Proton Packs • Re: kman's neverending HasLab mod thread...

Sorry this update has taken so long. Vacations were had. Good times. Work has been nuts. (Not good times) Plus family stuff. (Good times) But a few mods were still made.

But first, new acquisitions:

I got the new 3" speaker in, but have not yet installed in. The Dayton DMA80-8, the aluminum cone one that’s WAY lighter than the super heavy regular 3” speaker than would normally be a step up from the 2.5” one I have now. In fact, I think this is lighter than my current smaller one! Can’t wait to get this installed and pump up my jams a bit more! I printed a bracket for it from Thingverse, but later, I printed a better one (in silver, below) from the gpstar GitHub instead, as they actually have a hole pattern than works with it.





I got the accurate Arcolight neon lights in from Newark, so I can replace the Haslab lights with the correct red and clear ones: (Slo-Blo, and wand body top, respectively)





I now have the resin-printed clear cake internals in hand, for once I'm done experimenting with LEDs and ready to take on painting these. I’m excited to see how this is going to turn out!



I painted my HasLab stock Alice frame mounting brackets black, so they don't stand out as much. The screw heads, too. SO MUCH BETTER.



Just in time, too, because I finally got my new Motherboard from Redman (just in time for my vacation, LOL):

It's a thing of beauty!



Some surface prep, primer and paint later, it's about ready to install!



Aaaand then I left for vacation, before I had time to install. *laugh/cry*

All good vacations must come to an end, though. I came home to a fun package from 8th Logistics, however:





I’m relieved that the fit is great, just what I would have expected in a size Large. I printed up the valve model from the Q pack files, and ordered a black gear belt, which should be here soon. Kicking myself for not ordering the belt with the pack… I didn’t realize it was as hard as it is, to buy the Vintage style belts in larger sizes. Gotta sand, paint, and weather this valve a bit (especially since I used my lesser printer for some reason), and then I’ll get it on the jacket… somehow. Needle and thread time, perhaps?



I also bought the LED pocket insert from Imperial Supply Depot. Fortunately it fits nicely! There should be a wee bit more red around the border, compared to reference shots, but that’s not ISD’s fault. The jacket pocket is just ever so slightly off there, compared to the Wuxley (but no way am I paying for the real Wuxley!), so the fabric border is a tad skinny.



And I have some extra name patches ordered from Katarra8, so I should be able to put it all together shortly.

But I digress, this is supposed to be a pack thread.

So back to the pack, I started the incredibly frustrating process of installing the motherboard. It's funny, I've heard nothing but raves about how easy these went on for others, so I'm not sure what was so different about my pack, but it was NOT a fun install for me.

First thing I discovered: Sometime after I placed my order, Redman released a bracket kit specifically for those with the accurate 1/4-20 screws in their packs... like mine. But those are NOT the standard kit, of course, which is what **I** ordered. The *regular* screws they ship out (and threaded metal sockets for those screws) were *way* smaller than the ones I have. *sigh*



Didn't matter for the one *internal* bracket, at least, so there’s that:



I am SOOOO happy (for real) to have permanently mounted the two tubes that normally attached through the HasLab motherboard to the front pack parts... finally, those suckers will never drop off again, just because I remove the back board! #Happy



My mismatched screws. I doubt anyone but a small handful of people would ever notice. But it's irking me to no end, given all the effort I went through to get properly-sized screws in there, in the first place.



As to the actual installation, getting everything lined up *just so* was truly fairly tough. The bracket by the cyclotron vent tube was especially fiddly, since it's pushed up against that tube, and really doesn't fit there nicely. It’s *really* jammed up there.



And you have to get all these brackets mounted *perfectly* or the center cyclotron screw won't be centered, the gray bumper thingie that the cake sits on won't go all the way down, and your cake won't go low enough on the screw post to thread on the top screw, etc. Here it is just a little bit off, so it can’t fit down into the hole:





But eventually, I got all the brackets mounted just so, and everything was able to go back together. Phew!! Time to mount the Alice frame... for the last time!



THIS is where I remember that the Redman board doesn't come with any of the nuts for the HasLab mounting bracket screws. They do mention this, in sort of a halfassed way, but some sort of shopping list would have been nice… or, I dunno, actually include a few bucks worth of nuts and bolts? *grits teeth*. (Technically you can also destroy the HasLab motherboard by literally tearing out the stock screws, but... well, see below for more)

Off to Home Depot, where I am reminded the Home Depot is *hopeless* when it comes to metric fasteners, and perpetually out of stock and mixed up drawer contents, etc. Yayy. Off to Lowe's! Lowe's is better, and actually has the M6 lock nuts I need to attach the brackets, and the M8 lock nuts I need to attach the two bottom screws. But then....



Sooo... unfortunately, it turns out that the stock HasLab M8*30 screws are not *quite* long enough to get through the thicker metal of the Redman board, vs the thinner plastic motherboard.



Thaaaaat’s not going to cut it:



And of course neither Lowe's nor Home Depot had M8*35 screws in stock, so off to... Amazon. *sigh*

Two days later, I'm actually finally ready.

The brackets (nicely painted black) went on as nicely (ish) as they did on the stock HasLab pack, which is to say, only moderately well. But that's because I have a vintage (real issue) LC-2 frame instead of the modern LC-1 they were designed for. I'm ok with that. The one bracket doesn't fit, but the rest is more than strong enough.





Oh, and inside, with the frame mounted, it looks like this:



And there it is.

With the frame done, I just needed to close up the battery door cover. This is when I discovered that Redman gave me two mismatched screws: One Philips and one Torx. Whoops! LOL. *sigh*



While I am a proper IT geek and have the necessary Torx screwdrivers, I also don’t want to have to carry that around with me all the time, so I'll just use some M3 sockethead screws I have on hand, which are nice and black anyway.



Those are hex screws, too, but at least they’re not Torx. Now, I’m going to want to actually open this plate every now and then, however, so ultimately I'm going to use M3 thumbscrews instead, per a tip from Jeffrey Nachem. But this will do until those are in hand.

Motherboard is done!











(Apparently my only side pics were taken before I got the right bottom screws in hand, but y’all get the idea)

SO PRETTY

I still need to apply the DANGER sticker to the top, above the Alice frame, but I'll do that another time. (Also well after the paint has had tons of time to cure)

Future mods to come… it’s getting close to the point where I can’t put off replacing the faux wiring of the pack’s Clippard wire shroud with the real stuff.

I ordered a charging mounting block from Chris Hunt, so once that comes in, I’ll be moving most of my pack’s internal switches there, so I can get to them easier without having to take off the pack and open it up just to change NinjaTunes modes.

And I need to get those real cliplite lenses into the cyclotron. And of course that resin cake internal, that's gonna be a whole thing.

I ordered more metal knobs and wand bits from GBFans and Ben of Kent, and another upgraded bargraph from Frutto, so I can start tarting up my Afterlife wand, similar as I did my 84 wand. And I need to get back to finishing the wooden shotgun grip for that same Afterlife wand.

And that ignores the Spirit Goggles I want to tear down and mod...

Probably some other stuff, too, but this post is already too long LOL

Oh, and hey, I got a new toy, a laser engraver, so I’ll have to think of something fun to do with that, once I have it dialed in.



Until next time…

Statistics: Posted by kman — May 1st, 2024, 8:55 pm

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