By venkman71
#4911017
Happy Holidays to all you fellow builders out there, I hope this thread finds you well and with great things on your bench. I just wanted to take some time to put up a build thread for my Anovos kit that just arrived.

From what I understand, the build video may be surfacing afterall. I don't know when but as I understand it, it's still a go. Until then, I thought I'd document my build of my personal pack kit so without further adieu'...

UNBOXING AND OVERALL KIT ASSESSMENT

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It comes in a good sized box. Mine was nice and sturdy.

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It was packed in there pretty tight. Styrofoam on both ends as well as a styrofoam cap and wrapped up like a mummy. When you get it out of the plastic, you get this....

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The bumper is lightly attached and you can see the peg the ion arm sits on.

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The rest of the kit is stuffed inside the shell like Tetris. It's pretty cool, actually.

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Here she is emptied out. The L-brackets are fiberglassed in, which is nice for strength but the shell is pretty thick and meaty. Cutting out the power cell will be a bitch. Dremel up.

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Here's the kit all laid out. All of the major parts slot-n-peg in so there's no guesswork. Jose and I talked about a kit like this back when we first started building on the old ASAP boards. NO PARTS BROKEN.

However, there was one casualty....the decal sheet was savaged.
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Looks like she'll spend some time flattening out under a big, heavy, book and perhaps a Maine Coon.
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Here's a closer look at some of the kit components. I recommend you drill and tap all the metal pieces. Brass hardware looks solid. Pretty close to what you see on screen. Resistors slot in on either side of the ion arm. So far it looks like everything lines up but I'll know as I get further into the build. More than enough plexi to trim as you need. V-hook is sleek. Elbow replicas are really nice. It doesn't have a real bellows. It's machined but nice. I'd weather it.

It's like a giant Lego Duplo-Blocks version of a proton pack. I kinda love it. Now,....on to....

THE PARTICLE THROWER

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Mine arrived gorgeous. I have seen pics and heard horror stories of shattered handle collars, vaporized trigger boxes and cracked trigger tips,....I was fortunate to have not had any of that.
On it's face, the particle thrower portion of the kit, (which is, arguably, not only a prop in itself but vastly more complicated than the pack), is gorgeous.
That being said, there are weak spots where design succeeds but structure stumbles. We'll get into that later.

I am going to switch out several parts on the thrower as I build. I am planning on modding the handle so it swivels,.....I MIGHT do a pop-trigger, I'm using all real hat lights and lenses and Clippards so it'll be a bit of a hybrid thrower. For example, I present you this...
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The top thrower is a modified Anovos thrower body and the bottom is the thrower kit as is.
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Here's a closer shot of the thrower, (now attached to the "Shatner Pack"). It's an Anovos body, one of my old forward handle assemblies, my run of aluminum knobs, the rear instrument bar, cylinders and trigger box are from the Legacy Pack molds and the lights are from Jupiter Electronics.

That's it for now! More to come lads-n-ladies!

-V-71 :cool:
echo419, twmedford23, JamesB922 and 6 others liked this
By venkman71
#4911041
A bit of an update...worked a bit in the shop this holiday Sunday. :cool:

ASSEMBLING THE PARTICLE THROWER...

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I started by painting all of the particle thrower parts with A Rustoleum 2X Satin Canyon Black. The parts take the paint like velvet. I let it dry then I hit it with a very fine grade steel wool and then polish it with an old, tee-shirt. Here's a shot of the front hand-grip all masked off for painting. I began with pre-weathering and assembling a few pieces and this was the first.
I masked off both the front and rear handles then hit it with a few coats of Cinnamon Rustoleum 2X Satin to simulate the fadinig resin grip look from the screen-used pack.
You can see it here...
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From then on, I used a sanding file and steel wool to weather the grips to a screen used look.
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Masked off.....
Here's the simulated weathering on the front and rear handles....
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You'll end up erasing 85% of the brown paint but it creates a VERY effective patina that simulates the faded effects of the hand-grips.
Next up....the side-wall discs.
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After hitting discs withe the the Satin Canyon Black, I dusted the lower allen-head screw with the Satin Cinnamon to create a rust effect.
I, then hit it with the steel wool to take the paint down a bit...
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Then I hit the discs with some silver rub-n-buff to finish it off with a great patina.
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From here we see the first casualty of the build. In test-fitting the trigger box, the wall snapped like a piece of peanut brittle. We'll deal with it later, for F**k's sake...
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From here we move on to the Clippard valve assembly. I had some bitchin' vintage machine screws that pretty closely matched the Clippard valve bolts so I substituted the bolts for the ones that came with the kit....
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Hopefully you can see, I drilled and tapped the tip of the Clippard valve. The allen head bolt pokes up from the inside if the Clappard and the top is attached.
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It's a DAMNED SOLID replica Clippard. But the cap MUST be drilled and tapped. The pack one as well. I had some leftover GB Fans metal Clippard labels so Inswitched them out for the build.

More to come!

V-71.
twmedford23, ccv66 liked this
User avatar
By echo419
#4911043
Bummer about the broken part. The legris elbows are brittle too. I broke 2 by dropping one with the brass part glued on and by trying enlarge the hole on the other .
User avatar
By Belmont78
#4911600
Hi Sean. I could really benefit from seeing how you got the blue acrylic into the power cell. I'm still wrapping my head around it. I already Dremel down the outer hole but the insides are a little tricky.
By venkman71
#4912271
Belmont78 wrote: December 30th, 2018, 11:13 am Hi Sean. I could really benefit from seeing how you got the blue acrylic into the power cell. I'm still wrapping my head around it. I already Dremel down the outer hole but the insides are a little tricky.
I literally sand the edges of the blue acrylic until it pressure-fits into the power cell window frame.

I started doing this because the surface of the inside of any given shell is so irregular.

-V71
User avatar
By deadderek
#4912274
Okay. Your build looks awesome but Anovos REALLY drops the ball on communicating with customers, including wildly inaccurate instructions. Looking forward to build video.
User avatar
By da_rambler20
#4912723
Definitely following this thread. Gonna start my build soon hopefully. Really wish Anovos would reply about replacing pieces that were damaged in the box upon arrival. Man their CS sucks.
User avatar
By deadderek
#4912724
They honestly shouldn't be in business. Their disgusting excuse for their piss poor communication and lying to customers is absolutely unacceptable.

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