Update Time!
Hey everyone! Its been a few months, but its finally time again for an update. I decided to wait before doing an update this time since I realized my last few posts have been a bit lackluster. A lot has happened this past summer, namely with my old pack I mentioned here and there. I’m going to split this update into three posts, one for the build of my old pack, one for the lessons learned from it, and one for my new pack to try and avoid muddying up everything, although I apologize in advance if this post is super messy.
For context, one year ago, I was in a rush to build a proton pack in less than a month to go to Fan Expo with it. I couldn’t finish it in the end, but Fan Expo was still just as fun without it. This year I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to Fan Expo but at the last minute my friends and I decided to go. This left me with the possibility of finishing my old pack again, so for a week, I devoted my time to try and finish it into a state that was good enough. I didn’t really care all that much while constructing it, so a lot of the techniques I used were shoddy at best. The experience of building it taught me a lot of lessons. Theres a few notable ones to take into account that I will get into but for now I’ll share some progress pictures of it.
Heres the pack before I started.
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A lot of the old parts were too damaged to use, so I substituted them with my scrap parts from the new version.
![Image]()
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Heres the pipes I cut from pvc.
![Image]()
For the booster frame, I was going to be lazy and just cut the general shape of it, but I decided to have some fun with it and it turned out way better than I expected!
The cardboard ripple texture is not perfect, but its not bad for anyone looking to replicate it without much thought.
![Image]()
At this point I got lazy with the picture taking. I textured it with homax wall spray, painted it with black semi gloss, and glued everything on with hot glue, including the pipes, brass fittings from home depot, tubes, and the light kit I got from ebay for the pack a year ago.
![Image]()
I bought a 3D printed v-hook that I was going to use for this pack to connect it with my hasbro wand. I just found some random bolts to use to screw the v hook into the pack, but it didn’t work so well, so I just carelessly slathered a bunch of hot glue all over the place to further reinforce it which (somewhat) worked. I will get into this more later.
![Image]()
Heres a fun experiment I decided to try. Foam core is not a super stable material, a lot of other scratch builders who have used foam core have thought about using fibreglass to reinforce the inside, but its not cheap nor easy to use. I still wanted to reinforce mine, so an idea I’ve always had was to use multiple layers of paper mache on the inside of the pack. I wasn’t sure how well it was going to work, so I tried it with two layers all throughout the pack and to my amazement, it made the pack a lot more rigid!
![Image]()
For the motherboard, I was too lazy to find anything actually stable enough to use, so I just used more foam core and again paper mached it. I then made some l brackets out of foam core again for the shell to bolt onto. For the alice frame, I used bolts at the bottom where the frame had holes to bolt it onto the foam core and then I ziptied it at the top.
![Image]()
![Image]()
With that, the pack was “done” for Fan Expo.
![Image]()
Thanks for reading this super messy post!
Hey everyone! Its been a few months, but its finally time again for an update. I decided to wait before doing an update this time since I realized my last few posts have been a bit lackluster. A lot has happened this past summer, namely with my old pack I mentioned here and there. I’m going to split this update into three posts, one for the build of my old pack, one for the lessons learned from it, and one for my new pack to try and avoid muddying up everything, although I apologize in advance if this post is super messy.
For context, one year ago, I was in a rush to build a proton pack in less than a month to go to Fan Expo with it. I couldn’t finish it in the end, but Fan Expo was still just as fun without it. This year I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to Fan Expo but at the last minute my friends and I decided to go. This left me with the possibility of finishing my old pack again, so for a week, I devoted my time to try and finish it into a state that was good enough. I didn’t really care all that much while constructing it, so a lot of the techniques I used were shoddy at best. The experience of building it taught me a lot of lessons. Theres a few notable ones to take into account that I will get into but for now I’ll share some progress pictures of it.
Heres the pack before I started.
A lot of the old parts were too damaged to use, so I substituted them with my scrap parts from the new version.
Heres the pipes I cut from pvc.
For the booster frame, I was going to be lazy and just cut the general shape of it, but I decided to have some fun with it and it turned out way better than I expected!
The cardboard ripple texture is not perfect, but its not bad for anyone looking to replicate it without much thought.
At this point I got lazy with the picture taking. I textured it with homax wall spray, painted it with black semi gloss, and glued everything on with hot glue, including the pipes, brass fittings from home depot, tubes, and the light kit I got from ebay for the pack a year ago.
I bought a 3D printed v-hook that I was going to use for this pack to connect it with my hasbro wand. I just found some random bolts to use to screw the v hook into the pack, but it didn’t work so well, so I just carelessly slathered a bunch of hot glue all over the place to further reinforce it which (somewhat) worked. I will get into this more later.
Heres a fun experiment I decided to try. Foam core is not a super stable material, a lot of other scratch builders who have used foam core have thought about using fibreglass to reinforce the inside, but its not cheap nor easy to use. I still wanted to reinforce mine, so an idea I’ve always had was to use multiple layers of paper mache on the inside of the pack. I wasn’t sure how well it was going to work, so I tried it with two layers all throughout the pack and to my amazement, it made the pack a lot more rigid!
For the motherboard, I was too lazy to find anything actually stable enough to use, so I just used more foam core and again paper mached it. I then made some l brackets out of foam core again for the shell to bolt onto. For the alice frame, I used bolts at the bottom where the frame had holes to bolt it onto the foam core and then I ziptied it at the top.
With that, the pack was “done” for Fan Expo.
Thanks for reading this super messy post!
Statistics: Posted by OnEdge — September 6th, 2024, 3:51 pm