Not dead yet! Just moving very slowly.
Finally made a 12v battery case. I'd rather use regular batteries I already have than buy something I'm not used to. Finding that 8-cell case was a pain in the butt, but it was worth it.
It was supposed to have a retaining clip on top, but that broke pretty much the second I touched it.
It looks a little janky, but I wasn't using that side rail for anything, anyway. What, am I actually going to use a laser sight?
Not shown: printed dummy cells bridging the gap in the battery compartment.
Shown: embroidery floss covering up those nasty wires.
It looks kind of crummy, but the difference is like night and day. Compared to the range I'd get before, it feels rather commanding now. Not exactly a stealthy blaster now, but hopefully it won't need to be.
But that's just the start. I've got some other things in mind. Some rather questionable other things. Some questionable other things I have questions about.
I've been wondering about the possibility of making a more compact HAMP, possibly as an underbarrel add-on. The full-sized versions are pretty well established; powerful, but also stupidly easy to make. But they're also a little too full-sized to be anything other than a primary weapon. There seem to be a good number of manual blasters in the official line-up these days. The Demolisher, ThunderBlast, and Tri-Strike all basically use smaller HAMPS for back-up blasters, but I haven't really seen anything like that reproduced in the modding community.
So I started thinking... the HAMP relies on volume, so shouldn't I be able to split that volume up into a more compact package? Shouldn't a 12in pump attached to one barrel have the same performance as a pair of 6in pumps ganged together? These are dangerous questions to ask while I'm sitting in front of a CAD-capable computer with a 3D printer sitting nearby.
It makes sense in my head, but if I had a nickle for every time I stood before some figurative or literal smoldering heap and said "but it looked good on the computer..."
A bit of clarification since it's still kind of a cartoon instead of a finished model. Both pumps would lead to the same barrel via tubing; I know that creates dead space that can hinder performance, but I'm counting on it not being big enough in this case. The dark barrel part on top shows two barrels (Elite and Mega sizes), but I'm either going to use just one or try and devise some kind of idiot-proof plug; I've dabbled in toggles before, but with mixed results at best... actually, now that I think of it, I remember my earlier Elite +bow barrel part could fit neatly into the whole Mega barrel. Could I just use that as an adapter? Hm, tests...
Less important are the white pump foregrip and the red barrel. I still need to finalize the foregrip; no use picking drapes before I find out if the plumbing even works. The red barrel, outside of serving as an attachment point for the top barrel(s), is pretty much cosmetic. I wanted something more square, and the stock Nerf barrels seem to make my darts tumble if they graze the inside in the slightest.
So anyway, my big question is: Can I get away with splitting a larger HAMP into a pair of smaller parallel pumps?
the thing bursts into flames and kills my dog and ruins my marriage.
