Just wanted to pop in and say that I’m building a Slimeblower. My main goal was to make a screen accurate pack along with the Slime Glider gun. I’ve been working on this for a couple months now on the weekends, taking time out for life and all. I started by pretty much throwing out all known blueprints and plans and doing my own research , finding found parts and drawing up my own plans based on those found parts. For now here’s a few pictures I hope to finish the main tank and add it to what I have here:
Here we have the main pack mounted to an Alice pack frame. The two secondary tanks are aluminum with grey plastruct domes. The power supply boxes are folded aluminum, with aluminum heatsinks. The ball is two Plastruct 6" grey domes. Under the ball is the secondary slimeloader quick connect. A few things are missing here like the main tank, loaf pan, light boxes, and primary slimeloader quick connects.
The main tank domes. I made these by vacuforming them. They were renforced with fiberglass and then foam filled for more support. The wood rings are there to add support and keep the dome round while I was renforcing them, they also give me something to attach the center skin to.
Here’s the main tank while I was fiberglassing the seam. The wood rings again give me something to attach the skin to and the zip ties pull the seam in between the rings. The silver markings indicate where the screws go. When all is said and done the screws will not show, since I countersunk them and they are currently under bondo.
Here’s a side shot of the right side this was taken about a month ago so I’ve done a few things to it, like added lights to the pump boxes (power supply) mounted all the fittings and elbows and panted the heatsinks
Since then I’ve been working back and forth on the gun and the main pack. The gun is quite on it’s way.
Made from 4 1/2" aluminum tube cut down both sides and hinged on one side like the originals.
Nice work! I had been working out the specifics of an ‘accurate’ Slime Blower but put it on the back burner.
The key things I figured out are that the pack is not centered on the ALICE frame, it’s offset - you can actually tell from some screengrabs, like the “Running out of time, Ray!” shot. Also the ALICE frame has an extra horizontal cross member just under where the top of the frame bends. The ‘left discharge’ is not a solid box with a hose coming out like we thought, it is just a metal plate with the hose running behind it.
Also, the The ALICE kidney belt was replaced with a beefier version but it still uses the same front fastener; the belt is connected to the metal plates on either side of the pack- that’s what the black piece on the left hand triangular plate is, it’s a strap stitched to the new kidney belt. There’s one on the right side plate too.
I did a rough Paint shoop over Slimer7’s diagrams when I was working things out
My sketch doesn’t account for the quick release coupling behind the ball tank; I’d seen enough to know it was there but not enough to work out the specifics of how it was mounted
Needless to say I was skeptical about the Off-set alice frame, but there’s a screencap in the reference section that could (potentially) show it perfectly.
Today was a good day for the most part, missing that Rapture and all. The primary tank met Fill, Sandy and Spot-putty and finally got primed and set . ( miss any puns? ) . I took a shot after the last primer coat:
It’s missing the spacers on the left pump box / ball mount plate so it’s at an angle a little. Tommorow will see the correct color on the tank. Hopefully I’ll also pull the gun boxes and loaf pan on the vacuformer.
It’s a backpack waist belt designed to slip over the end posts of a backpack frame, with some added straps and hardware. I have one that I bought back in the late eighties that is minus the strap that slips over the posts. My backpack wouldn’t take one of those.
You would think so, seeing the pictures I showed. I have a small pile of heatsinks that didn’t make it, two of the large domes that didn’t make the pull and a few extra undersize / oversize or not quite the right parts.
I’m amazed that the domes came out the way they did. I built a new vacuformer to handle the size of the buck but the heater on the new machine wasn’t up to the challenge. So I put the buck on the my old machine and for giggles tried it out. My first pull was a disaster and I tuned up my vacuformer and the second pull was less of a disaster. Somemore tuning and I came up with this:
The buck is just too big for the machine, the raised edge is the table size and you can see it’s about 1" larger than the buck. Pulling the plastic over the buck was a struggle and it cooled a bit by the time I got a seal on it, that’s why you see some flaring around the base.
My plans seriously need to be updated, hopefully in the next few months, I will have a chance to make the necessary adjustments. Cyland, Im very impressed with your progress this far!
keep it up man.