Richie (Cadeian) and I have finally bit the bullet and begun the process of building new packs for Starfest in April, so that gives us a solid 3 months to get everything done.
Also, Boomerjinks has officially been banned from any and all jobs requiring precise measurements. As we all know, he has the attention span of a crow in a field full of bits of tinfoil.
We’re building our packs out of 1/4" MDF, mounted on Irricanian motherboards, etc.
Did I mention that we’re building five packs?
Richie turned his leather coat into a duster!
Tomorrow is our next build day, and we’ll be tackling the Ion arm.
We sandwiched two pieces of 1/2" MDF together, both cut slightly larger than the total size of the arm dimensions.
Cut it on the miter saw, and got our angle juust right. Afterwards, we cut the sides even and squared everything off, glued the angled piece together with another set of straight blocks, and finally cut everything even. I’m not sure it was necessarily the most efficient way to do it, but I think it came out really clean and the dimensions are correct, so whatever works. (Also, OMG ORBS)
I missed a few pictures on this part, and getting this stuff to nest well while saving space inside for the reason of weight has proved irritating at times as well. On our previous packs, we noticed the Injector Tubes were always slightly off in one way or another, either twisting or torquing, or just inevitably not sitting perfectly straight. To combat this, we decided drilling holes where they go, and fitting a piece of metal or thin, strong wood (probably metal..) on the inside bottom of the powercell and running some solid bolts through the metal into some doweling inside the tubes should provide a strong connection. The recession in the bottom will also allow a strong bond with epoxy once it’s time to insert the tubes.
The front of the powercell proved irritating, we first tried drilling holes and filing them smooth, but we weren’t happy with the results. we ended up cutting strips of the correct thickness wood, gluing them together, and sanding them smooth. we probably lost 1/16" of thickness on the piece, but I think the result was a great looking piece.
There’s a spot here and there that don’t lay down perfectly, but currently the power cell, ion arm and EDA platform are still currently seperate pieces, I haven’t sanded the edges smooth everywhere just yet.
Also, mother of god, we figured 15 clamps were enough, yet we’re still running out! Fortunately, these black and orange clamps are currently $2 each with a mailer coupon, $3 on sale otherwise. Gotta find another coupon!
Our whiteboard has been particularly useful, as you can see here:
Sorry for the lack of updates, I’m really bad about taking pictures sometimes. In fact, I missed taking pictures of the build process of these individual parts, but I’m sure you can assume how it was done based off the finished product.
I cut too many lenses, and I have the spares for sale in the For Sale forum.
These build pictures are actually about a week and a half old, we’re currently working on attaching the finished gearboxes to the side of the EDA, which has had a bottom plate and side wall attached to fix that gap where the Booster base was kind of floating there in one of those pictures.
Next round of pictures, I’ll go into detail on how we’re attaching the injector tubes and building the tube on the gearbox.
Gun mounts have been finished, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I think these came out rather nice.
Damnit, I just realized I didn’t sit the Ion Arm on there, it’s the only piece that’s not attached yet. I can’t decide if it’s worth the trouble to add the fake weld on it. Any thoughts? Probably should…
Sorry for the lack of updates recently, Lots and lots has happened, I’ve just been so slammed I haven’t posted anything! (I’ve missed lots of pictures too, sorry!)
We’re currently missing completion on:
-Sync Gen side walls
-Cyclotron
-Bumper
-Gun bodies
-a few of the easier ribs on the gear box
Other than that, we’re nearing completion. The goal this weekend is to hit the main body of the pack with its first coat of primer. I’ll update with some pictures over the weekend sometime, but for now:
Laser cut stencils for bumper segments, these will be cut out on a router table with two sided tape holding the stencil to MDF while a flush bit with a ball bearing does all the work. A bit overkill, but I’d rather not make five bumpers by hand, honestly. (Thanks John for the profiles on these!)
EDIT:
Awful picture I’ll replace this evening or something:
I wish I had the sync generator top laser cut, but what’s done is done.
