For the past couple of years or so there's been a bit of my costume that I've been unintentionally neglecting in the preparation for various conventions I've attended: the belt gizmo. Having finally sorted out the problem with the uniform hose, and having gotten around to attaching my angle-head torch to the left-hand strap of my A.L.I.C.E. frame, the Belt Gizmo was the next bit of gear in dying need of some TLC.
As things stand, this is the current state of my existing gizmo:



The paint's now beginning to chip due to how loose it was held in the leather holder, and it was missing the bracket with attached Nixie tubes, which is something I wanted to correct on.

Having spied a board (whose only flaw was a smudge of glue) going cheap as one of the “seconds” Nick was selling, I snapped it up with the intent to make it my new board.

Taking inspiration from Rich (Cheex) and RedSpecial, I've been planning a more significant build with Gizmo Mark II, including assembling (and documenting) a metal bracket in place of the resin one, and a current plan concerning acrylic Nixies rather than real ones… more on that depending on how it pans out.

First order of business was marking out the location of the various resistors, transistors and capacitors, which thanks to Rich's enquiry topic was made incredibly easy.

Once plotted, I set to work drilling the component holes which would be furnished with a mixture of fittings purchased from Maplin Electronics and kindly donated by Rich himself:





Even though not all the components are in place yet (I'm awaiting a set of disc capacitors to arrive from eBay), the current stage of assembly already looks more significant than my old one.

In addition to the parts, and being inspired to do a more significant build thanks to his own, I'll also be taking inspiration from Rich's idea of adding a pair of snaps to the board and holster in order to hold it in place, although instead of gluing it in place like he did, I'll be mounting it in position (where it'll be hidden from sight by the Nixie wires once they've been installed).

Right folks, sorry for the delay… not quite as far along as I'd have liked, but still progress:

The first major step toward getting things back into gear, and for making this board more significant than the last one was to drill the holes for the Nixie tube wiring, as well as the holes for the error box (assuming I'm able to fit it, more on that later):



Sorry about the blurriness, but the holes seem to stand out despite that.
Once that was completed, I turned my attention to the faux Nixie Tubes I'd be making for this project. I'd ordered a metre of 10mm diameter round acrylic rod from my regular supplier clearplasticsupplies, a section of which I cut into 8 lengths of about 3cm long (based on Tyger Cheex's excellent diagram):





Cutting them was fairly easy, although smoothing out the ends wasn't so much. A failed experiment with a belt sander later, I resorted to using the flat side of my Dad's grinder, which worked pretty nicely. Prior to the grinding I'd marked as close to the centre a dot for where I'd be mounting each of the Nixie Tubes to the bracket via a bolt, as I had no faith in a glue to do the job. Once marked, I drilled a small pilot hole which I'd later expand on once I'd chosen a bolt size.

I also marked as close to the centre of the undersides of the faux Nixies, as I intended to drill those in order to accomodate the Nixie wiring.

After a little bit of work, as well as some cursing and a deal of frustration, I managed to get both holes drilled to the sizes they needed to be to accomodate their respective bolts:



At this point in time I'd been considering mounting them to a larger bolt to make the job of dripping the top-most hole easier… but in the end I needn't have bothered.



The faux Nixie, sans rubber grommet to better show the inserted bolt.
Eventually, after some more cursing and frustration, I finally had the holes for the fake wiring drilled into the bases of each Nixie Tube, they aren't perfectly aligned with the centre of the tubes, but thankfully that doesn't matter too much. It's the holes on the top where it's more important that they're as bang on in the middle as possible.



Having had enough of the Nixies for the day, I moved on to producing the metal Nixie Bracket. I'd since decided that I didn't want to rely on resin parts for the bracket, which could snap (I know, especially seeing as I was responsible for the bracket and headpiece for the Nixies being resin on Nick's kit in the first place), so I opted for metal. During a recent visit to B&Q I'd seen a length of extruded metal shaped like an “L”, which I knew would be perfect for the job.

Having measured the width of the Belt Gizmo board, the metal was cut to length.



Following that, I retired production for the day, picking things up again on Saturday where I drilled the holes into the tops of the Nixie Tubes for the smaller bolts:



Which once finished, gave me the opportunity to begin drilling the Nixie Bracket so the bolts that would hold the tubes in place could be given a test fit.



Which, on the whole appeared to work out okay:



However, upon seeing the finished Nixie Tubes I've now got some revisions to make, to a lesser extent on how close to the edge the drilled holes are, but also to the spacing between the Nixie Tubes. Unfortunately I hadn't realised just how much space the tubes would need because of the rubber grommets. An additional factor that hadn't occurred to me until it was too late, is that I should've measured the width of the backet based on the width of the board plus the width required to mount the metal plate to the L-brackets… which easily added up to a difference of 5mm.
So now I've got to cut a new Nixie Bracket. It isn't a complete loss, as it means I should hopefully be able to plan the drilling for the holes a little better… as if I can't sort out the spacing between the Nixie Tubes, I may not have enough space to fit the Error Box.




So that's where things currently lie. The next update will cover the creation of the second Nixie Bracket, as well as hopefully the test fitting for the whole assembly. I may also make the holes in the Nixie Tubes deeper so that they can accomodate more of the bolts that'll be screwed into them.

In the mean time, I need to order a daughter board from Nick, and some wire to fit the heatshrink onto.

Looks great. I'll definitely consider your nixie method.

Today's installment is sadly only a small one, but despite it being a small one, there's been some fairly significant advances.

Following along the path of making this Belt Gizmo more accurate, my attention ended up being drawn to the cable connecting the main board to the daugher board. With the arrival of one of nick-a-tron's resin daughter boards, I was already set to continue my work on the Belt Gizmo… but it wasn't until I saw a page on this forum that I really got a sudden urge to make some progress.

On my previous build, the cable had been a keyring with a coiled wire, attached to the main board with a metal ring through the lowest hole in the main board and celotaped to the daughter board. Suffice to say this didn't work very well for very long, and was inaccurate.

A few days ago I was looking through the Belt Gizmo replicas when I spotted the photos alternatecoppa had posted of his excellent build, and it detailed a method for attaching the socket at the end of an old shaver jack to the board I'd never come across before: a small length of wire, bent into a prong (best seen in image #6 in his gallery).

This struck me as quite possibly the best method for attaching the shaver jack, as other options utilised screwing the wire to the board (which'd keep it fixed in place, but looked less accurate) or gluing it, which I was not a fan of at all as once snagged, it could damage the paint finish.

Following alternatecoppa's design, I drilled two holes beneath the lowest chipset on the right-hand side of nick's main resin board.



I'd actually bent the prong prior to drilling the holes, but the method would probably work as well with drilling the holes first, then bending the wire.

Once drilled, I fitted the prong I'd made through the two new holes (they could easily have been a bit closer to the chip, but they're okay as is).




Once inserted, I plugged the prongs into the shaver jack, and the fit is pretty good already. The grip can probably be improved with the use of some masking tape, or by crushing the copper contacts inside the socket. Additionally, the tape could be used for a surface to apply glue to to glue the prongs into the socket. I probably won't be doing that, as I like having the option of it be detachable if the coil got snagged, but leaves the option open for those who want it permanently fixed in place. It should be noted that coppa also opted to leave it detachable.



Even though the fitting will be improved, as is it holds in place rather well when the board is held upright with the coil danging down.



The daughter board was then drilled to accomodate the wires from where the plug had been cut off. I'll be using Wallabe's knot method (link) to hold the cut end of the cable in place.




I also ended up buying some smaller rubber grommets for the Nixie Tubes, which will be used if the spacing of the tubes on the new bracket I'll end up cutting isn't to my liking.



And that's it, for now.

21 days since my last update? Good grief.
I managed to get a significant update/upgrade made to the Gizmo, and that isn't the only significant update to things… I am now the proud owner of a new Fujifilm S1700 12 megapixel camera… and it is so much better at the detail shots than my trusty, but smaller grade Acer (only 3 megapixels) - see if you can spot where the change in camera takes place.

I suppose there was a certain degree of intimidation in terms of tackling the Nixie Bracket (my name for the bracket of metal that holds the Nixie Tubes), it was a fairly complex part of the Sanyo which even now is not as thoroughly documented as some of the minute details on the other props. Because of that, fabricating a metal one (to replace the resin one left over from the first resin Gizmo kit I bought from Nick) was the next planned update.

I'd made a minor update between today's and the one from almost a month ago, but between one thing and another haven't had a chance to post it until now:



For attaching the plate section of the Nixie Bracket, I would be using two sets of L-Brackets, one with squared-off ends, the others with curved ends. The curved L-Brackets were given an extra pair of holes in order to allow for better positioning on the board. The squared L-Brackets were also drilled to give them an additional hole, allowing greater freedom in fitting them to the curved L-Brackets.



Upon finalising the L-Brackets, it was clear I wouldn't be able to use the two pre-existing holes in the board to attach the Nixie Bracket, so two new holes were drilled through the resin main board:



It should be noted that I'm now pretty sure the method I'm using, a variation of the method Nick and I developed is incorrect for the Belt Gizmo. I'm starting to think Anhcon's method may be closer… but without having access to THE correct, or closest board, we'll never know.

With the first plate piece for the bracket having worked out as a successful test, but leaving room for improvement, I set to work cutting and drilling the L-shaped piece of metal to fit to length, with the intent to attach it using rivets (in order to leave enough room for the acrylic Nixie tubes).



Once satisfied, the squared L-Brackets were further modified, removing excess material from the side which would be attached to the mounting plate:



Once the excess material had been removed and the rough edges ground smooth, the L-Brackets were riveted to the mounting plate.



Once both had been mounted, additional material was removed, this time from the sides that would be attached to the curved L-Brackets. Once that material had been removed, the curved L-Brackets were attached to the squared ones with a rivel and washer combination.




I ended up going through a number of rivets and had to make another mounting plate in order to clean up a few mistakes and make the assembly easier. Once the trial and testing had concluded, I finally had a pretty good end result. This is my most significant piece of metalwork to date:






It still needs to be drilled to fit the Nixie Tubes (and I need to make a template for that to ensure the holes are correctly placed), but once it's finished, it'll be sprayed black. The finished Nixie Bracket will be attached to the board using cut down bolts, rather than rivets (to allow for removal for maintenance).

The plan is to push through the final run now and get it finished around the weekend. Once it's done, I can finally put it in the new Belt Gizmo holster I got from Tyger Cheex.

I can finally post a substantial update to this build log, it seems only fair it should be a major one seeing as all my prop projects are about two weeks behind schedule thanks to the ankle sprain.

Here's where things stood with the Belt Gizmo following the last update:








Three days later, I approached the next step of the assembly: mounting the faux-Nixie Tubes to the “Nixie Bracket”. A process that was easier said than done in retrospect. The holes for the 8 Nixies were plotted and drilled, carefully taking into account the requirement to feature the Error Box on the right-hand side of the bracket.


Thankfully, I was left with enough space that would allow me to fix the box to the flange on the metal plate that comprises the main section of the bracket.



Unfortunately, despite taking care with drilling the holes through the flange, the attempts to drill the acrylic rod for mounting prooved to be less successful, these were the only lengths of acrylic that I was able to fit into position…

It neccesitated a need to return to the drawing board.

However, it wasn't all bad news. The Error Box, a “potting box” from Maplin (link) was drilled and fitted into position, with the window marked out ready to eventually be removed by Dremel. Although it should be noted that the plastic of the potting box isn't as substantial as the larger project boxes Maplin offers, this is without a doubt an excellent option for recreating the Error Box on the correct Sanyo ICC808D board used for the Belt Gizmo.


During the same trip to Maplin where I picked up the potting box, I also purchased a spool of thick gauge of copper wire (2mm) to replace the existing prong I'd made to attach the coiled cable to the board. Two days after I'd found the Nixies wouldn't fit correctly, I turned my attention to the mounting prong for the coiled cable.
The holes were enlarged to accomodate the new wire and a length was cut and formed.


It's displayed at a 45 degree angle in the photo above as I was yet to bend it into its final position, allowing me to remove it for when the board was to be painted.

Following that development, I began drilling the Error Box so that it can be fitted with the wiring, and eventually remove the material to create the window:


Five days after the work on the error box was conducted, I once again turned my attention to another element of the Gizmo which I'd paid little attention to in the prop's first incarnation: the Daughter Board. Having purchased a Daughter Board from nick-a-tron, I set to work emulating the original prop from Ghostbusters II. Taking a page from ollidauss, RedSpecial and Tyger Cheex's books, I purchased a collection of resistors and other electronic components for use on my Daughter Board, but going a step further, inspired by Vlix's excellent Belt Gizmo and Daughter Board build I've plotted out the layout of the components to match that of the Ghostbusters II component layout, but with the colour scheme intended to reflect what littled we've managed to discern of the Ghostbusters Daughter Board.

It should also be noted that although I've included a mount for a 8-pin chip on my Daughter Board, this element is actually already represented by the resin block above it… however I felt that in the persuit of greater accuracy, it was worth including a real chip… this is the level of obsessive compulsive we're subject to.

The final component placement was recorded for future reference, and the items stripped from the Daughter Board to make it easier to install the belt clip. Originally I'd wanted to fit the clip parallel to the resin block in the middle, however due to size of the clip I'd managed to source from a cheap tape measure, I was forced to move the mounting point up to the higher of the two raised discs on the board:

A bolt was then cut down and filed so that it would, once painted, be nearly indistinguishable from the resin that surrounded it.

A cut-off piece of metal from the Nixie Bracket was inserted between the board and clip to give a bit of extra room for the wiring and the component legs once they were fed through the holes that were drilled into the board:


Having achieved a lot of progress with the Daughter Board, I set it aside to dry from priming and turned my attention back to the Nixie Tubes. Having ruled out using a solid length of acrylic, I'd gone back to my supplier's eBay page and looked at what he had to offer, eventually settling on a hollow acrylic rod that had the same outside diameter as the solid acrylic, but had a 6mm interior diameter. In the same order I'd also purchased a length of solid 6mm acrylic, thinking I could use it to manufacture a “plug” that could be used to mount the Nixie Tube onto the bolts I'd be using, and to also separate the plastic that would feature a sticker of the Nixie numeral display, and the wires that would be fed into the base of the tube.


Sadly the plug idea didn't work out, however, I'd learned a long time ago that there's more than one way to skin a cat, and it's no different with props:


Via a hole drilled through the back of the Nixie Bracket into the back of each tube, a tiny bolt is screwed into place, holding the tubes in position:


Once satisfied with the placement, the bolts were cut down so that only a small length of them is used:


I then removed the Nixies, bolts and Error Box so that the Bracket could be primed, and then eventually painted:



Whilst the Bracket dried, I began to add some life to the Daughter Board using some Warhammer modelling paints:

I used Kommando Khaki for the board (in retrospect, too dark) and Chaos Black for the chipsets. With both the board and bracket now drying, I retired for the night.

The new day started off well, with the Nixie Bracket paint having dried off, and didn't present any problems when being removed from the coat hanger it'd been hung from:



Unfortunately as that day (May 27th) was one I'd be working, there wouldn't be much opportunity to get any sigificant work done, and as the approaching weekend was going to be spent at Collectormania, the earliest I would be able to resume things was going to be Monday the 30th of May, a Bank Holiday.

Oh how wrong I was.
A rubbish bus timetable for the return journey from Collectormania 17, a missed train at Bicester North and one of the staircases at the station combined and resulted in a sprained ankle which now, over three weeks since the accident, is still taking it's sweet time healing.
I was in such a state, and immobile that I wasn't able to get any prop work done until the 11th of June. It's likely I could've started sooner, but more pressing matters required my attention.
Unfortunately I had hoped to have had the Belt Gizmo mostly complete, if not finished by now, as well as had made major inroads towards constructing my new 7th Doctor questionmark umbrella (which took a beating when I fell) and my Ghost Trap pedal.

With the arrival of the weekend, I was determined to get something done just to kill the boredom that was plaguing me, so with some assistance, my prop parts, paints and tools were brought in from the garage and I set to work at the dining table. Concentrating first on the Daughter Board:


The main blocks of colour were completed, with patience and due care (that I had the time to devote to) being taken in ensuring the paint lines were as clean as possible between the sections. In addition to the board and chipsets, the raised discs were painted in Burnished Gold and, contrary to what I'd normally advise (as I'd forgotten to do them before the painting), I drilled the holes for the three wires I'd be fitting through the board.

Once the painting was finished, I used a gold pen to lay out the circuit paths and a silver pen to add the solder details.


Once the colour detailing was finished, I sprayed the board with a clear layer of lacquer, and once dry, I went to town reinstalling the electrical components:


Followed quickly with the wires:


I had originally wanted to solder the circuit components in place, but all the soldering iron did was melt small portions of the resin, in the end I had to abandon the idea and just hope the folded over legs would be sufficient enough. I wish there was a neater way of holding the wiring in place instead of knotting it, but I wasn't privvy to an alternative at the time.



With the Daughter Board now finished, it was time to start beinging the Mother Board to life, starting with a course of primer, which I left to dry overnight:


The 12th of June didn't end up being very productive, but I did get the opportunity to fit the Daughter Board onto the belt (I will be providing a comparison piece of Rich's Belt Gizmo holder beside my old one, to show the improvement in quality his has brought):


The 13th was far more productive, and I set to work painting the board. Starting with Scorched Brown for the board, Skull white for the large chips, Choas Black for the smaller ones and Burnished Gold for the mounting pins, large chip details and the contacts:


With the painting finished, I added the circuit paths and solder points:


Two days later, I affixed the snap to the rear of the board using a rivet. I'm considering redoing this as I'm not sure if the rivet will remain in the hole if the board was forced away from the holster.


I also finally reached the stage in the build were I could fit the components onto the Mother Board:



Having seen the mess of wire on the back of the board, I trimmed them all down to more reasonable lengths, and fixed them in place with some strips of duct tape. It's just as well this is going onto the back of the board, as it's pretty ugly to look at.


And that concludes this current installment of the build log. I'm hoping to work on the Error Box soon, as I've ordered some thin acrylic sheeting for that. I'm also hoping to fit the wires for the Nixie Tubes soon, I just need to get my hands on a heat gun to apply the heatshrink, and prepare the graphics to make the stickers for the numerals.