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#363279 Best aluminum longshot boltsled and spring combo?

Posted by roboman on 16 August 2018 - 05:25 PM in Modifications

Hi. I still make boltsleds and they're $65 each + shipping. They're available through my facebook page. I'm not really active on here anymore so if you have any questions, feel free to send the page a PM or use my email that's listed on there. 

 

Turf springs are the highest quality you can get and are very affordable. They are available here.




#355167 B.R.A.D,F.E.S.T. 2. - August 13 SoCal War

Posted by roboman on 23 July 2016 - 08:55 PM in Nerf Wars

BRADFEST
REPEATED
AGAIN
DUH,
FRIENDS
ESTABLISH
SUPER
TEAMS

 

2009-STYLE

 

Where:
Tincher Preparatory School
1701 Petaluma Ave.
Long Beach, CA 90815

When:
Saturday, August 10th 13th
10~4

 

Fuck yeah, nerfing like it's 2009! 

 

Rules are fairly typical for SCUN events. This location is awesome. This is the August SCUN war. All darts, excluding 'super domes' are allowed. Regarding blaster bans - basically, don't be a dick. If it's too powerful, we'll ask you to stop using it, and if you have any concerns, feel free to PM me. Singled 4Bs are not allowed unless they have a hopper and OPRV. Titans must have an absolver. Homemade airguns are allowed if they aren't stupidly powerful. It is not recommended that anyone under 13 shows up, and if you are under 13 and you show up without a parent that stays the whole time, you'll be kindly asked to leave. Hopefully we won't get rained out like last year.

 

You are allowed to block anything 5/8" in diameter and under with your blaster. Large ammo (arrows, balls) counts as a shield breaker. 

 

I'm allowing glue domes (not 'super' domes) again unless a large majority of people don't want that to happen. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns about darts you plan on using. 

 




#354929 FDL-1: Fully 3D Printed Robotic Blaster

Posted by roboman on 10 July 2016 - 03:57 PM in Homemades

This is pretty slick. I'm not generally a fan of throwing a lot of complicated electronics and shit on homemades where a mechanical system could work just as well because it tends to be less reliable (at least when I build that kind of thing) and more expensive, but I like what you've done here quite a bit. From what I can tell, the design looks pretty modular, and that's definitely a plus if you want to get people to build off of what you've done here.

 

I know electronics in general tend to scare people away around here, for what it's worth. 

 

I'd love to see a version of this built that can be integrated into a primary, because a semi-auto flywheel mega blaster underneath a longshot or something would be really fucking cool. Shouldn't be too tough to do if you can come up with a solid mounting system, and I suppose that kind of flexibility is one of the main benefits of 3D printing everything.




#347791 B.R.A.D.F,E.S.T.

Posted by roboman on 11 July 2015 - 02:02 AM in Nerf Wars

DATE CHANGE: This is now the 18th. Apparently some of you nerds cool people are going to comic con and can actually make it if the two events don't, you know, happen simultaneously.



#347786 B.R.A.D.F,E.S.T.

Posted by roboman on 10 July 2015 - 07:18 PM in Nerf Wars

Let me know if you have one next month. When I'm employed I can probably make these if I can grab housing with someone down there.


I definitely won't, because I'll be living in CT by then. SCUN usually has monthly wars, though.



#347784 Homemades Picture Thread

Posted by roboman on 10 July 2015 - 07:07 PM in Homemades

Have some hardcore pistol porn:


Posted Image
Posted Image
Posted Image
Posted Image
Posted Image
Posted Image
Posted Image
Posted Image

About 100 hours of work total.

No, you can't have one. This one is for Psyk, and was commissioned 3 years ago as of tomorrow.

Dropbox link to all the parts if you happen to have access to a waterjet, sheet metal equipment, powder coating stuff, a lathe, a mill, a CNC router, a 3D printer, and you happen to be really, really masochistic because they're kind of a lot of work.

I wouldn't expect anyone who can't figure out how to make it based on the CAD models to have access to the tools necessary to build one from scratch. I won't be selling kits or parts for these unless you throw a LOT of money my way.



#347597 B.R.A.D.F,E.S.T.

Posted by roboman on 01 July 2015 - 06:57 PM in Nerf Wars

Because
Roboman
Always
Deserves
Fun,
Extra
Summer
Time

Where:
Tincher Preparatory School
1701 Petaluma Ave.
Long Beach, CA 90815

When:
Saturday, July 11 18th NOW
10~4

Facebook Event Link

(Copy/pasted from G.L.U.E. D.O.M.E.S. last year with slight edits)

Hosting this before I leave for my co-op at Sikorsky on the 25th.

Rules are fairly typical for SCUN events. This location is awesome. This is the July SCUN war. All darts, excluding 'super domes' are allowed. Regarding blaster bans - basically, don't be a dick. If it's too powerful, we'll ask you to stop using it, and if you have any concerns, feel free to PM me. Singled 4Bs are not allowed unless they have a hopper and OPRV. Titans must have an absolver. Homemade airguns are allowed if they aren't stupidly powerful. It is not recommended that anyone under 13 shows up, and if you are under 13 and you show up without a parent that stays the whole time, you'll be kindly asked to leave.

You are allowed to block anything 5/8" in diameter and under with your blaster. Large ammo (arrows, balls) counts as a shield breaker.



#347502 Armageddon XVI

Posted by roboman on 29 June 2015 - 12:44 AM in Nerf Wars

Shit was fun, yo

Pros:
Shooting that one girl in the middle finger from across the field as she flipped off Dom

First time in 7 years of active nerfing that my 2K hasn't broken at all during a war. Definitely because of the carbon fiber flames. There's clearly no other explanation.

It was great seeing all of you again for the first time in quite a while, seeing as I'm stuck in Hoth, NY most of the year and can't even make the East Coast events, much less the ones in socal.

Cons:
I'm still fucking sore. Jesus christ I haven't run that much in a loooooong time.

My only gripes are a distaste for thrown melee (roboman and I almost caught a tomahawk to the face)

I caught one to the neck. 0/10 would recommend.



#346401 Armageddon XVI

Posted by roboman on 23 April 2015 - 08:31 AM in Nerf Wars

Not sure if I'll be staying in CA long enough to make it this year. I'll try.



#346124 Exhaust Valve Homemade (Current: Bladder Tests)

Posted by roboman on 12 April 2015 - 08:07 AM in Homemades

dude dont tell people to put high pressure into a pipe nipple, thats an extremely dangerous suggestion on a site where people have used 2 liter bottles as air tanks before. yes metal is better as a tank, but not when done improperly or carelessly. a large, low psi tank is very safe and easy to do correctly by most anyone; especially when equipped with an oprv and treated with care.

dont mess with high pressure unless you know what you're doing



If you manage to make a piece of galvanized steel or brass pipe burst under the relatively low pressures that are considered "high" for Nerf purposes, I'd be impressed. I'd say it's a safe assumption to make that anyone who has the ability to generate the magnitude of pressure required to make a piece of that pipe burst is probably smart enough to not do that. I'd say it's very reasonable to stick to high volume/low pressure when you're dealing with plastic tanks, because I've had experience with PVC tanks exploding and it's not fun. If you're super worried about it, use Class 3000 galvanized steel pipe, which has a schedule 160 wall thickness and is rated to 3,000 psi working pressure (with a safety factor of 5).



#346116 Exhaust Valve Homemade (Current: Bladder Tests)

Posted by roboman on 11 April 2015 - 09:32 PM in Homemades

Your tank seems excessively large. This system I built a few years ago based around a 3/8" NPT QEV from ebay that's a few dollars cheaper than yours and has a much smaller footprint and put stefans (both slugs and glue domes) through both sides of cardboard boxes at ~80 psi. IIRC, the tank had a volume of about 2.5 cubic inches, maybe 3, and it was set up with a pneumatic breech with virtually zero dead space. If you switch over to a small metal pipe nipple with threaded caps/adapters to fit into the QEV, you can safely run higher pressures in it and create a much more compact system.

Posted Image



#346055 Why is xplorer so expensive!?!

Posted by roboman on 08 April 2015 - 01:18 PM in General Nerf

The prices reflect the labor rate of a typical prototype shop. They do not (and cannot) run large-volume production, so individual unit costs are relatively high due to the lack of automation and need for a lot of hand-finishing. I do not agree with the design of their metal boltsleds, because they're literally designed to fail above certain spring loads. They're also designed to be as cheap as possible to manufacture, which is why they come in multiple pieces that are screwed together.


I do not agree with all of the production methods they use, because there are definitely more efficient and less expensive ways to produce higher quality parts on the scale that they're currently doing. They are still pretty much the only mod kit supplier that is capable of doing all of their production in-house, and they're one of the only ones that offers machined metal parts. OMW's metal parts are die cast, which significantly reduces the overall strength due to the materials available for the process and an inconsistent grain structure as a result of multiple production factors. Mine are currently outsourced to a machine shop in China because I'm too busy with school to do the machining myself (but they have faster machines than I do anyway).

I've heard their shotgun grips have been dropping in quality because their molds are wearing out, causing flashing and poor finish on the parts. You'd think they'd just make another mold set, but I guess Heng doesn't want to do that...



#345548 I lost all my retaliator screws

Posted by roboman on 14 March 2015 - 04:35 PM in Modifications

99461A825

#3-24 thread forming plastic screws are replacements for stock Nerf screws. They're also not terribly cheap in small quantities, so you may actually be able to save money by buying a cheaper blaster and pulling the screws from it.



#343533 Rights Issues With Homemades

Posted by roboman on 15 December 2014 - 06:00 PM in Homemades

It saddens me how much this concept of owning ideas has permeated society.

If you guys really want to go down the route of defining how people own ideas, then you can take a look at the creative commons licenses. I use the CC Attribution license for all my website and youtube stuff (which includes all my writeups, and so by extension the original Rainbow writeups). Basically, it just means that you can use it for whatever the hell you want (re-post it, modify it, sell it, whatever) as long as you credit the original author. It's about as lax of a license as you can have without actually just totally winging it out into the public domain (which means that you don't have to even attribute, you can just use it for whatever). This only applies to actual "works" - e.g., videos, pictures and text. The actual mechanical designs for stuff you would have to patent if you wanted to gain a temporary monopoly on it (which is all that "intellectual property" is in the end - you don't "own" ideas, you're just granted a legal monopoly for a temporary period).



All of that is useless, too, if you can't afford to defend it. Even if somehow, somebody here managed to get a patent on their design, it would be absolutely pointless to try to defend it in court because the legal fees (not to mention the filing fees alone) would be an order of magnitude larger than the amount that person is profiting off of the blaster sales.



#343430 Calipers or expertise needed!

Posted by roboman on 10 December 2014 - 04:16 PM in Darts and Barrels

A ±0.01" tolerance means that the ID of an acceptable piece of tube can be anywhere between .490" and .510". If you want someone else to measure a different piece of tube for you, their measurement is going to be somewhere in between those two limits, and likely not the same as the stuff you'd get if you order it. In my experience you can expect it to be closer to ±0.005", but it still varies between batches (enough that I switched over to the aluminum equivalent, which still isn't great, but is better).



#343326 Mech Engineering Colleges

Posted by roboman on 05 December 2014 - 07:43 PM in Off Topic

@Roboman, I do not mean to be intruding, but how good do you believe your job is, and are all peers graduating with a job? Also a comparison of GPA from HS and GPA now? (if you do not wish to answer than do not) Also, is there HVZ? Kinda looking forward to keep nerf close in college.


I don't have the job yet, it'll more likely be next year. Co-ops pay very well. I want the co-op position at Hasbro because I want the work experience in an engineering field, and it's a huge bonus that it happens to be in an area directly related to one of my hobbies. I don't plan on working for Hasbro after college, because I'd much rather start my own company, and I've been slowly building up to that over the past couple years.

Here's the annual report for the C/O 2013 regarding employment and plans after graduation. I'd like to note that if you can't get hired after graduating, the school will hire you (at least from what I've been told), though some people don't want to go that route. If your GPA is above a 3.0 (sometimes 2.5, depending on the company), you're going to be able to get a job if you want one. Engineering companies know about RPI, and they know that in general, we produce competent engineers. HS GPA was 3.86 (unweighted; my school didn't weight grades). Current GPA is...significantly less than that.

We have an HvZ group. I usually go to at least one of their events each semester, but they have stuff pretty much every weekend, weather permitting, and a multiday game each semester. I have run singled pumpbows and 2Ks at their events with elite darts and they were fine with it as long as I wasn't being a dick.



#343276 Mech Engineering Colleges

Posted by roboman on 02 December 2014 - 08:48 PM in Off Topic

Roboman, whats it like in troy, I'm trying to decide if I should apply to RPI or not. I heard its a dangerous area, what are your thoughts?


Like most places, it's dangerous if you're out alone at night in bad areas and make yourself look like a target. If you stay around campus or downtown, it's fine. I've never had any issues (though there's usually a mugging or two each year, but that kind of a thing can happen pretty much anywhere). North Troy can be kinda sketchy, but there's really no reason for you to be over there unless you live there (it's entirely residential). Here's an album of some of my pictures of a few parts of campus and a little bit of downtown. I like to walk around downtown and shoot pictures every now and then, and I've never felt unsafe. There's not a huge amount of stuff to do off-campus, but there are plenty of events at RPI to keep you busy. I'm active in the Photo Club and Archery Club, and I usually go out to frat parties on the weekends.

You should apply, visit, and see if it's a place you want to go to. It wasn't my first choice, and I honestly didn't intend to go here when I was going through the application process, but they gave me a free application and waived the essay requirement, so I said fuck it, applied, and wound up going (showed up on the first day of orientation on my own without ever having set foot on campus, too). After 3 semesters, I don't think I'd be happier anywhere else.



#343255 Mech Engineering Colleges

Posted by roboman on 02 December 2014 - 01:38 PM in Off Topic

I'll go ahead and plug RPI. It's kind of really expensive, but you're pretty much guaranteed a well-paying job once you graduate. Average starting salaries for mechanical engineering graduates is $55-65K/yr right out of college with a bachelor's degree. I like it here, but it's a very rigorous program, and the professors actively fight GPA inflation, so expect your GPA to be somewhat lower than it would be if you went to another school. I am, as it turns out, really bad at math, specifically differential equations, and my grades are currently reflecting that.

A side note - you won't be working with tools as a mechanical engineer (for the most part). You'll be doing lots of CAD and math, but generally very little on the manufacturing side of things. The people who work with tools generally get paid less (especially when they're just starting out) and have significantly lower educational requirements for their jobs (not saying they're stupid, just that they went a different route - typically a voc. tech. program at a community college or tradeschool). It's important to know how things are made if you're going to be designing things to be made, but a lot of schools (RPI included) seem to gloss over that. If you learn these things on your own and can demonstrate your knowledge through extracurriculars and personal projects, you'll be a much more attractive candidate for internships, co-ops, and actual jobs. Hasbro wants me to go on co-op with them for a semester once I fix my GPA - they want a project manager for the 2016 Nerf line (and they really like hiring RPI students, apparently).



#342958 CAD Help

Posted by roboman on 21 November 2014 - 01:17 AM in Homemades

We do not - if you're wanting it to be just homemade blasters, I'd be open to help with one. I primarily use sketchup, and it's pretty easy for me to knock out models. Personally, I'd think sketchup would be a better format since it's freely accessible and has built-in public cloud storage, but I could export to many formats. Not sure what the free version of Sketchup can open though.


The free version of SketchUp can only handle .skp and .3ds files, as well as Google Earth terrain (which, while kinda neat, is largely useless for us). As far as I've been able to figure out, Sketchup files are generally incompatible with most major CAD systems. If you pay for the PRO version, it lets you export 3D DXF and DWF files, but those are still generally difficult to work with in most solid modeling programs.

As people have mentioned before, students can get an educational copy of Inventor for free, and it can export to virtually any standard CAD format you can imagine (except .skp). I'm partial to SolidWorks, but it's much harder to obtain a (legal) copy of it for free. Torrents are widely distributed and easily available, but I know some people are less than comfortable with that. The files are directly compatible with Inventor, though (and you can export .ipt/.iam/.idw files if you install the free Inventor View software).

Someone made a CAD file directory at one point. It's very incomplete and not maintained. I haven't found a need for one, at least for my files. I keep everything in Dropbox and share links to folders when people ask me for files. Almost all of my CAD files are available to anyone who asks for them, as long as they're in a state that I'm happy with (though boltsled files will not be made available - draw it up with a pair of calipers if you want to create your own derivative).



#342702 Question: vinyl letttering for paint stencils?

Posted by roboman on 05 November 2014 - 12:46 AM in Modifications

That looks really sweet. Does the heat transfer stuff cut just like normal vinyl sheet?



#342687 Question: vinyl letttering for paint stencils?

Posted by roboman on 03 November 2014 - 11:20 PM in Modifications

One of the great things about self-adhesive vinyl is that you can make it conform to really complex surfaces with a heat gun or even just a hairdryer. Unfortunately, it also really likes to stay stuck to things, so you'll have to be careful when you peel it off to avoid tearing it or pulling up the edges of the paint. The vinyl sheet I've used doesn't really leave a residue on things, but it's also meant for wrapping cars and like I said, sticks really well. Based on a quick Google search, I can see that several companies sell removable vinyl sheet, or "low-tack" vinyl. That's probably more along the lines of what you want.

This is actually something that Baghead and I have discussed for a while, because it would make really awesome paintjobs happen very quickly and we know people with vinyl cutters. I'm really interested to see what you come up with and how it works out for you.

You should look into making some accent decals for different blasters, too. I picked up some neat color-shifting carbon fiber vinyl wrap on eBay a few months back that would look really neat on just about anything (I just bought a few sample rectangles, so I wrapped my mouse with an x-acto knife and a hairdryer).

If you get really thick vinyl, it works really well for etching surfaces with a sandblaster if you've got access to one or feel like picking up a cheap one at Harbor Freight. That looks really awesome on shiny/transparent things. Unfortunately, the vinyl for that is decently expensive compared to normal sign vinyl, but it's several times thicker and designed to be removed from things. Look up "Sandblast resist" - Amazon carries it in a bunch of sizes.



#341271 SoCal War: G.L.U.E. D.O.M.E.S.

Posted by roboman on 17 August 2014 - 01:16 PM in Nerf Wars

Pros-
Roboman's special glue un-exploding all of my blasters


They say my special glue has magical healing properties ;)

Anyway, I had a great time and I hope everyone else who made it out there did too. I'll probably be hosting another event there while I'm back for Christmas break (sometime after the Christmas war).



#340972 Running designs through cad

Posted by roboman on 04 August 2014 - 10:41 AM in General Nerf

Zorns lemma, If you wanted to print a part that requires threads, is there some way to do that in sketch up or do you have to tap the part afterwards? Oh, and thank you guys for all these responses and views on my first topic!


Really large, coarse threads work fairly well, especially if they have a profile similar to an ACME thread. Multi-start threads are even easier because they tend to have a higher helix angle. If you're trying to put a really small screw like a 6-32 or something in the part, you're gonna have to tap it.



#340880 How is the LA community?

Posted by roboman on 01 August 2014 - 02:36 PM in Nerf Wars

A vast majority of the SCUN guys aren't active on NIC forums. We have wars every other month or so, and as Mysterio said, there's one in Long Beach on the 16th that I'm hosting. We usually see 10-15 people at our smaller events, and generally around 40 at Armageddon. There's another group based in Norwalk that primarily uses lightly modded Elite gear and does a lot of HvZ.

The thread for the G.L.U.E.D.O.M.E.S. war is here. You should definitely try to make it out if you're available.



#340792 Running designs through cad

Posted by roboman on 29 July 2014 - 11:46 PM in General Nerf

*shrug*

The companies that release this software know the score: casual users and students pirate their software, since it's not even remotely affordable. It ultimately benefits them, since it breeds brand loyalty when those users eventually move into the professional arena. Ultra-cheap student licenses serve exactly the same purpose: all that cool software you get access to at universities is a way to build future brand loyalty. It isn't a charity, it ultimately makes them money.


Not only that, but SolidWorks and MasterCAM, among other companies, actually released "cracked" versions of their software on pirate sites in the 90s because they knew that it would boost their userbases and make people more likely to buy their stuff in the future. They don't chase down pirates like the MPAA/RIAA do.

By the way, if any of you want to be pointed in the right direction when it comes to sifting through various websites for decent cracked versions of this software, shoot me a PM or something. I upgrade my version every year, so I usually know where the easiest to install version can be found. I'm also willing to help you learn the software if you have questions because it's really useful to everyone here if a large number of NIC members can communicate their ideas clearly through 3D models.



#340778 Running designs through cad

Posted by roboman on 29 July 2014 - 05:37 PM in General Nerf

Despite these facts, roboman, not everybody wants to (or for that matter can) spend 8000$ on a cad program unless they are using it in their profession which I am not.


I cannot afford to do that either, as I am 19, a student, do not own a company, and work part-time in the summers as an assistant professor at a broke community college in Compton. A full license is also much, much more than $8,000.

A student version is available if someone from a school fills out the form for you and you're actually a student. It can also be acquired via other means if you're willing to look for it and you don't care about the legality of your software.



#340755 Running designs through cad

Posted by roboman on 29 July 2014 - 12:15 AM in General Nerf

I've found that SolidWorks is pretty much the best CAD package for the type of modeling that's useful in this hobby. It runs way faster than Inventor, has a vastly superior FEA package, generates nearly-photorealistic renders without a separate application, and generates really clean STL files for printing. I've had issues with STLs from Inventor before. It defaults to a unit that's neither inches nor millimeters (not sure what it is), which is really inconvenient and hard to change.

I use SolidWorks 2014 Premium for everything I do, and I'm a Certified SolidWorks Associate (I'm taking the Professional exams in the next month or so). If you're planning on going into engineering, you'll find that SW is much more common than any of the other 3D CAD packages, at least unless you wind up doing aerospace engineering (that's primarily CATIA, which is owned by the same company, and is an order of magnitude more complicated).

Incidentally, the only homemade writeup I've ever submitted, the SCUNBAG, was not created in CAD first. In fact, I used the CAD model shown in the thread entirely as a means of explaining how it works. I just sketched it out and made it because it's entirely PVC and brass. I primarily use CAD as a tool to generate files for CAM software that creates g-code for CNC machines and to generate working drawings for manual machining and inspection.



#340731 2014 Nerf War Schedule

Posted by roboman on 27 July 2014 - 11:59 PM in Nerf Wars





August:



[url=http://nerfhaven.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25203] 16th [CA] G.L.U.E.D.O.M.E.S./url]






#340713 Homemades Picture Thread

Posted by roboman on 26 July 2014 - 12:29 PM in Homemades

Posted Image

Nine almost-complete boltsleds, one reject, and fifteen blanks. 53 total lbs of aluminum, 49 of which will be removed by the time they're done.



#340572 SoCal War: G.L.U.E. D.O.M.E.S.

Posted by roboman on 20 July 2014 - 06:52 PM in Nerf Wars

Gratuitously
Loosening
Up
Extreme

Dart
Omissions
Makes
Extra
Sense

Where:
Tincher Preparatory School
1701 Petaluma Ave.
Long Beach, CA 90815

When:
Saturday, August 16
10~4

There's a school directly across the street from my house that I've been meaning to host a war at for a while, and I'd like to be able to go to more than one NIC war per year, so I'm hosting this before I go back to college.

Rules are fairly typical for SCUN events. To be clear, this is not an "official" SCUN war, whatever that means - it's the first time using this site, and we obviously need to test it out. This is now the August SCUN war. All darts, excluding 'super domes' are allowed. Regarding blaster bans - basically, don't be a dick. If it's too powerful, we'll ask you to stop using it, and if you have any concerns, feel free to PM me. Singled 4Bs are not allowed unless they have a hopper and OPRV. Titans must have an absolver. Homemade airguns are allowed if they aren't stupidly powerful. It is not recommended that anyone under 13 shows up, and if you are under 13 and you show up without a parent that stays the whole time, you'll be kindly asked to leave.

You are allowed to block anything 5/8" in diameter and under with your blaster. Large ammo (arrows, balls) counts as a shield breaker. I'm not sure about new MEGA darts yet, as I haven't been to a war where anyone actually used them.

Special note: This school has soccer things going on during certain weekends in the summer, so we have to watch out for that. I have not been able to find a schedule for those things. The alternate location is here: Kettering Elementary School - 550 Silvera Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90803 and/or the park directly next to it if that location is taken. It is approximately a 5 minute drive from the original location.



#339984 Apocalypse 2014

Posted by roboman on 04 July 2014 - 12:20 AM in Nerf Wars

I'll try my best to make it out there again, but I'm currently a maybe pending money for a flight and whether I can take the following Monday off from work. I will not make the mistake of commissioning a metric fuckton of homemades a month before the war like I did last year again. A few aluminum LS boltsleds might pop up for sale at some point, since $9/hr as an adjunct assistant professor for 25 hrs/week is not really enough to cover a $600 round trip flight (that's ~2.7 weeks of work). If not this summer, I'll be a definite next year, because I'll be living in Troy over the summer unless something drastic happens between now and then.

EDIT: Sorry guys, I won't be there this year. Blame Compton College for paying their faculty jack shit.



#339894 Homemades Picture Thread

Posted by roboman on 01 July 2014 - 12:42 AM in Homemades

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I finished it up. The plungerhead is by far, the best design I've ever used in a springer (props to Kane and Ryan for the general idea, props to my students for not complaining when I use them as a source of free labor). The o-ring I use is 90025K354. Though it's a bit pricier than a normal round o-ring, it has two points of contact in the plunger tube and seals absolutely perfectly, and it's still an order of magnitude less expensive than a skirt. I didn't set mine up as a check valve because it's really not necessary. I used a .150" wide groove with a 1.075" base diameter to make sure the o-ring can freely float in the groove to further reduce friction. This is by far, the best pumpbow I've built so far. There's no ringing from the spring after each shot, just a nice, solid "thwack". It primes really smoothly and the trigger is super crisp.

By the way, I'm never making another one after I finish this batch. The handful that are currently unclaimed will go up for auction with a starting price of $155 (since that's what everyone else paid) after all the pre-orders are filled.



#339853 Homemades Picture Thread

Posted by roboman on 29 June 2014 - 11:26 PM in Homemades

Posted Image

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Just a little bit of aluminum porn for your Sunday night pleasure. This one is for Shoopy (and is, of course, very late), and it includes the new stock rod reinforcements that I came up with to prevent shearing at the connection to the rear plate of the blaster. There's no plunger assembly in it yet because I'm machining the first x-profile o-ring plunger head on the CNC lathe at work tomorrow morning.



#339758 Last Armageddon (Armageddon XV)

Posted by roboman on 24 June 2014 - 08:08 PM in Nerf Wars

As per usual, it was awesome, and the new location is sweet.
For once, it wasn't insanely hot, which was nice.

Pros:
Thorn (he's literally a pro)
Seeing some of the East Coast dudes at not-Apoc
Speed Rounds (I passed on those at last year's Apoc, and I'm definitely not making that mistake again)

Cons:
Leaky pump connection in my brand new 2K build
Scooter didn't pick up his printed turrets from me

I suppose I'll be seeing some of the out of towners in August because I guess it's pretty much assumed that I'll be at Apoc again.

Regarding the Missile Crisis gameplay, I don't think it would be easy to balance the advantages and disadvantages inherent with the two sides of the field if it was played like we used to, unless the whole thing was rotated 90 degrees, because the school is only roughly symmetrical in one direction. Even then, I think we still would've had the typical 1.5-2hr game that we've experienced in past years, and that's just not fun. One sided attack very clearly works well if you have good teamwork (and Micah) happening. We just kept blindly rushing the defending team with our missiles out in the open because not many people on our side realized that it's critical to protect the missile carriers, for some reason.

On another note, I think Ding would be a great gametype for a war the size of Geddon, simply because you'd be a lot less likely to end up with the one team that has all of the rapid fire stuff absolutely curbstomping the other team since there were a lot more people with pump-action things and Sceptors than we normally have.



#339515 Q&A with Hasbro Engineers

Posted by roboman on 12 June 2014 - 01:58 PM in General Nerf

I can tell you that an individual who worked for Hasbro and who has since moved on to other design/engineering jobs has expressed that they think the modifications and stefans are cool, and that they would put a 'modability' rating on the side of the box if it were up to them.


Adding onto this, from what my interviewer told me when I was interviewing for a Hasbro co-op (turns out they blanket-deny freshmen, which is why I'm not there right now), quite a few of the employees modify their blasters, though not to the extents that some people do here - more along the lines of AR removals and stuff like that.



#339453 Last Armageddon (Armageddon XV)

Posted by roboman on 10 June 2014 - 12:42 AM in Nerf Wars

Oh, I should probably mention that I'll be there, if it wasn't obvious.



#338982 TR-27 GRYPHON - CR-18 Rapidstrike Mod

Posted by roboman on 16 May 2014 - 04:54 PM in Modifications

Wow, I'm glad you all liked it so much. It really has been a very fun project to work on.


roboman


The piston motor must have a motor brake in order to stop fast enough that you only fire 1 dart. I did some testing to see just how effective the brake was. I ran the motor at full speed for 1 revolution, and then let it coast. After that single revolution, it coasted 2 and a half more without power.

So far I have been using a micro relay to engage the motor brake, and a MOSFETT to control the speed of the motor. I'm going to experiment with an H-Bridge for two reasons. First, it has a built in braking system that unlike the micro relay, will not interfere with communications between the Arduino and the Max7219 LED controller. Second, I am considering using reverse to stop the motor even faster than the motor brake could. (Yes, I know this will put a lot of stress on the motor.)


Both Bee-Ri & roboman



Code code code... I'm really thinking about it guys. On the one hand, I love to help others and explain everything away. But on the other, I'm hoping to sell this, and hopefully pay for my Nerf/electrical hobby. If I can bring in enough income, I'll keep modding more blasters.

I'll let you guys know what I decide on. As an alternative, I might make an in-depth article about programming though.

Good news though, my H-Bridges came in today, so I'll be experimenting with them shortly! Thank you all for your compliments and input. Like I said, I think Nerf and I will have a bright and fun future together.


I guess that makes sense. I was planning on retaining the original piston reset switch so I don't have to worry about braking or anything, since it shorts the motor contacts and does the same thing that you're doing with an H-bridge. The reverse is an interesting idea, though it will be interesting to see how you wind up applying it during the firing cycle, because if it's wrong, it obviously just won't work right.

As for the code, I understand where you're coming from, but keep in mind that your code will only work on your setup unless someone manages to exactly copy what you did, and the people who are willing to put the time and effort into building one of these or even something similar generally aren't going to be interested in paying you to do it, so releasing your code just helps the community build cooler stuff and improve on what you did. Besides, you're gonna have competition from me in about a month or so in the form of drop-in modular kits, regardless of whether your code is public or not, since I don't even work in the same language that you used; I'm just interested in seeing what you did because I like reading through that kind of thing.



#338914 TR-27 GRYPHON - CR-18 Rapidstrike Mod

Posted by roboman on 13 May 2014 - 12:33 PM in Modifications

Damn, you beat me to it. This is pretty much exactly what I've been (very slowly) working on for quite some time, though I'm planning on going with the custom PCB route to entirely replace the trigger assembly and eliminate most of the wires you have running through the shell. Why are you planning on replacing the power transistors with an H-bridge? You shouldn't ever have to reverse any of the motors, so a power transistor should work just fine.

Would you mind posting your code or a link to Github or something? I'm interested to see how you did it.



#338885 T.U.R.N.U.P.

Posted by roboman on 12 May 2014 - 12:28 AM in Nerf Wars

We can meet up a week later if you want, back-to-back weekend it. And this is just a Pasadena crew thing, not especially SCUN affiliated.

I'd be up for that, just let me know. I was talking with Nate about the possibility of a pre-geddon war, which is why I asked. Not sure if/when that's happening, though, especially with 'geddon being so early this year.



#338883 T.U.R.N.U.P.

Posted by roboman on 12 May 2014 - 12:12 AM in Nerf Wars

Dammit Matt, this couldn't be a week later? I'll actually be in town for this one, but I'll be at an archery competition through that weekend, so there's about a 99% chance I won't be making it. Any idea if there'll be an official SCUN event before 'geddon (or has South Pas finally been thrown into the 'official' war site rotation)?