An authentic Medpac at long last!

In the spirit of my New Year, New Gear tradition, I recently finished up an essential piece of my in-universe survival/hiking kit.  Some 20 months ago, I made a discovery – I noticed that the health powerups in Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were essentially the same design as one from an early SWRPG sourcebook:

a bit of digging turned up similar designs in the Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology and the more recent SWRPG Revised Core Rulebook (2002):

As my backpack’s current first aid kit has been stashed in a repurposed extension cord waterproof safety box, I’ve been thinking about what I could use as a container for my medical supplies that would better fit the in-universe aesthetic.

My subsequent websearching did not turn up any dedicated fan who had ever produced their own medical container. This is somewhat unsurprisingly, since of the vast Star Wars fanbase, the subset who build or collect props and gear remains focused on a small sample of items (usually those associated with the small cast of publicly-recognizable Face Characters).
Therefore, I was going to have to get creative. I knew that with a little patience, while my scratch-building skills could produce something that might look right, it would probably not be sufficiently functional for real-world use…no matter how smooth my Bondo is sanded or how much AcraGlas epoxy I use, eventually things will warp or buckle or delaminate, and then the item will be revealed to be a scratchbuilt creation, made of auto filler putty and plastic scraps. No, this time I wanted something that looked good AND was fully-functional. This mean I would finally have to join the modern world and embrace professional on-demand fabrication.

I asked my friend who has the most experience in 3d modeling, and they recommended one ‘Shockbolt’ of Shapeways; I tracked him down and approached him about my idea. His preliminary model blew me away, but was followed by an interminable nine-month lull in with communication (he was moving homes and unpacking an apparent lifetime’s work as a professional geek); finally, last April I acquired the finished medpac files to be sent to my contracted 3d printer…cue six more months of waiting, lapses in communication, excuses, tales of woe, and other such annoyances (More on him later).
Eventually a package of rattling plastic pieces arrived on my doorstep, and I could finally Get! To! Work!
When I first unboxed the components, I had a sudden sinking feeling that the print had gone horribly misaligned and I was still going to have to do a whole lot of scratchbuilding to fix it. Silly me, I didn’t realize that such printed pieces come off the printer with layers of in-fill to stabilize them, and all that stuff can just be ripped out!

Before and after: what a satisfying difference! (the right image is still pre-sanding)

After cleaning up the prints, it was time to bust out the Bondo and start filling in rough-printed areas, sanding down surfaces with successive grades of sandpaper (60, 100, 150, 220, 320, 400, etc) before priming, painting, sealing, and weathering.
At long last, I can finally show off the final result, which I’m quite proud of!:

The loaded medpac fits perfectly into my softpack’s outer pockets, while still leaving some room for other gear. (Final dimensions: approx 4x3x8 inches).

Going forward, I still need to source and install some small magnets to keep the lids closed, but kept in the pack it’s fine for now. I will probably also whip up a Green Cross sticker or stencil to better identify this as a medical kit. The final step is to determine and assemble the functional contents, but that’s a post for another day 😉

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