Lots of thrower work - she’s coming down the finishing stretch! I got a little busy building and did not keep very good documentation, though… Oops >_>.
Got the majority of my sound stuff in. I’m going to use the Dayton Audio DTA-2 at the recommendation of Grand Wizard Julz, who’s build is a constant source of inspiration and research (AKA stealing ideas :P). I’ve got another, smaller Pyle speaker coming in to use as a front-facer as well - It’s just on backorder.
And on quick non-packbuilding tangent, I got my PKE Meter holster from Tyger Cheex. This thing is awesome!
First off, the HGA! As discovered with a lot of forums searching (and a helpful post from Vincenzo), both of the fittings on the HGA require a 1/8-27 NPT tap. Here’s the HGA all tapped up:
Here’s the general starting point of the ‘staging’ table - these are parts that are not over in the workshop area of my basement being worked on or painted. I keep the pack parts mocked up due to giddyness.
The second temporary workspace I have setup down there is my electronics bench. It’s very very messy, quite obviously, and will probably continue to be until I get my thrower over there to start putting wires inside stuff!
Speaking of the thrower, the paint scheme is complete. I used rustoleum automotive primer followed by rustoleum aluminum topped with Krylon BBQ Black. Any non-real-aluminum parts you come across (like the trigger tip and shaft collar) are done with the metalizer mentioned much earlier in the build thread. I’m happy with how the black looks all finished up. It comes across in pictures as a little too shiny, but I don’t get that feeling in person :).
All the knobs are attached with screws, tapped into the resin. I may add washers behind if any start to slip.
Interior trigger box view with the washer and set screw implementation
To attach the bargraph, I used stacked double-sided 3M squares cut to size. My bargraph extends just a little bit past the edge of the thrower for now - since i don’t have a frame in mind at the moment this looked best to me.
The wiring for the thrower ears was showcased a bit earlier. To cover it with heatshrink, I pushed the heatshrink over everything and made a hole just small enough for the tip of the red button to go through - when I started shrinking, it expanded enough to where it just needed a little bit of cutting to get the washer on. I didn’t even cut a hole for the orange hat light until all was done - the LED made a hump to tell me where to start cutting :).
The various hat lights/arcolectric lights are held in with super glue gel for now (I may add epoxy later). The clear clip light will be replaced with a ‘real’ arcoelectric as soon as the shop/someone has one for sale again :).
I cut down the reflector considerably to make it fit a little better with all of the electronics. I think it still looks fine from the vent! It’s secured with hot glue.
To attach the LED to the reflector, I used a combo of shiny HVAC tape and hot glue.
Unfortunately here I didn’t take pictures after this. I cut a little hole the size of the LED cable in the bit of tape above, glued the LED into place there, then taped/glued this into the hole atop the reflector. Finished product:
I may add a diffuser of some sort to it to make the LED less obvious, but I think it looks pretty okay!
I held all of my LED’s into place in the hat lights with hot glue. I basically covered the housing then plunged it into the hat light, taking care not to let hot glue get ‘ahead’ of the LED and cause lighting issues in the hat.
Here’s my LED setup going in the tube. The nice bright white flash, 2 orange LEDs and 1 blue LED. There isn’t enough room to put them next to eachother in the tube and when I put the color LED’s ahead of the white it took away a lot of the satisfying blinding white flash, so I put them behind. The orange still isn’t as noticeable as I’d like even with 2 LED’s, but it looks pretty nice! I’ll get videos at some point.
And here’s where we’ve left off in our adventure. Almost completely assembled. I need to trim the excess heatshrink off the gun ear and put the final rear greebles on, then tackle labels and dry rubs (I’m very nervous about those - my first time!).
My next immediate challenge, though, is putting my volume control knob in the thrower. I’m shooting for the right rear knob - I’m just trying to brainstorm a way to attach the knob to the volume control without it being permanent. I’m having considerable trouble with that one - input welcome!
