Low budget Flux Capacitor

[Knightjar]

My son is playing Doc Brown in his school assembly (yes, I'm proud!). He needed a flux capacitor to make time travel possible. There was no budget and very little time, so we visited the Pound Shop. Here's what we ended up building:

Here's a video of it working:YouTube - Low budget Flux Capacitor

There are more photos and brief build description here.

The lights look rather blue in the photos but are actually white. Of course it's not screen accurate, but I think it's close enough for its purpose!

 

[Kingpin]

Holy cow, that's brilliant! Still close enough to pass for the real thing.

 

[lou3433]

That looks great!

 

[Stroudy]

Genius!

 

[Guardian Devil]

Fantastic! I love it :thumbsup

 

[Jedifyfe]

Very cool. Can you breakdown what parts were used?

 

[geentool]

ok, now tell me you re selling this. Its great what you can do with tupperware!!!

 

[Mcfly]

Very impressive mate.
Congrats
Take care Jason.

 

[Lutso]

Holy cow, that's great!

You've inspired me to scratch-build my own and stick it in my car. I'm not even kidding...

 

[Jasco]

Well done, shoot I can do that!! I've never even considered trying, thx!!

 

[familyman]

Amazing, I love this build, going to try find all the stuff at the local dollar store next week. great build.

 

[CB2001]

Epicness! Total epicness!

 

[KramStaar]

Heavens but this is well done!!

Warmest congratulations on an especially inventive solution. I LOVE lateral thinking!

Kind regards

MARK

 

[Knightjar]

Thanks for all the nice comments! It's great to know we've inspired more people to build one too.

Very cool. Can you breakdown what parts were used?

These are the main bits. The lids for the sauce bottles were the best find.

The bag seals are C-shaped in cross section, so you can insert the LEDs at one end and slide them down to where you want them with the cables coming out of the slot. They have various ridges on them which, while not being movie-accurate, look nice and technical and make up for not having any detail inside them. The ends were made from bits of acrylic rod that are supposed to be used to hold cakes together (amazing what you find in your spares box!) and off-cuts of welding rod.

This was the layout with the sauce dispenser lids painted and lengths of mains flex attached to their caps. The terminals on the lids were in my spares box. They came from the legs of little tripod flashlights bought from the Pound Shop for another project. Incidentally, I realised afterwards that the cable connectors could have been made more accurate by using the caps upside down so that the ridge would be underneath the cable exit.

 

[coldin71201]

You
are
a
BEAST!!!!!
As soon as I get paid next week, Imma try to make one for my Chevy Malibu.

 

[tk1055]

OK I need to hit the dollar store now! I want one for my Honda Insight!!!

 

[B4DW0LF]

OMG, I just found this thread... and now Im inspired to attempt my own budget build.... This is fantastic...

I have to ask... Has anyone from the US attempted this? If so where do you find the parts... I mean what are bag seal sticks? I have managed to source the Ketchup bottles, the rest Im sure Ill have no problem with but not sure what Im gonna use in place of the bag seal sticks.... ideas???

Paul

 

[Knightjar]

The bag seal sticks were a lucky find. I hadn't seen them before. That's the joy of Pound Shops/Dollar Stores. You could probably use something like the clear plastic bodies from ball point pens, but it might take a bit of butchery to get the LEDs to fit. Good luck with your capacitor!

 

[steveo3002]

very nice job , good work finding the cheapo parts

did you find the yellow leads cheap here ?

 

[Knightjar]

No, the leads are just pieces of white mains flex painted yellow and attached to the caps from the sauce dispensers.