packs. Being budget minded we looked at mainly Styrofoam as the building material. We were also trying to make the pack as light as possible
We used Stephan’s plans for the build.
Used acrylic sheet as the motherboard
Started the Cyclotron
Some of the tools we were using
We set up a sort of production line to make the base parts
Most of the rough parts made from Styrofoam
If we could find wood or PVC for the round parts we used them
Belt and palm sanders were used to give us the nice surface finish
More acrylic sheet was used in some places for thin items.
For the blue chase circuit lights we got the kit Bk-116 from http://www.bakatronics.com
It took a bit but I finally found a 4 sequencing light kit. This is a Future Kit (http://www.futurekit.com) Kit No: FK-144 for under $20. The kit can handle 100W per channel but I am only lighting up LEDs. Each light circuit uses 4 white 3mm LEDs. The kit uses 12VDC so I wired up the LEDs to also draw 12VDC so I do not have to worry about resistors and such. The housings are flashlight reflector housings purchased from a surplus store.
The red lens are red circular acrylic sheet purchased from the local plastics store. They were already circular which was a bonus as it saved me time from cutting them out.
The Styrofoam takes up a lot of space so areas had to be cut out to fit items in.
To try and keep the pack as light as possible I decided to use 8 AA batteries. Only time will tell how long this will last with the sound board. The lights do not take up much power.
(2016) i am thinking of maybe going with a LiPO battery and moving the location of the battery as later on it will take a bit of work to access these batteries and my sound system takes up more power.
The blue lights installed
The underside showing the wiring that will lead to the main body area.
It was discovered that some parts will probably take some forces that Styrofoam will not handle so these parts are being replaced with wood. Wood also has a grain so I have covered the surfaces with spackling compound.
Working on parts of the costume this item to the left is the hose connector that is on the leg. To the right is the ribbon clamp. I purchased some aluminum strip from the local hardware store and cut with my scroll saw which cut the aluminum easier then I thought.
Almost done the parts.
Amazing work! Looking forward to seeing the finished product!
My first pack was a Styrofoam build. It’s still out there going strong after four years. Keep up the good work!
I did realize that some of the Styrofoam Parts may not stand up to regular use so I did consider other options.
I was quickly running out f room so had to recess the cyclotron light kit into the Styrofoam.
I found some speakers at the surplus store and decided to put 2 of them in the pack. Here is one of the holes being cut.
The second speaker is going into the main body. At the top center is a power strip with 1/4" quick connects that I am attaching things to. This will hopefully make things easier to fix and trouble shoot in the future if needed. To the right you can see the end of the battery holders.
Here you can see the 2 battery holders and how they can be removed for changing.
Trying to keep thing on a budget for sound I am using a Big Dawg sound card. (http://www.bigdawgspromo.com/) This is a 5 button sound card where I uploaded the sounds I wanted. This mean I can have 5 distinct sounds that is activated by one of the 5 buttons supplied. I get 200 seconds of sound with the sound quality chosen. This means I can not get the Ghostbusters theme song on there unless I want to decrease the sound quality.
At the bottom is a 15W amplified needed for the sound board. This is another Future Kit FW608 that cost around $20. This is more then I need but I had this sitting around so I decided to use it. I do not know if this draws a lot of power so I might put in an off switch for this separately from the rest of the pack.
I rarely play the whole song at events.
