Monthly Archives: April 2017

Ghostbusters Project: The first money shot

A couple of minor updates within the last few days, that in itself were not big enough to warrant a blog post, but now..

First off, I took the daring step of drilling hole in my shell for the split loom. I had previously 3d printed a loom holder, and it was time to jump off the cliff..

I marked off where the loom would pass through the shell, and step drilled the hole up to 30mm, which was the diameter of my holder, then used my dremel to cut down from the half circle to the bottom of the shell.

A little sanding and filing, and it turned out pretty good.

Can’t wait for my proper motherboard to arrive so I can start mounting things. I did have to bondo and sand and repaint a bit around the hole, but that was fixed as well as the bondoed piece on the right.

In addition to this, I got a new shipment of fun pieces. Not all of these are accurate, but to my defense, I ordered some of these prior to finding the proper ones.

Having almost all pieces in place, I decided it was time for my first pic with placement of most parts.

I still intend to replace most resin parts with aluminium, but until I have them, the resin parts will do.

It was about here I found how wonky some parts of the shell is. The upper left corner where the ion arm is supposed to sit had a height difference of 3 mm from the corner to the inner corner of the ion arm placement. I had to balance the resin ion arm (that I had sanded flat) on an m3 nut on the inner corner for it to not fall down.

To fix this, I decided to mask off parts of that shell, sand down the highest points and add loctite putty to build up a base. It took me about 45 minutes to fix, but the result was pretty good.

You can clearly see the bulk that was build up. Dry fitting with the ion arm leaves this:

Nice and flat!

The shell went out on the balcony for a bit of touch up on the hammerite black paint, and once that’s dry, most of the shell work should be done.

I also hot glued in my coloured lenses for the power bar and the cyclotron…

… only to realize that I have RGB LED’s in my light pack, and the program does four different colours, so I had to cut them off. Oh well 🙂

I also took out the metal parts and the black glossy plastic box of my 3d printed ghost trap, courtesy of countspatula and went over them with flat black before assembling again.

I have built in a remote control in my pedal to not have to use the hose for anything functional at all, and I decided to also wire up the LED on the remote to a small LED on the pedal. It is not very bright, but a nice little addition, I think.

 

By |2017-04-14T16:53:59+02:00April 14th, 2017|Building, Costuming, Ghostbusters Proton Pack, Stormtrooper|Comments Off on Ghostbusters Project: The first money shot

Ghostbusters Project: Shell base painted

One of the ideas I’ve had is that the reference picture I’ve seen seemed to point to the shell being painted with a hammered look, and the things put on it, on a flat black.

I searched for a good colour that might have some texture or depth into it, and came across Hammerite, which is essentially used for painting steel.

I’ve primed my proton pack for painting over the weekend, and late last night I masked off the areas I wanted to be flat black and went over it with hammerite.

It is a bit shiny at the moment, but that will dull down slightly once I apply my non glossy clear coat.

For now, I’ll leave you to bask in its glory:

By |2017-04-10T07:57:14+02:00April 10th, 2017|Building, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters Proton Pack|Comments Off on Ghostbusters Project: Shell base painted

Ghostbusters Project: Shell updates and updated motherboard

Continuing where I left off late yesterday evening, I put in a little of work this morning as it is going to be a really great first day of Spring, we are planning to have a family outing later on, so some things have to be done now!

First off, my fiancĂ©e caught me in the shower doing something I didn’t want her to know I was doing..

NO! Not that! Shame on you!

I was wet sanding my proton pack!

After I left off yesterday evening, I had sprayed my proton pack with body filler and started to sand with 180 grit sandpaper and this morning, in the shower, I was wet sanding the entire pack with a much smoother 400 grit sand paper.

It came out quite well. The irregularities I wanted to get rid of, were at least good enough. The ones that are left will be covered by the hammered texture paint, or behind things that are mounted on top of the shell

Next up, drying the shell off and take it outside where I let it sit for a few minutes before it was time to spray it again.

The key to get a good coat is to build it up in small layers.

After going over it a few times (still will go over some parts one more time), this is what I’m left with.

It is hard to see the difference on the picture, but the shell is much smoother and some irregularities and blobs of resin and air bubbles have now been sorted. The shell is still a bit wonky though. Maybe I should do a Wonkman instead of Venkman pack… 😉

(The original packs were wonky as well)

Lastly, I had my friend Tommi K. send me an outline of his motherboard for his Nick-a-tron shell, as the gbfans motherboard I bought did not fit.

I come from the world of R2-D2 building where all measurements are agreed and therefor all parts fit everything. This is not the case here, but no biggie.

I took the outline, cut in 3 parts and scanned it with an A3 scanner at work, then worked with tracing the outline in my CAD program until I came up with this:

I will print the outline of it and test fit a dummy mockup before I send this off to another friend with a CNC cutter to cut my own, perfectly fitting, motherboard.

By |2017-04-09T11:19:54+02:00April 9th, 2017|Building, Costuming, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters Proton Pack|Comments Off on Ghostbusters Project: Shell updates and updated motherboard
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