Just doing my obligatory introduction post. I’m currently a journey level machinist and foreman for a growing company in seattle that does a lot of aluminum machining (mostly 2D stuff, some “3D” is capable) for front panels. I’m also currently a senior engineering student at WSU with hopes of getting into SpaceX after graduation (fingers crossed!!)
Got into this website when a friend approached me about being GBs for halloween last year (2012). Had an absolute blast in doing the research and thinking of the cheapest way to build a pack in time for halloween and decided it would be worth while to make an account on here and try to repay the community we pulled information from.
Our first packs are made from thick foam that was cut using a razor blade and then glued together with gorilla glue. I had the “brilliant” idea to coat the thing in fiberglass resin to sturdy it up a bit…horrible idea. haha
all of the lights we used on the pack came from LED glow sticks and tearing them apart. we would just turn them on to the setting we wanted and just kept an eye on each others packs as they turn off after a certain amount of time.
Wanted to thank the community here for being so informative, providing all the information that you do that allowed us to build our packs. We had an absolute blast doing it and plan on doing it again this year. We ended up winning 3 out of 3 contests last year for a total winnings of $525 that was split 3 ways.
here’s a few pics of us at halloween:
some preliminary design work on the first pack made…
I have aspirations of making an entire pack and wand out of aluminum through the place I work. While isn’t not movie accurate, I think there is a definite appeal to it in the cool factor.. I’m figuring out how to make the parts in 2D and assemble them into a 3D structure utilizing the technologies, and parts, I have accessible to me. As I start this process, I’ll document it along the way as much as possible (cameras are kind of a no-no at work, but I’ll see what I can do). Could it be dubbed a “super hero” pack, if it’s 100% aluminum parts? 
Anyways, end of the novel here. See you all around!