Hi everyone! Well, since Halloween is quickly approaching, I figured I’d post this to show people you don’t need to drop a few grand to build a nice pack. Back in August, I was commissioned by my friend’s wife to build him a proton pack for his October 1st birthday. The pack would have a budget less then other packs I’ve built for myself, so I set out to try some new things and I wanted to share. The one caveat of this build was I, along with 2 other people, donated parts to the build (mainly real hardware and lights). So I will discuss what you can do to get similar results on a budget.
The Pack
The cheapest way to get a “shell” for your proton pack is, honestly, to scratch build it. You can find 4’ x 8’ sheets of styrene on Ebay for $50 shipped. So technically, you could then scratch build a shell from that and some plastic glue for less then $70.
This build had a time limit to it of 2 months so I did not have enough time to completely scratch build a shell. What I opted to do was go with one of Austin’s vacuum formed shells. I chose his shell because it was way cheaper than a fiberglass shell ($150), but I could create a “crisper” looking pack then if I went with any of the other vacuum formed shells that were currently on the market at the time.
Austin’s shell comes as the basic shape of a proton pack but without any of the detail pieces, such as the ribs, cosmetic plates, EDA Discs, etc. Here is a photo of it shortly after I got it from him. In this photo, I have already begun to clean up the “webbing” (that happens to all vacuum formed proton pack shells) and cut the powercell and cyclotron rings out; attached the cosmetic plates around the sync. gen; attached the N-Filter; and I have a bumper just sitting on it, to see how it looks on the shell.
I scratch built the rest of the ribs, discs, and any other detail pieces that are permanently attached to the shell, then primed it.
So far on this build, its cost less then $200 to get to this point.
Now, an issue that is inherent with using a vacuum form plastic shell is they are flimsy. I’ve seen people reinforce the inside of their shells like this with wood blocks where they could be any stress on the shell. I decided to try something different. With supplies you could get from any auto parts store, my friends and I set out to fiberglass the inside of shell. You can buy a 1/2 gallon fiberglassing kit for less then $20.
Cost at this point? Around $220.
With the shell fiberglassed and all the detail pieces attached and primed, I moved onto the “tubing” of the pack. I used a combination of Schedule 40 1" PVC pipe and acrylic tube. The PVC is extremely cheap from a hardware store, and I purchased both 2.5" and 2.75" Acrylic tube off ebay in 12" lengths for less than $15 a piece. So it would cost about $40 at most (tubing, plus 1" wood dowel and filler putty) for all the tubing for the pack.
Everything I capped using the 0.125" styrene mentioned earlier. The Ion arm was also scratch built from that. If you feel up to it, you could also scratch build a bumper from the stuff. The bumper on this build was one of the “donated” parts.
Which now brings us to this:
On this particular pack, all the hardware, such as the resistors, shock mount, and clippard valve on the pack are real, and were donated to the build. BUT you can easily get all these things in resin for a fraction of the cost of buying the real things. You could easily get all of them in resin for about $15 from Nick-a-tron. The booster frame on this pack is also from Nick.
The Motherboard was 1/4" MDF, cut custom for the shell. That was like $5 for the sheet of MDF. The pack was mounted to a LC-2 ALICE Frame, which you can find on ebay relatively cheap as well.
You add $50 for paint and all the hardware (nuts and bolts), $10 for the blue/red acrylic lenses, $30 for the metal ion arm cap, and another $30 for the frame and that brings us up to about $400 for the pack.
The Neutrona Wand
I have built a few proton packs so far in my time here in the community. With each build, I like to try something new. My first pack, I scratch built the gun. Second pack: I used a Multimediamayhem gun kit. Third pack: a ThrowingChicken v2 gun kit. With this pack, I wanted to try out Nick-a-tron’s recently redesigned gun kit.
For all things I ordered from Nick, it came to about $200, shipped. His kit comes with all the parts to finish it up. Here’s some construction shots of the gun:
Bringing It All Together . . .
So at this point, you dropped about $600 and you have this:
For labels, I took the Hprop .pdf to Kinkos and had them print it up on sticky paper. I then laminated the one side of the stickers to protect them a little and give them a glossy finish.
The last few things you’d need would be the brass clippard hardware, a ribbon cable and the clamps for that. You can get those from a variety of places, such as the GBfans store or multimediamayhem and won’t cost you much from either.
So with the last of the parts you need attached, along with you spiffy self made labels, your “budget” pack should be looking something like this:
So now you have a proton pack that you built yourself that looks just as nice as some of the packs that people drop over a grand for! Is it really a “budget” pack? Not really, because to get to this point it would have cost you probably about $700 dollars. There are cheaper ways of going about it but with a time limit and a price range to work in, this is what I came up with. A lot of the small details are where you start to get nickel and dimed. And it adds up. But you can’t argue with the results.
So that’s my little adventure with building a commissioned pack on a budget. Did the one pictured here cost this much? It cost less but also had a lot of parts donated to it, making it worth a lot more then what was paid for it. I wrote this up to give people alternate ideas for getting their own packs done and to give them idea of how it can look. Take away from that what you will. Anyway, thanks for reading!
