Can You Believe This Portal Gun Was Built From Scratch?

October 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

This Portal gun will really make [aNoodleJMC’s] costume pop this year. She actually built the video game weapon replica from scratch. It even includes some electronics to light it up blue or orange depending on which portal she’s planning to fire at an available flat surface.

There’s a lot of parts that went into the project, but by far our favorite one on the list is an acrylic toilet plunger. Its handle serves as a light pipe for the colored LEDs and can be seen above as a cloudy rod at the center of the clear barrel. A 4″ and 3″ PVC pipe helped to form the rest of the barrel, along with a 3″ clear acrylic pipe for the transparent areas. The bulbous parts of the body were sculpted from florist’s foam. Once she had all of the parts roughed out it’s obvious that [aNoodleJMC] spent a ton of time filling problem areas with Bondo, sanding everything smooth, and giving it a paint job she can be proud of. We hope she didn’t forget to include GLaDOS in the fun.

We actually just bought our Portal gun. But that’s because we had the big plans of adding the ability to levitate objects.

[vai reddit]

Fembot Costume Includes Smoking Nipples

October 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

The greatest of Halloween costumes start with an idea, but they’ve also got to have strong execution to pull the whole thing off. This year [Johanna Jenkins] decided to put together a Fembot Halloween costume which is a wonderful example of this concept. Going as a Fembot from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery sounds like a lot of fun right off the bat, but a bit of work at the sewing machine and access to a wig shop in Hollywood really brought it to the next level. But [Johanna] didn’t stop at that. The Fembots have machine guns in their bras. After they’ve torn through all of their ammo they’re left with smoking barrels as nipples, and that final touch even made it into the costume. In the video after the break you can see [Johanna] showing off the small battery operated fog system she piped into the costume bra.

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Ironman Replica Twofer

May 23, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

We think it’s a bit to late to show up for a screening of The Avengers in full costume, but an arc reactor T-shirt would be pretty cool. [4ndreas] built a chest strap that looks much like [Tony Stark’s] chest-mounted power source. It has a 3D printed enclosure which hosts the ATmega8 and 22 LEDs which provide the pulsing goodness. The thin cellphone battery helps to keep the size of the package to a minimum ~~and a strategically placed hole in a black T-shirt completes the look~~. It’s even bright enough to shine through the fabric of this black T-shirt.

But if you insist on head-to-toe regalia you’ll appreciate [James Bruton’s] Ironman suit replica build. Not only does he look the part, but he’s trying to build as much functionality into the project as possible. Most recently he finished the helmet. It’s got a motorized faceplate and LED edge-lit eye plates to impress hackers and cosplay fans alike.

Find video of both projects after the break.

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Worried About Haloween This Year? Why Not A Giant T-Rex Costume?

February 23, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 12 Comments

Although some might note that [Jamie]’s creation could mistaken for a Velociraptor or even Allosaurus, his giant T-Rex costume/model is quite a feat of artistry. It stands at over 14 feet tall and 10 feet long. For comparison, the room that you see in the picture above measures 25 x 25 feet. If you happen to live in the Atlanta area, or are willing to travel, this costume is expected to make an appearance at Dragon*Con in 2012, so be sure to look for it there.

The whole thing is made from poly foam plank cut with a CNC router. It also has a metallic support structure. As noted in the article, you could, in theory, cut all these parts out by hand. Persistence would be required though, since there are over 140 parts!

[Jamie]’s making capabilities are obviously quite advanced at this point, but he’s trying to expand them by winning a router in the Instructables Shopbot contest. If you like his creation, be sure to vote for him! Check out the video of this costume in action after the break. Continue reading “Worried About Haloween This Year? Why Not A Giant T-Rex Costume?” →

Halloween Hacks: The Headless Dogman

November 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 4 Comments

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headless_horseman_dog_costume

Typically, when people hear that you’ve made a Halloween costume for your dog, the statement is met with the eye rolling and polite lies about how cute the outfit is. There are few exceptions to this rule, and [Dino’s] latest creation is one of them. For this week’s entry in his Hack a Week series, he created a “Headless Horseman” costume for his dog [Sophie].

The costume borrows parts from one of his previous hacks, the Hexababy. Reclaiming the dismembered head from the disturbing crawler, [Dino] reattaches it to the doll’s body, just not in the traditional manner. He screws the baby’s head to the arm of the doll after fashioning its outfit from some scrap cloth. The doll’s head retains it’s beady red LED eyes from the previous project, but [Dino] added a tilt switch to the setup so that they light up sporadically as the dog runs about.

Be sure to check out the video below to see the final result of [Dino’s] work. The doll looks great, though it seems that its saddle needs some reinforcement to handle [Sophie’s] bountiful energy stores.

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Halloween Hacks: Arc Reactor Costume

October 28, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

Halloween is the time of year where you can dress up as a pirate, muppet, or superhero and no one will bat an eye. During this holiday of expanded social permissiveness, [Nbitwonder] decided that building an Arc Reactor from Iron Man would be appreciated by his engineering cohort.

The ‘body’ of the reactor was manufactured on the RepRap Mendel we covered from beginning to end. A few minutes with Google Sketchup was all that was needed to generate the files and send them to the printer. In a few short hours, [Nbitwonder] had the body of his Arc Reactor.

The board design was thrown together in Eagle and etched. 11 blue SMD LEDs were thrown into the mix along with some borrowed resistors. Pieces of a hard drive spindle and a little bit of wire rounded out the parts list, and everything was assembled with the DIYers favorite tool, the hot glue gun. Not a bad job for a few hours of work.

The files for the Arc Reactor are up on Thingiverse along with a Flickr photoset.

ATtiny Hacks: Robot Halloween Costume

September 24, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

When it comes to Halloween costumes, [Michael] doesn’t like buying expensive and poorly made bits of cloth and fabric that resembles [random Disney character]. Last year, his son decided to be a robot for Halloween and although gray spray paint and dryer vent hose make a very good costume, that only goes so far. The robot needed lights, so [Michael] spent a little time on this build that blinks a few LEDs in a random pattern.

The build is very simple; an ATtiny13 drives two 74HC595 shift registers. The code – all 30-odd lines of it – uses the random() function to shift high or low values to the shift registers. After pausing for a little bit, the cycle continues and a new patterns of LEDs light up.

The electronics of the robot costume could be easily transferred to another theme – astronauts need LEDs on their backpack, and of course aliens communicate with blinking lights. In any event, it would avoid last year’s fiasco with a dozen [Heath Ledger] Jokers. Check out the video of [Michael]’s intergalactic robot son after the break.

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