Well, after finally getting a new video camera, then realizing it took pictures, I can finally upload pictures and video easily. Expect more of my shit.

To start, here is my PAS with a CPVC speedloader. Universal Coupler, [k25]. Ranges are about 97' with good darts.

Trigger and Priming Bar were made by Louie. He makes great stuff.

And because I hate when all of you guys do this, MONEY SHOTZ YO!

Yeah, eat that.
For shits and giggles, I put on a flashlight. Works well too.

From the front:

With the light on:

My latest WIP
Kickin' it OldSchool

Man this thing truely is vintage! It's like the third Super Soaker ever made.

Well here are the two guns I have completed recently:


Big Bad Bow
Mods done:
AR removal, nitefinder spring addition, PVC spring rest, minimization, CPVC coupler. Hits mid 80's. Good loner gun.



Now for my newest gun:
Lanard Shotgun
Thanks for the help with it guys!
Mods done:
Singled, universal coupler, PAS spring replacement, torsion spring moved, trigger shaved down, E-taped plunger head, E puttied priming mech. Still have to glue on a stock. I love this gun. (I bought two)
It's hitting around high 70's with the PAS spring. Both were very fun guns.

 

Finally got the hopper and barrel mount added to the IPAC. Still need to change up the pumpgrip, forward mount, and stock. At least its evolving...slowly.

 

 

 

Peep that iron sight

 

 

Peek-a-boo!

 

Writeup here

Been hoping post #200 would have been something cool, and I didn't fail. Finally got this build at a functional state over spring break. Been about a year in the making (mostly because no writeup for this exists):

 

 

Standard Rainbow Pump: full [[[[[[k26]]]]]] and 7" draw length. Still not completely finished. Still have to sand parts down, countersink screws for comfort, build a stock plate, rework the trigger and catch, put a spring spacer in, and straighten out the bushing a bit. Still kicks like a fuckin' mule though. This was a very satisfying build on a very cool looking project.

 

 

The handle is a 1 1/2" PVC Wye/Tee combination. Been using it on every functional homemade I've created. Surprisingly comfortable.

 

 

And who would I be if I didn't use a speedloader only on this thing? Some things never change. Maybe after this semester is over I will finally get around to making a hopper...

 

 

Family photo with the NRev +Bow made by Louiec3 WAY back in the day. Both have similar performance too. Couldn't be happier.

I've had nearly any free time with design work in and out of classes, and a two month study abroad in Ireland, but this is finally done:

 

 

 

 

Machined PCSR: Created on the instruction and templates of Captain Slug here

 

 

Realistically there is still a few more things to do until it's done (permanently securing the elbow into the blaster, making a hopper, improving pump grip, etc) but I couldn't wait to share. Ranges are decent but not stellar. Hopefully the things I still have to complete will improve that.

 

 

The handle and trigger are as smooth as butter after spending an afternoon beveling and buffing that edge. It is now as comfortable as a blaster with two large pieces of polycarbonate as a handle can be.

 

 

All in all, not a horrible build at all once the templates were cut and drilled and tapped into. Will definitely be laser cutting them next time. 

 

Oh, and the trigger pull on this thing is superb. Hats off Slug.

That's funny... I buy all of my thinwall 1-1/2" PVC from stores. Lowe's and HD, specifically.
[/quote]

Yeah, SC is a little slow in the noggin when it comes to getting anything, especially brass.

Thanks for the input guys.

Yeah NerfGeek, I would have tried threaded couplers, but I wanted the pump handle to feel connected. It's just so much nicer that way.

A word of warning: the tube I mentioned earlier is MUCH weaker that PVC, so don't try putting the strongest springs you got in it. I have two Home Depot springs in mind, and they should work just fine.

I was looking for thinwall 1 1/2 inch PVC. I was going to use it for a pump handle on my WIP RAINSnap. I knew it wasn't at any store, but I also didn't want to order it from FlexPVC. Too much money for the length I needed, too much hassle...

...I was at Home Depot with my dad one night. He need some adaptor for his RIGID Shop vac. I was done looking around so I waited with him until he was done. I noticed that RIGID also had vacuum tubes that attach to the Shop Vac. There were two pipes, so I picked the smaller one in dimaeter. I then took it over to the PVC and the end that was not tappered was perfect for the pump handle. All you need to do is cut it down before it tappers and you have a solid pump handle for half of the price!

Just got an X box and Kinect so...

Gamertag: Spud Spudoni

Games I have as of now:

Left 4 Dead 2

The screws I use of my the PumpSnap I am building are the screws seen in most Snap threads. Only problem I have with them is that when they are screwed in all of the way, they stick out on the inside of the PC. For making a spring rest out of a 3/4 in. Endcap, the screws still shoot out and block the spring from going to the back of the endcap. I have found that if you take a 3/4 plug, flip it so that the flat backside is facing the spring, then the screws can sit on the other side while you get a good surface for the spring to sit.

It's shown above in the chart and not mentioned, but the 9637K36 spring makes for a really strong catch spring. I found out about it on some other forum post here, but it makes for a great catch spring replacement on nitefinders, firestrikes, and other brand blasters. Also great in rainbow catch-style builds. It comes in a pack of three and is about 10" long, making it easy to cut down for whatever size you want.

I know I want to go up to NY to visit family after summer studio sometime in August, so if I end up getting there, I'll try to take the drive to NJ.

Just out of curiosity, are there any homemade Nerf AEGs?

No, for the reasons said above.

I meant the plunger tubes beside the mag. Like a sandwich [plunger mag plunger]

Uh, there's only one plunger tube. Two side by side with a magazine in the middle would make your handle at least 4" wide which isn't exactly a handle anymore. Even if you reduce the diameter of the two plungertubes, getting proper air output and them firing together consistently does not work.

Any updates on when the results will be coming back?

So there was a lot of interest, but we only have 2 entries with a couple weeks to go.

 

Are people working on projects? Do we need to extend the deadline?

I definitely am, although I had no idea this contest was going. Extending it at least another month, or to the end of December would be great. 

WOW. At first I thought you may have somehow integrated a raider into the sound effects blaster. Then I saw that it WAS a raider. I was amazed how you created the foldable stock as the forgrip of the gun. The creativity of of that, plus the scope is unbelivable. Hats off to you.

For the STL files posted, what programs runs those? I assume Solid Works which I have access to at school, but for others who don't have the funds for something on that level, could those files be run on something free like Fusion360 (autodesk)? I've heard there is some compatibility issues between platforms.

Good looking blaster.
I have a question, does the Spectre still have the same priming bar design like the Maverick where it breaks easily?

Do you think you will do contracts for this gun?

Sweet. Someone finally posted a topic on this gun. Good thing I got this.

Wasn't the song in the video by Girl Talk? Sounded like him.

 

 

Has anyone considered contacting the companies and seeing if the original crossbow/tornado molds are extant and if we could just....buy them? Or rent them?

No, you actually necro'd this thread.

 

Companies don't just rent out their intellectual property to consumers. If they were to sell

(that's if they still had these molds) the original design to a consumer, it'd have to be for good reason, and very expensive. No company does that to avoid tarnishing their brand.

Companies contract out their intellectual property all the time. I don't know about toys, but it's standard practice in the entertainment industry. Most of the time it is very expensive, yes, but I would imagine that production molds for discontinued toys would be much less valuable than, EG, the film rights to the X-men. If spending fifty thousand dollars to reverse engineer the molds is up for discussion, who not discuss spending a similar amount to try and use the originals?

 

I wasn't saying that some random person should just take the initiative to call up and say "Hey I'm Dave can I give you $200 to use your old factory for an hour?" but more along the lines of "Hello, I represent a newly formed LLC that is interested in acquiring licensing and production rights to one of your discontinued product lines, would you be interested in looking at our business plan and discussing the disposition of any tooling or molds you may still have in inventory?"

 

Sorry if this comes off adversarial, I'm just trying to elaborate on my thought processes.

I don't think investing 50k to reverse engineer a 22 year old shell was up for discussion. Hence why this very thread exist, to try to recreate the shell in other ways.

 

I'm not saying that it isn't feasible to recreate the shell, but the amount of skill required or money just isn't worth the time to create that shell. But note, I say that it is not worth it, not that it shouldn't be attempted.

why not just design our own shells?

 

I don't have a ton of experience with surface modeling, but I'm sure there are people in the community capable of drawing comfortable and attractive blasters that would be easy to fit standard rainbows into. 

 

That said, that is a very impressive print mysterio. I just think that with the amount of effort put into replicating a 22 year old design, we could build something better from scratch.

Just because something is old, doesn't mean it needs to be redesigned. The saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies here.

 

Not only is the Vortex Tornado shell extremely comfortable, the inside of its shell is almost made to put your own internals into it. Nothing really needs to be changed inside or out.

I am not capable of doing that kinda stuff because I'm only 13. Parents would scream that I'm gonna burn down the house.

Give it your best shot, but know that not only is resin and silicon (which any decent silicon will cost you 150+ for the amount you'll need) very pricey for a thirteen year old, it also requires a high level of skill to achieve a proper mold of the blaster. Notice that Peter Brown makes casts of full objects only. If you were to replicate his process, you'd make a resin crossbow replica, barring everything worked, but it would be a solid mold which wouldn't allow you to put internals inside the mold so keep that in mind. Maybe this is a project for you to do in the future, but definitely get an idea ready and plan the whole thing out before hand if you truly plan on attempting this.

That is niiiice. Is it 3D printed? And do you have internals to put into it to test the strength? I don't think it won't matter as much for the tornado, as the internal parts take most of the stress, but it would be nice to see some good progress.

This is good progess.  I assume you scanned the shell and 3D printed what you have into three parts? What glue is holding that together, is it sturdy? The outer part of the screw port is one thing, but I question how the inner part, that screws actually go into, will hold up and print. When do you plan on making the other half?

If it's gonna be modular why not different sized magwells based on what you wanted to fire. For example insert a "mega plunger" a mega barrel and a mega magwell and now your gun shoots megas... if your really going modular make the swappable components self contained so you can do it at a war between rounds.

Not sure how easily the inside of a shell could be compatible with different styles of internals, but I like where that's heading. Big ideas, crazy ideas are some of the best ones. As seen on the centurion, micro mag well installation is possible. What I'm wondering however, is the practical application of this. Are we talking about a blaster people just buy and select their parts, and have a blaster ready to build shipped to them? Are we talking about stock caliber, when talking about elites and megas as you mentioned, or NIC style like some of the others?

You are right, my idea would entail screwing two resin halves together once they are cured. And your idea of the plunger assembly, barrel, priming bar, and a mock piece for the trigger and catch is what I was floating around too. The only thing that I was trying to figure out, is how possible would it be to remove the internals after the mold has been cast? I'm thinking if you created a full mold pf the internals out of silicon of a mock trigger with the room to move and spring rest connected to the back (basically a really long trigger with a stem for the spring), a mock catch piece with no hole in the middle, extended upward for its movement for the actual catch, and the plunger assembly and priming bar. Then when the silicon mold dries, you'd pour in more silicon into the mold, creating these pieces. That way when the resin dries, you can just peel the silicon internal molds out, and peel the resin half shell out of the silicon mold. Then repeat. This might be a little expensive, but I may be able to try this out in the coming year.

 

Langely's suggesting you make a fake set of internals that are similar to your real set, but solid. For a trigger I'd just make it a solid block the size of the trigger + any movement it can possibly make. It'd mean you'd need to accurately machine them once though.

 

 

Yes, I know. I think I've mentioned the mock trigger thing a few times, and even have a sketch of it a few posts up. Hell, the next sentence in the post you quoted says exactly what you said. Thanks though

 

 

 

Yeah, so far none of this is really cost-competitive. Even vaccuforming and filling with resin is going to produce shells that, accounting for any value in time and materials, you'd need to sell starting in the low hundreds of dollars.

 

However, CNC would produce a better shell mold; and you don't need a manufacturing CNC machine. Something like a shopbot would do just fine if you CNC'd the outside surface out of wood (or something similarly cheap & easy to CNC) you could vaccuform to that.

I don't like how quickly we are jumping to mass production off of a concept that is barely past the idea phase. This is all apart of prototyping. At this point, it isn't about how cheap it is to produce a shell out of resin or any other material, but is it possibly. As also mentioned above, resin and casting is obviously expensive. No one is saying it isn't. But as of right now, it stands as the easiest way to produce a shell accurately, and strong enough to work for a nerf blaster with little threshold to create (no need for CNC, 3D printers, Mills). That's what is important, not the money.

This may be a possibility, even if not the ultimate goal of this idea. You could simply make it the desired width of the plunger tube you want, and then simply attach the tube to the inside with screws at the beginning and end of the tube, much like a plusbow.

I could very well see this idea being applied to the homemade market more than the stock blaster market honestly. Groups like MHA producing homemade blasters with interchangeable outer shells that get screwed onto the blaster to bring homemades closer in looks to nerf blasters would change the game. I've had this idea for years, but never thought about using it with vacuum forming over 3D printing. Definitely would make the process much faster, easier, and cheaper to produce.

What about just a very basic shell? I don't know if that's what spud is talking about, but just a shell with no inside ridges or anything. Then people could simply put their desired internals inside.

Vacuum forming is a one side process. For each side of the shell, you'll get an interior mold of the inside of the shell, and an exterior mold of the outside of the shell. You can just do one vacuum form and get one half of a blaster, that's not how it works. You either build an exact interior or cut out the interior half of the shell and secure it to the outside half of the shell, making it structurally unsound imo.

 

If you want just the outside of two pieces of a shell, then yeah it will work fine, but you'll have a hollow shell on the inside that you can't do anything with. Every shell on it's interior has a complicated system of screw ports, supports, and the like that keep a blaster together and functional. You can try to really pull the plastic in to try to get the shell formed, but you'll need to drill holes through the entire shell in order to allow the air in the liminal space to move through the vacuum process, destroying a shell to possibly get a vacuum form. And yeah, there are plenty of shells simpler than the crossbow and tornado but are those worth replicating?

 

TL;DR creating an exact replica in how the blaster looks and feels is the ultimate goal for recreating a shell. If a plastic shell 'looks' like a crossbow but doesn't have the same texture on the grips, lines, grooves, and detail of a crossbow and is just a smooth form, is it a crossbow? If so, than you can try out the +bow.

 

 

I see.  Thank you for that.  Having never used one before, I had no idea.  Perhaps there could be a shell form that would be superior to a Crossbow while still being easily formable.  I'll have to ponder it for a while.

However, it could be possible to get a decent form with a very thin sheet of plastic with enough resistance to allow a resin cast to be made in it. If spaced out correctly, you could fill the resin between a form of the front of the shell, and the interior of the shell. But that all depends on whatever your molding material is, resin or something else, working properly and getting in every nook and cranny of every ridge in a blaster with a lot of ribbing like the tornado. But I guess if we mod a shell to remove any of the useless plastic on the inside, fill up the gaps between other ridges with putty, and just keep the interior ready for tornadobow swap, it could be possible.

 

 
No no, you misread me. It's both definitely possible to create a strong part and definitely 'expensive' to do this. It's possible to mass-manufacture, it's possible to micro-manufacture. It's possible to 3d print. Each method will have pros and cons. In this context, the cons of CNC and resin casting it that the material costs are high. Every method we're talking about requires specialist machinery (CNC, 3d Printer, Injection mold) which serves as a high threshold to the individual, so the cost of the part produced is what matters. 3d Printing and injection molding will both use plastic, so the cost of the part should be more marginal, except that I don't expect 10,000+ people to want to purchase these things so injection molding is right out IMO.

Right, I understand what you're saying. I definitely think that if the community is ready to take a step towards recreating shells for blasters, every option needs to be weighed in to see which method has the best opportunity cost. As of right now, I just want to know what is possible. Figuring out what is the best can come later, when a few ideas come to fruition. Whether that's waiting another two years for Drac's crossbow to come back with anything conclusive in 3D printing, or waiting until I have the funds to do a resin cast, is yet to be seen.
 

 

 
Sorry, I misunderstood. Based on your diagram and what you said about layering and standing the trigger up, I thought you were talking about casting the whole shell in one piece. 
 

No no, the only reason I mentioned layering the trigger up, is so that you have something sticking out of the mold that would stop resin from overflowing over the trigger mold, and would give you something to grab onto when attempting to take the negative mold out.
 

 

 
I haven't worked with resin before, so I'm just talking out of my ass at this point, but I had thought that a rigid mockup of the internals with maybe a couple of coats of glossy paint and some mold release would pop right out of the resin. You could probably taper and bevel the square parts slightly so that they come out more easily.  I've seen videos of people making parts out of fiberglass using a rigid mold coated in wax, but the fiberglass is flexible enough to work off the rigid mold, so maybe that's the key difference.
 

Me either, but I know a little bit about fabrication, and prototyping with the early amount of schooling I've had so far. Maybe if silicon (because as a material, nothing sticks to it, can be covered in wax or a combination of other non stick substances, maybe we can get something easy to remove. I'll keep looking into silicon negatives molds in a cast.
 
I know about fiberglass, but always assumed that it wouldn't work as well for some reason, probably due to the amount of flex fiberglass has when set. But honestly, ABS probably has much less tensile strength, and as you said, that flex could really help in removing negative molds from a cast; like ice cubes in an ice cube tray. Then, putting in reinforcing plates will be no different than what is normally required for a crossbow. But I feel like someone a few years ago tried this, and it ended up messy. I'll have to look more into it. The ultimate draw for me in using epoxy resin, is the ability to put items into the mold that can be seen when the shell is together. Darts, Coins, or some other type of items inside of a clear crossbow shell sounds insane. But whatever works, works.

 

 

I actually think an injection mold is within reach. Even if the mold costs $50,000 to create all that we would just need 500 people to pledge 100$ for a better crossbow. Everyone gets a crossbow, and we have a mold to make INFINITE crossbows. It could potentially pay for itself. Just something to consider. The active nerf community is about 10,000 strong. I think we could drum up the support we needed. Just some things to consider.

I mean, yeah that is something that could work if we had everyone in the community (active or not) contribute. I just don't understand the draw for injection molding at this point for the crossbow and tornado bow. No one uses those shells to put stock internals in them anymore, so why do we need to have an injection mold for the inside of the shell? As long as there is enough room for the internals that matter, the rest of the shell can be filled in and it would be much stronger as a result. This can be achieved with silicon molding for sure. Now, it won't be able to make an infinite number of shells (maybe at most 50) but it could cost as less as 25 dollars for a mold of both sides of the shell (I haven't looked into the quality of silicon molding ingredients at that price, as forewarning so take that with a grain of salt). And that is much more effective than a 50,000 dollar mold. There are plenty more alternatives for molding other than silicon over injection, so cheaper options are still out there.

I apologize for contributing to the creation of this thread monster and for hijacking the hell out of the original intent, but I do legitimately have more input.  Has anyone considered making a pepakura cardstock pattern and producing a shell molding from that or perhaps even just using it as a shell?  This may sound absolutely impossible, but properly resined (?) pepakura can be incredibly strong.  Also, let me be the one to say the Crossbow shell is stupid.  They are short and uncomfortable for anyone that isn't a midget.  There has to be a better shell out there.

I don't think I'd EVER trust paper or cardstock coated in fiberglass to hold up a spring load. No matter how much fiberglass you put in it, it just would be too thin overall. Knowing Pepakura, I assume you could make screw ports for the shell halves. Otherwise, there's no way I could see the two halves staying together unless you used glue. Again, the material is just too thin. Yes you could layer fiberglass up to a decent thickness, but that would be very uneven, and probably very messy to basically paint that onto cardstock. If you can explain that in more detail, I may believe pepakura could work. But for now, I see no way to create a blaster shell efficiently, accurately, and strong enough to work with homemade internals.

Close mindedness is what destroys innovation and advancement of the hobby. I'd expect nothing less from grumpy old man Draconis. Thanks for never changin'!

 

Really the only reason I have for continuing this search, is because people have been trying to recreate the crossbow shell via printing for how long, with how much work? What is there to show for it? 

 

Frankly, resin casting, vacuum forming, or fiberglass isn't much better than it, but some methods have the ability to do it now. Which is more to say than any 3D printer so far. 

Has anyone considered using vacuum forming to make shells before?  It may be possible.  I know that vacuum tables can be easily made, and I have seen some relatively complex vacuum formed objects.

It really depends on the size of material you are vacuum forming, the thickness of the plastic/plastic type you are using to form something, and the amount of finite detail of a piece being vacuum formed. I've used our vacuum former in my studio's shop in school, but we always ran into problems with forming between two extruded sections that were very close to each other. Instead of getting, let's say, a clean form with sharp angles of two rectangular pieces 0.5" apart, we got a bowed section between the two pieces because the process couldn't get the plastic to form into the corners of the material. If this is applied to all of the ridges and dead space in the tornado/crossbow shell, you'd need a very thin sheet of plastic to allow it to get a decent form. And at that, it would be to fragile to do anything with.

Why do you need the inside? It is designed for use with injection-molded ABS with injection-molded internals designed to precisely fit it. Using the interior for any other material is likely to end in unnecessary frustration and/or outright failure.

No you're right in that there really should be no reason to mold the inside. But if you apply a vacuum injection mold with resin, you take out a lot of the error and it's really much easier to do it this way. If I'm just doing a mold of the complete half shell, then I don't have to worry about the trigger sitting properly, the catch sitting properly, or other internals getting in error if I plan on making negative molds for them. The rule is the less things that have the ability to fuck up, the better. If I only have to worry about a two part silicon mold and the resin, then I'd be better off. In terms of the interior getting in the way, from what I've seen of my tornado and of other mods, very little shell modification is needed to install new internals, so it shouldn't be a huge problem. My goal (at least if I ever mold a crossbow) is to do an initial exact mold, install and remove things that don't need to be there (the ABS that people cut out for the plunger tube and a thicker spring rest), then I can just re-cast that resin mold again, without ever having to do any alterations to the original shell. This altered resin mold will also be our solution to the copyright issue. It may look the same on the outside, but the inside can be completely different.

Sure, these shells are extremely rare and valuable, but isn't that just as much of a reason to test our techniques out on smaller, more common shells?
I would rather fubar a Sharp Shot or Eliminator shell and waste a small amount of materials than accidentally throw away several hundred dollars of supplies extracting a Crossbow shell from a silicone grave.

What are rookies recommended to start with? Complicated creations like the +bow or simple pieces like the SNAP?

Because who cares if you cast a blaster no one cares about? I mean, you have a good point but as you said, the cost of materials is very high. So for most of us, its one good chance to get it right or nothing. Tornado or bust. Yeah there's less to mess up in going with a smaller blaster, but if I have a certain amount of money to spend on a gamble, I'd rather do it once and hope I get a good cast, versus hoping to get a good cast with a little bit of money, then spending more materials hoping to get another good cast on a bigger mold.

 

For some of us who have access to shops with all of the equipment needed for this, the percentage of error is greatly reduced, so going the bigger mold is a better option if time is of a concern. I can't be doing a ton of molds with our equipment in studio. The best I can hope for is one good shot.

 

EDIT: At this point, I have found a way to make a complete silicon mold of the inside and outside of one side of the shell with one mold. Hopefully with the proper tools, this won't be a concept any longer. I'll post on this when I have more concrete results.

Thanks for the input Fondue, and welcome back to the community. You present some ideas that I never thought possible; slush casting. I'll have to look into how this done further as to how this is done, but this could close the price gap of using resin as a casting material by making a hollow shell for the internals instead of filling in the whole thing while still being relatively strong if done in layers.

 

How long would multiple layers of slush casting take to cure? I assume not as long as a normal resin pour [day(s)].

 

I also assume slush casting could be done in a half of a shell mold instead of a full mold? That would reduce the need for a precision cut down the middle of the mold later, and would ensure the two halves fit properly as long as they're molded properly. 

 

The expanding foam writeup could work excellently for this as well, totally forgot about that. It might not look pretty in a clear shell, but fabrication first and fine tuning later. That would work for the plungertube, and as long as a rainbow is being used, the catch as well. But how would the priming bar and trigger sit properly? The trigger could just be bolted and spaced in the center of the handle, but the centering of the priming bar may need some thought.

Idea: have Heartfoxx make a shell for a rainbow pump that has a stock mount!

Or we can put the work in ourselves as a community instead of outreaching for others to make it for us.