“Ghostbusters…
If there’s somethin’ strange in your neighborhood,
Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!
If there’s somethin’ weird and it don’t look good,
Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!”
Boy, doesn’t that song bring back some good memories? I remember having sleepovers in elementary school, and spending the entire night watching Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II with my friends. I must have watched both films at least two dozen times, and many people from my generation can probably say the same.
One young man, named Chris Nevlin, is also a big fan of the Ghostbusters franchise. So much so that he decided to create a replica of a movie prop from Ghostbusters II. That prop is the Giga Meter, a device which, in the film, was used to detect ethereal energies (i.e., ghosts). It measures “phychomagnotheric energy in Giga Elecron Volts, which are the standard unit of measurement for high-energy physics.”
“It’s kind of an ambitious project that some Ghostbuster prop fans take on. The body is based on an old handheld power scrubber called the scrubber n’ buffer,” Nevlin tells 3DPrint.com. “Those are really hard to find, so when I finally got my hands on one, I didn’t want to tear it up for the prop replica. I needed to 3D model some pieces for the giga meter anyways, so I ended up just recreating the entire body in Solidworks — in multiple pieces.”
“I have a few of the parts for the giga meter available for sale on Shapeways for people trying to make their own, though I do not have the main body available yet,” Nevlin tells us. “There’s a few issues to work out there. Still, a few people have messaged me on there and ordered the parts that are available and have been very happy to have the 3d printing option available for their project.”
“All of the other blinking LEDs are run by the microcontroller as well,” says Nevlin. “The inside of the body is a rats nest of wire wrap wires. It wasn’t planned out as well as it [could] have been, but it works.”
As you can see in the photos provided and video below, the giga meter came out very nice. It accurately depicts the Giga Meter seen in the Ghostbusters II film. What do you think about Nevlin’s creation? Do you think he should have done anything different? Discuss in the 3D printed Giga Meter forum thread on 3DPB.com.