#4888575
Good to see you back lad, and another great update, the texture did work out very well! Your getting close to wrapping this up, what a journey ;)
#4891436
Looks beautiful mate. I have family out in the Brisbane area and they have said how hot and humid it's been out there recently! I'll be visiting this August for a month so should be cooler by then lol. Again, your pack looks fantastic and I hope it fully cures - you almost want a cold storage facility for it by the sounds of it!
#4892962
Hi guys sorry for the late reply. Been very busy with a host of things including finishing the pack build ;)

VBGBFan2005 the build is based largely of the Steffan plans that can be found in the reference section of this fantastic site. I have modified these here and there to cater for the additional details that have been discovered by the collective OCD efforts of gbfans forum members. Hope this helps.

Barison, the paint eventually dried. The humidity gave me no end if grief. In the end I brought the painted parts into the house and used the air conditioner in a bedroom to dry the air and cure the paint. This year has had the strangest weather, normally we would have cooled down a month or so ago but we are still having bright sunny days albeit 25C dry air instead of 32C tropically humid.

Now today I finished my build with the final placement of the dry rub transfers on the thrower and a bit of pack weathering. I'm loading photos up to photobucket as I type so shortly I post a heap of shots showing how i finished off the build and the final result......

P.
barison82 liked this
#4892963
Just had a sneak peek, looks pretty awesome. I've finally seen a benefit to painting it, allows you give it some wear scratches that allow the aluminium to shine through, also I don't think the dry rub transfers would have looked any good on bare aluminium.
#4892965
Ok here we go. Photobucket is being painfully slow with my photo uploads tonight, but I managed to get up most of the photos I want to share.

Basically the pack has been assembled for about a month now but was missing its finishing touches like the dry rubs, which I completed today. I would still like to find a genuine ALICE frame and straps to replace the reproduction ones I presently have, but that can be done down the track when I find a set :)

The following photos shows a compressed time line build of finishing off the pack. So starting back where I left off in January, test fit of lights into the painted pack.
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Start fitting out the thrower box. In this shot you can see some of the 3D printed limit switch holders and vent light holder I created.

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Top view of the vent light. I went for one of the multi led type boards and frosted the leds with steel wool because they were just too bright. I know that this is not as per the genuine packs but the effect at night is worth the sacrifice on this one.
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Oops this is from another nuclear accelerator (LHC) that I was looking at for pointers on compressing the proton stream :cool:
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This photo shows the thrower and pack connected for the first time, with the thrower clear tube LED cabling connected and powered up for the first time.
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OK the cabling in the thrower had me worried. The Ethernet cables appeared to take up a heap of space and I started to worry that I wouldn't have enough room for them and the barrel servo and linkages. Luckily it was worry over nothing.
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Other end of the Ethernet cables in the pack.
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I ended up placing micro JST connectors on every cable in the thrower as a 'just in case' if I ever wanted to replace a switch etc in the future.
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Starting to look complex.
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Bargraph test fitted, plus Spoungface's bargraph FPC/Ribbon cable adapter board fitted.

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Now onto the barrel tip. I had decided that I wanted to mimic the flash bulb in the thrower tip like others have previously done. I needed a piece of acrylic to make a holder for the tip LED/bulb, and with it being the weekend and limited options for material supply I found a cheap tumbler at Big W that I would sacrifice. Its the base that I'm after!
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After chopping the base off the tumbler with a hack saw I turned it on the lathe.
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After a bit more machining I arrived at this.
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I cut a few flash bulbs with my Dremel tool before I managed to cut one without chips/cracks. This was a very interesting task.
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Getting the wiring down the red tube was quite tricky. In the end I soldered on a single wire to the end of both cables from the bulb to use as a draw string and applied some silicon grease to help things along ;)
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This is a shot of the Arduino that I use for the barrel extension/retraction. Originally I was going to mount the Arduino in the thrower but ran out of space. So I printed up a box for the Arduino and two DC/DC converters and mounted it in the pack under the GB sound card bracket.
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Thrower with all wiring tucked under a carefully placed bit of ice cream container lid to keep it clear of the barrel extension linkages. In this shot you can see the servo linkages and cable tidy that I used to let everything move together without jamming.
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Green hose installed.
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Ecig time! Purchased a couple of the Kanger 2's from eBay and decided to have a go at modifying them up as per the how too tutorial in the forums, only thing is the photos in the tutorial were gone so decided to have a play and work out how these things work. While mucking around trying to remove some temporary air tubing I accidentally pulled the internals of the ecig out. Luckily there was enough wire length to solder on my connections. I must say that I now know more about Ecigs than I ever previously thought I would.
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Assembled Ecig with a chair foot end cap, irrigation system air line barb and wiring for power connection.
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Internals all assembled. Unfortunately forgot to take photos along the way to this point. But, all cabling is installed, Ecig, air pump, fan etc installed. 3D printed Nfilter fan duct made to create an nice and tight internal seal so the smoke only goes outwards.

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All sealed up ready for a proper test.
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Vent test, sorry about the TV noise in the background.


Thrower dry rub transfers now applied. I must admit that I pretty much ruined my first set of these. The first time I tried to apply them they would not stick properly or at all and I made a real mess of them, with the only one coming out ok being the circuit on the N Filter. After a bit of research on the web I found out that you need to make sure that the area they are being applied is clean of any finger prints or oil from our sweat and they are best applied slightly warm. So on my second attempt I cleaned the area with rubbing alcohol (Isopropyl) and gentle warmed up the the transfer and application area with a hair dryer. Once I did this they all went on fairly easy.

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Pre-weathered final product. It looked all so new and clean, I was a bit worried about stuffing it up during the weathering process.

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And now after 2 years of building let me introduce the final product.

I gently weathered the pack with a foam sanding block and steel wool pad, using the original pack photos for inspiration. In the end I generally worked the external corners lightly as I am only after a used for a year or so look, not 30 years of neglect.

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With a day time vent test.
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This has been a real big journey for me, its the longest amount of time i have ever spent working on a specific thing. I'm really happy with how it came out, I know that it is not accurate to every minute detail but I don't think its an embarrassment.

I noticed that I missed taking photos of a few key areas, XLR bracket, rear of the pack etc so I will do this and load them up over the next few days.

I also noticed that I need to change the screws that hold the pack clippard on to socket caps, do'h. I guess that I'm going to keep finding a few little tweaks here and there.

That's about it, I keen for feedback, spotted issues, etc as always.

Pete
twmedford23, Jonobiwan, ccv66 and 4 others liked this
#4892986
Fantastic build! Congratulations on finishing your pack after two years of hard work. The results look totally worth it.

I really like how your flash bulb setup turned out. It has me seriously considering redoing mine using a piece of acrylic rod. IMHO, the white rod and wiring I used stand out too much against the clear the tube :sigh:
#4892987
Thanks for the feedback guys.

GohstTarp I was really happy with how the bulb and tip came out. I like how the barrel is pretty much transparent for most of its length. I machined a small slot half way along the acrylic holder to let the LED wires sit loose while the rod was a snug fit in the acrylic tube. I used a small grub screw to hold everything in place, but this was a bit of overkill.

P.
GohstTarp liked this
#4893007
Absolutely amazing! Like any piece of art, you could spend eternity tweaking it. If there were a few inaccuracies, I'm pretty sure any gbfan would give you a pass considering you hand crafted it yourself. I'd be proud to wear it, until my shoulders gave out. What was the final weight on it?
twmedford23 liked this
#4893652
galeap wrote:Barison, the paint eventually dried. The humidity gave me no end if grief. In the end I brought the painted parts into the house and used the air conditioner in a bedroom to dry the air and cure the paint. This year has had the strangest weather, normally we would have cooled down a month or so ago but we are still having bright sunny days albeit 25C dry air instead of 32C tropically humid.
F**k me what a beautiful pack - I've only just seen the finished MASTERPIECE. Well done mate, and glad the paint dried in the end lol! I did hear how odd the climate had been over there.

That pack is just stunning, you must be so proud of it, I know I would be if I'd acheived that all by myself...I take my hat off to you.

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