109 replies to this topic

[hereticorp]

Daecu, on Sep 16 2008, 05:53 PM, said:

That's pretty ridiculously amazing o.o

Running off AC too...

edit: If you plan on selling these later one let me know

Thanks.

What else would it run off of?

Yeah right.

Feel free to build your own though.

One Man Clan, on Sep 16 2008, 07:07 PM, said:

That's funny. I was thinking to myself before I even got to the first post after your original that it seemed like a Rube Goldberg thing to have such a design. I mean, I know it's not overly complicated and all.

Making quality darts is a dying art. Another bunch of master craftsmen need to emerge. Raise your hand if you've even HEARD of zero's, never mind made thousands of them (single-handedly keeping the NJ and surrounding Nerfing Community going for several years).

That's true, it does seem a bit like something he'd think of.

That is also true, I have to look up Zeros I suppose, maybe I'll make it into those ranks some day.

.Z4., on Sep 16 2008, 08:40 PM, said:

This is awesome, although I kind of like just cutting some blanks while watching reruns of Mythbusters...Nice work though, could you estimate how much all the components cost?

I would have no idea, the entire thing except the cutter itself and the power strip was built from components my dad had sitting around under his bench.

Señor_Wolfwood, on Sep 16 2008, 11:06 PM, said:

I applaud you sir.
I have been attempting to think of an efficient consinstent way to produce stefans, and I do believe you've inspired me. I may PM you to get some specifics but the diagram is a great help.

PM Away, I'll be working on a holing mechanism next, with a wood-burning iron and some sort of belt feed with PVC attached. The hot-glue portion of the process will be harder, with the inconsistency of glue flow and all.

Forsaken_angel24, on Sep 17 2008, 12:09 AM, said:

If you were to make a Stefan making machine then it might be worth your while.
You just turn on the machine leave for a few days. Come back and have plenty of darts to sell at wars.

See, I was thinking about that.

The real problem comes in when the darts have to move off the hot glue line, because they need to come off with the weighted end up and stay straight upright for a while for the glue to cool so the dome doesn't get distorted.

The after-cut part of the process gets stupidly complicated to automate without some form of industrial mechanization.

Talio, on Sep 17 2008, 02:31 AM, said:

I have a very serious question.

Are you asain or just bored?

Keep up the good work,

Talio.

Insane AND bored. It's a nice combination, especially at work.

Thanks, I'll try.


ETA: New pictures and a Video up in the original post.

Edited by hereticorp, 17 September 2008 - 08:25 AM.

[Split]

I'd love to help you design the entire working part. You could honestly do the hot glue regulation by weight though. An extremely accurate scale, when it reaches a certain weight from a certain amount of glue+foam+weight the dart advances. Getting it to stand up straight is the hard part. To reduce cooling time just make the belt go through a cooling unit like a freezer or something.

[hereticorp]

Splitlip, on Sep 17 2008, 11:42 AM, said:

I'd love to help you design the entire working part. You could honestly do the hot glue regulation by weight though. An extremely accurate scale, when it reaches a certain weight from a certain amount of glue+foam+weight the dart advances. Getting it to stand up straight is the hard part. To reduce cooling time just make the belt go through a cooling unit like a freezer or something.

The weight when reached would then have to trigger an immediate release and removal of the dart, or else there could be dripping. But if you remove the dart too quickly you could get a trail of hot glue pulling the dome out of alignment because the stream was still too thick between the gun and the dart.

Hot glue guns are simply not precise enough to automate with, you would need a hot glue melt pot with a heated delivery nub that could be accurately measured and regulated. Not difficult in and of itself, except that the temperature would have to be very consistent throughout the whole system or you'd get uneven glue distribution.

The problem is inherent in the materials used. If another type of material was substituted, something that would allow for more precise distribution, it might be easier. But I don't know of any material that could be used.

Heh, the freezer would make it incredibly cost prohibitive. I'd much rather design a system that would allow the dart to drop into a box array that would keep it upright. Making a gridwork box and a ratchet-advance delivery chute would be much more practical. If somewhat large to hold large quantities of darts.

EDIT:
Another problem, since the foam is coming off a roll, it needs to be straightened somehow before being holed/glued.

I guess a hair dryer somewhere in the mix could do that.

Edited by hereticorp, 17 September 2008 - 11:58 AM.

[CaptainSlug]

Controlling the amount of hot glue dispensed is just a matter of having the trigger pulled a very precise distance in a repeatable manner.
Getting a machine to make a uniform dome would be the real challenge. It would probably be much easier to make an automated assembly line that makes felt + washer stefans because you only have to apply a certain volume of hot glue to the middle of the washer and then drop the foam blank onto it.

[hereticorp]

CaptainSlug, on Sep 17 2008, 12:55 PM, said:

Controlling the amount of hot glue dispensed is just a matter of having the trigger pulled a very precise distance in a repeatable manner.
Getting a machine to make a uniform dome would be the real challenge. It would probably be much easier to make an automated assembly line that makes felt + washer stefans because you only have to apply a certain volume of hot glue to the middle of the washer and then drop the foam blank onto it.

It would be if hot glue guns were consistent about the amount of glue put out per trigger pull, neither of the ones I have here (10w and 40w) are consistent about it between pulls.

See, I was thinking about the Felt/Washer being easier to automate as well, you'd just have to prep the tips beforehand and put them in some sort of dispensing mechanism.

Watari, on Sep 16 2008, 10:26 PM, said:

Uhh, I just read the above 3 posts and decided to search for what "zero's" are...well I did search, many times, and came up with people just talking about it, I think it had to do with FBR and craft foam and/or felt? Also the links didn't work (since most of the people that posted were from '03-'04) and also I googled "Foam modified" and "zero darts" and nothing really came up, since I didn't want to necro a topic, can anyone tell me (or us because i'm guessing more than one person wants to know)...what zero darts are?

I googled for Nerf Stefan Zero

Found this:
Zero darts are Stefan micros with a collar made from a thin foam sheet. These darts have the lowest dart/barrel friction and work extremely well in air pressure guns. The plunger inertia issue makes Zeros a less than ideal choice in spring guns. Zero darts should be considered especially effective in large volume pump guns like the SM5k where a larger barrel diameter won't hurt as much and the lower dart/barrel friction will be critical.

From Here... On NH Ironically Enough

[Draconis]

I remember recently where a guy on NHQ was asking about interest in mold blocks that he was making. The idea was that you squirt hot glue in to a hole drilled in a slab of aluminum, and then shove a dart blank in to the hole. Repeat the process down the row, and by the time you get to the end, the first on is solidified enough to remove.

What if this concept was configured in a circular wheel, which rotated around on a step motor, getting a squirt, a dart, and cooling time. Then as the cooling darts com back around, they are plucked out, just before the hot glue gun squirts again.

The dart cutter could certainly be placed directly above the molding wheel, though there may need to be something to push it in to the hole, rather than allowing it to drop in by gravity.

[hereticorp]

Draconis, on Sep 17 2008, 03:08 PM, said:

I remember recently where a guy on NHQ was asking about interest in mold blocks that he was making. The idea was that you squirt hot glue in to a hole drilled in a slab of aluminum, and then shove a dart blank in to the hole. Repeat the process down the row, and by the time you get to the end, the first on is solidified enough to remove.

What if this concept was configured in a circular wheel, which rotated around on a step motor, getting a squirt, a dart, and cooling time. Then as the cooling darts com back around, they are plucked out, just before the hot glue gun squirts again.

The dart cutter could certainly be placed directly above the molding wheel, though there may need to be something to push it in to the hole, rather than allowing it to drop in by gravity.

You could actually have it setup with an angled piece that pushed the dart off into the end-bin right before the hot glue step, there could also be a heat element below the second step which would be where the blank drops onto the Glue/BB so that it would stay hot enough to melt the dart onto it. Then in the next 6-7 steps it would cool and then be knocked off into the bin.

The dart cutter would need to go into a hopper because the cutting process would always be faster than the rest of the process.

You'd also have to deal with placing the BB in the hot glue as well, and possibly heating the whole thing enough so that the BB and glue would melt the dart foam slightly and stick correctly. It could definitely be done that way, I'll have to think some more.

Hm... You could even have a mesh cage hopper with a hair dryer under it to straighten the darts. Have it on a timer, when the timer completes the dryer shuts off, the hopper dumps into the glue-hopper and then the cutter starts up again for the next batch.

Edited by hereticorp, 17 September 2008 - 02:14 PM.

[Lynx]

Cool.

You could have it set up into a funnel that goes into a machine that makes holes. The funnel will let the blanks fall onto a soldering iron. All the while, a motor is spinning with prongs that will knock the blanks off of the iron. To ensure it doesn't just fall off the iron, the funnel will hold about 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch of foam on it. From there, you can have it hit off into a pillow case.

Cool.

[hereticorp]

Lynx, on Sep 17 2008, 05:38 PM, said:

Cool.

You could have it set up into a funnel that goes into a machine that makes holes. The funnel will let the blanks fall onto a soldering iron. All the while, a motor is spinning with prongs that will knock the blanks off of the iron. To ensure it doesn't just fall off the iron, the funnel will hold about 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch of foam on it. From there, you can have it hit off into a pillow case.

Cool.

That would be incredibly inexact for the making of the holes, especially with the drop angle being a variable.

It would be better to funnel the darts into PVC on a belt and have it advance a click at a time, then the iron drop down a specified length to make the hole, then let the pieces fall into another hopper that would somehow manage to sort them so that the hole side is down and then have the next machine do the hot-glue/BB stage.

[Langley]

Don't forget you've got to straighten the foam when it's cut. I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for a human to straighten the foam, and place it into a grid of dart holders. You can actually buy 2 axis robotic arms that have glue gun attachments. Programming one to wipe off the tip of the glue gun every two or three darts with an automated swab shouldn't be difficult. The only tough part would be dispensing your weights in between the burning and gluing.

[hereticorp]

Langley, on Sep 18 2008, 10:39 AM, said:

Don't forget you've got to straighten the foam when it's cut. I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for a human to straighten the foam, and place it into a grid of dart holders. You can actually buy 2 axis robotic arms that have glue gun attachments. Programming one to wipe off the tip of the glue gun every two or three darts with an automated swab shouldn't be difficult. The only tough part would be dispensing your weights in between the burning and gluing.

Already discussed that above, a mesh hopper and a hair dryer on a timer would be about right to straighten things out before the things went into the next stage.

Well yes, you could manually load the darts into a gridwork holder, but the point of this is to make a fully automated solution.

I'll probably build the dispenser setup at some point, it would be a simple 3-stage process.

First: Soldering Iron with a rounded tip on a set-length drop/return cycle.

Second: The array moves one step forward and a BB is dropped, multi-size nib would serve to work with different materials, could also be adjustable for 2-tick for double-bb darts.

Third: The array moves another step forward and the glue gun/pot is activated for a given number of seconds to produce the dome.

Meanwhile the first and second steps are happening on the next darts while the third one is being finished off. You'd obviously have to have a check to insure that steps 2 and 3 didn't happen on grid place 1,1, and step 3 didn't happen when the array is at 1,2, but still, it wouldn't be difficult.

Could operate a bit like a typewriter, with the array returning to point 0 after completing a row and the grid holder advancing forward one step.

[Langley]

Well if you're going to do it that way, having a two-dimensional grid just complicates things. You could just have a row of dart holders that slides back and forth. The two dimensional grid is only really practical if you went for my pre-built two axis arm idea, and you're loading the darts in by hand (which I still think is a good idea, since you're still automating the most time consuming parts of the process and avoiding trying to automate the trickiest.)

[hereticorp]

Langley, on Sep 18 2008, 11:18 AM, said:

Well if you're going to do it that way, having a two-dimensional grid just complicates things. You could just have a row of dart holders that slides back and forth. The two dimensional grid is only really practical if you went for my pre-built two axis arm idea, and you're loading the darts in by hand (which I still think is a good idea, since you're still automating the most time consuming parts of the process and avoiding trying to automate the trickiest.)

I'm thinking more of saving space, having 100 darts lined up in a holder makes for a looooong holder. Having a reciprocating mechanism that will bring the holder back to start and move over one slot is still practical, especially if I don't have the 3-stage array move at all, just have the holder move underneath.

Just have the array on an overhanging arm, ignore the entire double-mechanized idea and just go with simplistic.

[aetherguy881]

I've already started over engineering this in my head... I can picture it now... A stefan production facility in my shop and my parents bugging me about taking up too much space.

Anyhoo I can get some ideas on some paper if you want. just PM me.

The video is lacking one major component... Music: How it's Made.

It's legal, obtained from here It's not the original, just a synthesis.

[hereticorp]

aetherguy881, on Sep 18 2008, 11:55 AM, said:

I've already started over engineering this in my head... I can picture it now... A stefan production facility in my shop and my parents bugging me about taking up too much space.

Anyhoo I can get some ideas on some paper if you want. just PM me.

The video is lacking one major component... Music: How it's Made.

It's legal, obtained from here It's not the original, just a synthesis.

Seriously, I'd love that. I might even be getting a house with a 2-car garage that I can convert into a workshop. =)

I prefer my Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time - Temple of Time Techno Remix in the background. But that's a nice tune, I'll look at applying it to a future video.

[hereticorp]

Something I was discussing over on NHQ with Carbon got me thinking:

Quote

It’s unfortunate that if you hope to get any kind of additional automation going, you'll have to pre-straighten your foam. Unfortunate because cutting them straight from the spool like that is pretty nifty. You could straighten the foam in the heatless style, by letting it hang/pulling it tight from some rafters, so you can keep the full lengths. Barring that, you could make a feed tube above your pulleys, so you could stage shorter lengths.

Allow me to toss out some ideas for additional systems:

As far as a hole mechanism: a possibility would be to channel the cut blank into a length of tubing below the shears. That would in turn channel the blank onto a conveyor. The conveyor would have lengths of PVC attached standing upright, allowing the cut blank to drop directly into its holder on the conveyor. Drill a hole through the bottom of each PVC pocket, and place an LED/photosensor setup shining through it. When the blank drops in, it would trigger a stepper motor on the conveyor to advance the proper distance to the next empty tube. The conveyor could then pass underneath the hole device, which could then do a simple up and down motion.

Even still, the blank may be too light to drop properly. That, and if it's meting the hole, it may stick to the burner, unless is was somehow grabbed at the base. Ah well.

For the straightening, I was thinking of running a long tube with holes drilled in it upwards and having a hair dryer on low trained on it so that as the foam advanced, it's heated and straightened.

The problem with a tube directly below the cutter is that the photosensor would have to be in the way of the dropping blank to function the way you're suggesting. The other option would be to have a horizontal photosensor/LED setup and holes drilled through the bottom of the blank-holders on the conveyor. Actually... Come to think of it that's a pretty damn good idea. Thanks!

Keeping the FBR in the blank-holders would be easy, all that needs to be done is have a piece of polycarb with a hole the exact size of the soldering iron head cut out of it above the holder so that if the dart sticks when the iron hits it, the polycarb would knock it back into the holder when the iron retracted.

BB drop wouldn't be bad after that, and the aperture could be adjusted for different sizes. 1/4" would be difficult because it needs to be tamped down into the dart due to the size, but that could be accomplished in the same step as the bb drop.

Even the glue wouldn't be bad, you could use a heated glue pot with an outflow pipe that's also heated, and then a sliding-door style release that would open for a given period of time to let out a set amount of glue and then close, simultaneously cutting off the glue flow AND getting rid of any trailing glue so that the dome isn't pulled out of line when the conveyor moves on...

and the setup would inherently stop the cutter if the conveyor didn't move forward because a blank would be constantly occluding the cutter's LED/Photosensor, preventing the feed motor from moving forward.

Ah, excellent ideas there, I need to draw this out before I forget it.

I'm sketching as I type and I will post a picture once I really draw it out.

[Draconis]

Just Some Bob, on Sep 18 2008, 02:04 PM, said:

People who work with plunger/tube systems all the time should be able to come up with a dispenser capable of some precise metering, don't ya think?

One would hope. I have seen some thermoplastic based rapid prototyper designs floating around on the web, and most of them use a heated worm drive screw in a tube to force out the material.

[hereticorp]

Just Some Bob, on Sep 18 2008, 05:04 PM, said:

I agree with the heat-before-cutting idea; if you can pull it off, it should reduce waste because you can cut to final size rather than allow for trimming after straightening.

Also, I've been pondering the hole problem, and have thought of a completely different approach: What if the weights themselves were carefully heated just enough to melt their way in? The foam will vary slightly from piece to piece, so dropping weights from the top becomes problematic, as some might melt too far in. So push them up from below. With a well designed holder, you could drop in a hot weight, slip a foam blank over it, and trigger a vacuum cleaner motor to draw the foam down AND accelerate the cooling.

People who work with plunger/tube systems all the time should be able to come up with a dispenser capable of some precise metering, don't ya think?

I think it would be possible with enough tubing and the right level of heat for the flow.

I think the heated weights could still be dropped without much problem, the hopper itself could provide the heating element, if you provided an even heat the BB wouldn't melt very far in. I'd very much prefer the drop in method without having to deal with flipping the dart over to put the glue on.

I suppose they should be able to come up with something, except for the inconsistency of the flow with hotglue.

Draconis, on Sep 18 2008, 06:22 PM, said:

One would hope. I have seen some thermoplastic based rapid prototyper designs floating around on the web, and most of them use a heated worm drive screw in a tube to force out the material.

I could do that as well, I think that would work out pretty well with a drive motor.

[hereticorp]

Just Some Bob, on Sep 18 2008, 10:20 PM, said:

hereticorp, on Sep 18 2008, 07:01 PM, said:

I suppose they should be able to come up with something, except for the inconsistency of the flow with hotglue.

Or pick a different glue? I haven't done much with it yet, but Gorilla Glue sticks to everything I've wanted it to (and more), plus it foams a little. Although there's probably no chemical glue that cures as quickly as hotglue cools. But if you could easily apply it consistently, that might make up for a lot of other evils.

There's also no chemical glue that's going to dry in less than 24 hours, and be liquid enough to flow into a dome through a dispenser without tails coming off of it in the process.

I don't think that another type of glue is the way to go on this, but I'm open to suggestions if anyone has a specific glue they know will work.

I'm about 99% sure that gorilla glue will not work. Not unless you want to give up the idea of a front dome on the dart completely and relegate the role of the glue to making the BB stay in place instead of covering it up. Making a dome of gorilla glue would be pretty much impossible.

[Split]

I'm sticking by my idea on this one, albeit I'll be more specific here. Heated weight gets dropped in, dart somehow ends up under the glue gun (either the gun moves or the dart moves). It is also now on a little scaled platform. Hot glue gun slowly puts glue onto the dart (maybe 2+ at a time for added speed?). As the dart gets heavier, the scaled platform notices. Once it gets to a variable amount, it triggers the platform to open (opening either via hinge or slide or multiples of either). Once the platform is opened under the dart, the dart falls down vertically into and through a tube with holes in the sides. On the outside of the tube is a sealed cooling element. Dart falls and cools, the hot glue gun was shut off when the platform was triggered and everything resets.

This is easily adjustable as well as practical. The tube that the cooling element is around can be continued up past the platform (making the slide platform the most practical to fabricate) in order to stabilize the dart. It could also help position the glue gun with the proper spacer, meaning that making the glue gun move over the dart is the easiest way.

The only part that's hard from here is getting the dart into position after cutting. Possibly making the entire tube and platform move vertically through the cooling element around the dart.

[hereticorp]

Splitlip, on Sep 18 2008, 10:50 PM, said:

I'm sticking by my idea on this one, albeit I'll be more specific here. Heated weight gets dropped in, dart somehow ends up under the glue gun (either the gun moves or the dart moves). It is also now on a little scaled platform. Hot glue gun slowly puts glue onto the dart (maybe 2+ at a time for added speed?). As the dart gets heavier, the scaled platform notices. Once it gets to a variable amount, it triggers the platform to open (opening either via hinge or slide or multiples of either). Once the platform is opened under the dart, the dart falls down vertically into and through a tube with holes in the sides. On the outside of the tube is a sealed cooling element. Dart falls and cools, the hot glue gun was shut off when the platform was triggered and everything resets.

This is easily adjustable as well as practical. The tube that the cooling element is around can be continued up past the platform (making the slide platform the most practical to fabricate) in order to stabilize the dart. It could also help position the glue gun with the proper spacer, meaning that making the glue gun move over the dart is the easiest way.

The only part that's hard from here is getting the dart into position after cutting. Possibly making the entire tube and platform move vertically through the cooling element around the dart.

Heated weight would definitely improve the design with regards to complexity, taking out an entire step of the process.

Scaled platform would be very difficult to do with any sort of automated design, especially with the minuscule weights we're dealing with here. How would the dart stay contained on the platform? How would the platform actuate while still remaining accurate as a scale? If you're encasing the dart, how would you get the case on and off the platform and how would you account for the weight added? You'd almost need a hanging system for that setup with the bottom of the dart being blocked until it drops onto the platform and the glue is added. You could do it that way but you'd need an actuated glue gun as well in order to account for the supports of the hanging dart holder.

The essential problem with that setup is that the glue gun would not shut off in a timely fashion, there's a warm-up/cool-down period and the glue doesn't just stop when you stop pulling the trigger.

There would need to be some sort of clipper or block to cut the glue off and to make sure there isn't a trailing anything when the dart drops.

The equivalent of that step would be the swirling of the hot glue gun after placing the dome when doing it manually. There isn't an easy way to simulate that with an automated system.

A cooling element is a little too over the top for me personally, I'd rather let the darts run out past the glue station and have a low fan over them before they drop into the hopper, that would seem like an easier solution.

[AssassinNF]

hereticorp, on Sep 18 2008, 10:18 PM, said:

Splitlip, on Sep 18 2008, 10:50 PM, said:

I'm sticking by my idea on this one, albeit I'll be more specific here. Heated weight gets dropped in, dart somehow ends up under the glue gun (either the gun moves or the dart moves). It is also now on a little scaled platform. Hot glue gun slowly puts glue onto the dart (maybe 2+ at a time for added speed?). As the dart gets heavier, the scaled platform notices. Once it gets to a variable amount, it triggers the platform to open (opening either via hinge or slide or multiples of either). Once the platform is opened under the dart, the dart falls down vertically into and through a tube with holes in the sides. On the outside of the tube is a sealed cooling element. Dart falls and cools, the hot glue gun was shut off when the platform was triggered and everything resets.

This is easily adjustable as well as practical. The tube that the cooling element is around can be continued up past the platform (making the slide platform the most practical to fabricate) in order to stabilize the dart. It could also help position the glue gun with the proper spacer, meaning that making the glue gun move over the dart is the easiest way.

The only part that's hard from here is getting the dart into position after cutting. Possibly making the entire tube and platform move vertically through the cooling element around the dart.

Heated weight would definitely improve the design with regards to complexity, taking out an entire step of the process.

Scaled platform would be very difficult to do with any sort of automated design, especially with the minuscule weights we're dealing with here. How would the dart stay contained on the platform? How would the platform actuate while still remaining accurate as a scale? If you're encasing the dart, how would you get the case on and off the platform and how would you account for the weight added? You'd almost need a hanging system for that setup with the bottom of the dart being blocked until it drops onto the platform and the glue is added. You could do it that way but you'd need an actuated glue gun as well in order to account for the supports of the hanging dart holder.

The essential problem with that setup is that the glue gun would not shut off in a timely fashion, there's a warm-up/cool-down period and the glue doesn't just stop when you stop pulling the trigger.

There would need to be some sort of clipper or block to cut the glue off and to make sure there isn't a trailing anything when the dart drops.

The equivalent of that step would be the swirling of the hot glue gun after placing the dome when doing it manually. There isn't an easy way to simulate that with an automated system.

A cooling element is a little too over the top for me personally, I'd rather let the darts run out past the glue station and have a low fan over them before they drop into the hopper, that would seem like an easier solution.

Would it be simpler to design something to make CS/Washer Darts?

[Split]

I figured that you would get confused to that passage I wrote. I just made up a nice diagram for you in photoshop.


The light blue are the darts. I'm just realizing that they're way too small, but you get the idea. They would probably be in a track along that horizontal line being pushed by something. The entire tube moves down, one gets shoved in, and right then a heated weight could be dropped in. The entire tube moves up, stopping any more darts from entering.

The hot glue gun is spaced perfectly by the tube and a little spacer (green rod that comes off of the tip).

The red is the scaled platform. It would obviously be all electrically controlled. The rods coming vertically off of the platform lead to where the electronic scale and control circuit. Where the red arrows are are where a motor would move the platform horizontally when the weight got to a certain point.

The platform opens, and the dart drops down through the tube and the cold air from the cooling element, solidifying (at least partly, but enough to make it not deform) and perfecting the hot glue dome. It falls all the way through into the finished darts bag. Ta da! You could even make it bag a certain number, easier for resale! But that's for much later.

[hereticorp]

AssassinNF, on Sep 19 2008, 12:40 AM, said:

Would it be simpler to design something to make CS/Washer Darts?

Could you maybe NOT quote the entire contents of two hugely long posts to ask a question that was answered in the first page of posts?

Yes, it would be a lot simpler, but we're not discussing that.

Splitlip, on Sep 19 2008, 01:03 AM, said:

I figured that you would get confused to that passage I wrote. I just made up a nice diagram for you in photoshop.

The platform opens, and the dart drops down through the tube and the cold air from the cooling element, solidifying (at least partly, but enough to make it not deform) and perfecting the hot glue dome. It falls all the way through into the finished darts bag. Ta da! You could even make it bag a certain number, easier for resale! But that's for much later.

No no, I got it, but I'm asking how you would keep the darts upright and in place before they hit the platform? The way I have it worked out there's PVC shells holding the blanks, but that wouldn't work with your design at all unless there was some other method of moving them along the track while still keeping them lined up.

Just Some Bob, on Sep 19 2008, 05:19 AM, said:

hereticorp, on Sep 18 2008, 08:18 PM, said:

There would need to be some sort of clipper or block to cut the glue off and to make sure there isn't a trailing anything when the dart drops.

... or LET there be. Use the hot glue in such a way that there's a reliable "point" pretty much right on top. Then the machine can touch it to a disk sander.

It's more a problem with distorting the dome through a trailing connection with the hot glue source, you'd have to eliminate that somehow.

[Split]

Splitlip, on Sep 18 2008, 10:50 PM, said:

The only part that's hard from here is getting the dart into position after cutting. Possibly making the entire tube and platform move vertically through the cooling element around the dart.

I imagine though, you put the walls on the track at the right spacing, and you won't have many problems in two of the dimensions. The problem is keeping them from falling left or right. This would be solved by keeping tension from the left side, which also gives the benefit of pushing the darts into the tube.

I think I have a solution to this. I'll work on it in my head until I'm sure it'll work and post up details a little later.