Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Signed by Jon Coulton! 9/9/2011!

[DarkJedi1500]

[Insert funny intro statement here]
Not much needs to be said; I just decided I really wanted to try to make a portal gun. Here is my progress thus far. Most of this build is inspired by the excellent documentation Volpin put out about his builds.
The main barrels of the gun are made from 3” and 4” PVC with two 4” couplers serving as the back section. The two PVC tubes were offset using ¼” balsa and then shaped with sintra and bondo.

The back shell started off with cardboard curves with the space in between filled with foam filler. The whole thing was then paper mached, fiberglassed, and then shaped with Bondo.

Using a dremmel, the center grove was carved into the top, and the hole was drilled to accommodate 1” PVC and be leveled with a mouse sander.

I made two barrel sections for the gun since I thought my original section was too short. Here is the gun with the longer section:

And here it is with the shorter one:

I still need to work on the nozzle and front shell so I should get a better idea which barrel to use later on. Overall I am really happy with the build and it has been a good break from all the sewing work I am currently doing on the subject delta costume.

 

[StaggzCosplay]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

not bad at all man. Hey, i saw your delta suit, and ive got a delta costume im building over in the replica costumes spread, do you mind taking a look at it and telling me what you think? i would realy like to see what you think needs to be changed. thanks mate and keep up the good work!
~rinzlertron

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

not bad at all man. Hey, i saw your delta suit, and ive got a delta costume im building over in the replica costumes spread, do you mind taking a look at it and telling me what you think? i would realy like to see what you think needs to be changed. thanks mate and keep up the good work!
~rinzlertron

Thank you for the compliments but please keep this thread flu used on the portal gun. Particularly I am looking for feedback on the barrel length.

 

[jeremiahjw]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Barrel length looks good!

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Made some more progress on the gun while taking a break from sewing Delta’s dive suit. (I HATE SEWING!)
I do not have access to a lathe, so I had to go other means for the nozzle. Using a piece of PVC I used Balsa and MDF to create the right thickness of rings around the barrel and then used bondo to create the angles surface.

Test fitting this piece with the gun, I am 95% sure I’ll be using the short barrel as shown here.

I also made the detail piece for inside the clear barrel. I’m planning to mold this to get two identical pieces.

 

[EZBSVS]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Hey man, I agree the short barrel is probably the best way to go. But get your front shell built and then see, it'd suck to do it then find out it was too short.... Looks great so far though!

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Some more progress. This thing may be done before the fourth of July!

I made the front shell pretty much the same way I made the back shell; with cardboard, foam, and fiberglass.

I also decided to go with the short barrel, but made a new one with a back piece to help support it in the coupler and a slot for the wiring.

Here was the first test fit with both shell. I also added the wire nubs to the rear shell.

For the claws I went with 3/8” aircraft plywood. The three pivot pieces were made with tabs that slide into the shell for added strength.

With everything looking good I started to paint. Below is the result of 2 days of sanding and painting.

My friend David designed a set of custom decals for the project where we incorporated our 2 Story Props logo into the Apature as well as changed the bar code a bit.

The LEDS are ordered so hopefully I can put up some demo pictures and video next week! Stay tuned!

 

[Grey]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Is that a Bioshock tattoo?

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Is that a Bioshock tattoo?

It was drawn on with a sharpie. As you can see from my Subject Delta build I am a fan of the games, and I was just messing around.

 

[Weaselhammer]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

What are you using for the clear tube and the light tube inside of that ?

 

[Loosewire]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Looking good! I think the longer barrel looks cool too, it could be like a Mk.II sup'd up so you can shoot huge portals, maybe with a ghostbusters style back pack.
But yesum, well done for sculpting the muzzle so smooth and even. The barrel paint job looks HOT!
Also thanks for those very helpful fibreglass casting videos, about to give that a go for the first time right now.

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

What are you using for the clear tube and the light tube inside of that ?

The outer tube is 2-3/4" poly carbonate (McMaster-Carr part 8585K34). The inner rod is a clear 1" acrylic rod (McMaster-Carr part 8528K34)

Decals went on this morning! Clear coat will go on tonight and then both shells will get a coat of wax tomorrow.

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun WIP with Pics!

Self Bump I guess. The claws were finished off with resin tips hot glues on and painted black. The diffuser was made with a casting of a tube end. I couldn’t use the tube end due to the plastic melting when I cut it.

Lighting was achieved with 24 high output LEDs. There are 11 of each color (blue and amber).

After all the circuits were put together the gun was assembled. Here is the final product:

YouTube - ‪2StoryProps Portal Gun‬‏

 

[carlylewis]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Complete 7/4/11 with Pics!

Nice work! I thought the barrel would look better with a consistant glow (i'm building one myself) but looking at yours, I kinda like the fact some parts are brigher than others...makes it more interesting! Now i'm not so concerned about mine! Thanks!

But again, love your work!

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Complete 7/4/11 with Pics!

Nice work! I thought the barrel would look better with a consistant glow (i'm building one myself) but looking at yours, I kinda like the fact some parts are brigher than others...makes it more interesting! Now i'm not so concerned about mine! Thanks!

But again, love your work!

Thanks for the compliment!

The uneven light in the nozzle is caused by the LED ciruit board being pressed directly onto the diffuser. While the diffuse helps the whole nozzle glow, you can see the individual lit LEDs when you look directly at the operational end of the device (You cannot see the off LEDs or resistors so Im happy)

This can be alleviated a few ways. I really needed to get this done so I can foucs on Delta so I didn't try to fix it on this version.

-Increase the space between the diffuser and the LEDS allowing the light to fan onto a larger area.
-Get LEDs with a larger viewing angle.
-Design your diffuser so that the LEDS backlight a solid piece.

Hope that helps.

 

[dumhead456]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Complete 7/4/11 with Pics!

Hey, great work mate looks awesome building one of these is on my to do list i hope mine ends up looking like yours this is really good work

 

[Mad Anime]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Complete 7/4/11 with Pics!

that is......AWESOME

 

[Gareee]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Complete 7/4/11 with Pics!

Good to see another build by you!

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Complete 7/4/11 with Pics!

Last week we took the Portal Gun out to an undisclosed location to get some pictures with an appropriate back ground. Here are the results:

Also, be sure to check us out on facebook for more pictures of this and other projects: facebook.com/2StoryProps

 

[DarkJedi1500]

Re: Dark Jedi 1500's Portal Gun Lab Phototshoot 8/25/2011!

Another Update on the Portal Gun. This Dragon Con I was walking around with the Portal Gun when I was stopped by Jonathan Coulton, the man who composed "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone" He was very impressed with the gun and gave it his seal of approval!

Since the gun is now a collectable I will most likely be making a replacement piece for future use, so stay tuned for a new and improved version!