ice

Hey, haven't posted here in quite a while. A few years back, when longshots where the thing everyone was modifying, there was always a request for stronger or at least more readily available bolt sleds, that never seemed to get fulfilled. I'm aware that there are ways of getting new boltsleds, as offered by OMW and other companies, but they where typically very expensive, or could only be bought with a kit. In my absence from nerf, I've gotten into casting and molding, and now have the ability to make custom parts, or simply recast existing parts out of much stronger plastics. I would like to know if there's still interest in stronger boltsleds, or any highly needed part for that matter, as I have the means to make small quantities in my workshop.

In order for this to be cost efficient, I would have to sell at least ~10 boltsleds, or which ever requested part, although these molds have a long library life and I could continue casting from them for years if people still want anything I have molded. The price point would be around $30 shipped for a boltsled, which I realize is alot for this community, but if I had a high volume of orders, say more then 25 people requesting them, then I could sell them for a bit less, maybe $25 each.

Basically what I would like to know is is this something the community would be interested in? What other parts would you suggest for molding?


On a more technical note, This is the casting plastic that would be used. Although I don't have an exact comparison percentage to the actual nerf plastics, I estimate that it's nearly twice as strong, and displays very similar strength and flexibility properties as polycarbonate, though someone with exact numbers on the nerf plastic specs can correct me on this.

Demo video of casting plastic:

So I just finished modifying my Nitron, re-wired the whole thing (to skip all the electronic locks), took out some physical locks, and hooked it up to a 12v 2000MAH RC battery. The fly wheel is no considerably louder, much more so then just 3 volts should have increased it by, but I'm thinking, since there's so much less wire, maybe the current stays stronger as it reaches the motor? Anyway, I put the whole thing back together, and went outside with a 10 shot clip to range test it, having 8 discs loaded. They all traveled considerably far, maybe in the 80-90 foot range. I went found 7 of said 8 discs, reloaded my mag, and shot again, this time only hitting about 40-50 feet. Puzzeled and unhappy, I loaded the same discs a third time, in which they barely went 10 feet. It's kind of a hazy day here in PA, but it wasn't raining really, just that the grass is moist. When the discs landed in the wet grass, they didn't feel wet themselves, but maybe they got heavier? I went inside and brought out fresh discs, and they flew the original 80-90 foot range, and then decreased range each consecutive time I shot them, just like the first batch of discs. Then I used another group of fresh discs inside, shooting from my room, down a hall, into the living room, hitting a wall 60 feet away consistently every time (though the discs weren't very accurate, they maintained there velocity and hit the wall every time for each round I fired them).

I've obiously come to the conclusion that water, even the very little bit that touched the disc's, none of which seemed to soak in, either makes the discs heavier, or changes there grip on the fly wheel, so they don't spin as well.

My question is, has anyone else seen this same thing happening to there Nitrons? I'm also interested to see if anyone can test this with a stock nitron and tell me there results.



Interested with said data, I just went outside with my stock Praxis. Discs went 50-60 the first time (dry). Then, I reloaded the discs (which had landed in the grass) and fired them again (8 shots). Almost every single disc went out straight about 10 feet, then abruptly turned vertical and flew right of me. Being that this blaster is stock, I'm rather upset, cause it's not something that I'm doing wrong, it's that the product literally doesn't work with even the slightest bit of moister. Most nerf war attendees will see this as as big of a problem as I am if they planned on doing anything at all with the vortex series blasters, assuming the other two smaller variants preform the same was as the two larger ones. If you have a small vortext blaster, or a stock Nitron, please preform this same test and post your results, for the benefit of the community, and hopefully someone will have an explanation better then "Cause it's wet".

Thank you

So I need some help with an octo-shot turret that I just finished. I've used a quadshot for many years now as my primary, and decided it was time to upgrade, seeing as everyone's using hoppers now anyway, and I need some more fire power. However, not liking to use hoppers myself, I sided with an octo-shot turret. There's a rather large problem with it though, and nothing I read on any of the threads or vids addressed it, so I thought I'd make a topic. When I prime the blaster, which inturn pulls the rotation bar, then prime forward which finishes the rotation, my turret ends up slightly off center, so the main barrel doesn't completely line up with the plunger. Even without the plunger tube in to push on the turret, it never seems to fully rotate. It's quite snug in the shell and doesn't wobble at all, even if I shake it. I'm going to have pics up later tonight, and I'm sure I'm overlooking something rather stupid, just thought it would be a good idea to go for outside help. Much appreciated, thanks.

A FORWARD NOTE
I'm going to be writing and posting this over a few days, as this is still a WIP, but I wanted to throw up an update, cause I've shown a few people the design idea and I'm interested to see what you guys think of it.


Hey, so a little story before I start. Coop and I were thinking of just silly and unnecessary mods for nerf, and were going to build the best one. This is one of the ideas I came up with, integrating two automatics, totally unnecessary, but also pretty cool. This idea grew on me more and more, and later that night, I actually started drafting how the shells would fit. They actually went together very nicely, so I started making the cuts for the integration. I already had the stampede completed, which I used at Massacre 5 to great avail. It's powered by two RC battery's, 7.2 volts each, and shoots about 2.5 darts a second, and packs a big bad bow spring, giving it a range of 60+ flat, with hot glue tipped streamlines. It's also rather accurate. I had the swarmfire in a bin, a project I started and then left to work on later, and was just gathering dust, so I didn't feel bad about sacrificing it to make this new project come to life. I have a second swarmfire that I modded with brass barrels which averages around 50 flat with taggers (the blue kind, slightly heavier then the orange ones), so I was envisioning this to be a really cool rushing blaster, or HVZ blaster, but mostly just a concept gun, and something really fun to build.


So here's the plan, integrate the swarmfire upside down like a LS DTB integration (as I'm sure your guessed), and wire them both up to the stampede trigger. I started with the shells before the wiring, as it seemed more appropriate. This was the plan.



(I have 2 stampede shells I'm working with, hense the color change seen later) The orange in that picture it where I wanted a poly carb connecting bracket to reinforce the way the shells lined up. Swarmfires aren't light, even without the battery, so I felt something like that was necessary. Fitting the shells is actually really simple, and I don't have pictures of how I did it, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out yourself. To integrate the shells, remove the internals and screw each shell together. Turn the stampede upside down and fit the swarmfire to it so you can see the seem of the stampede handle line up with the seem of the swarmfire body, to make sure it's on straight. Then, duct tape the shells together. Adjust as needed.






Add a few tacks of hotglue on the parts of the shells that meet. This is only meant to hold them together for positioning purposes. Remove the tape, then unscrew the shells so the two halves line up. Reinforce how ever you like. I bonded the shells together using epoxy putty as the base, and then putting a roughly 6 inch poly carb template between the blasters, which was also bonded with epoxy and epoxy putty. I then sanded the sides of the e-putty (once is was fully dry) in an attempt to have the shells flow a little better.











(also put hot glue on the inside for reinforcement, just for funziez)










So I still have some work to do, yes I know, but the shells are virtually fused together (as far as normal plastic strength goes) While the shells are apart, I can bend the stampede and swarmfire shells inward, and hear no cracking on the connection point. Once thats done, take a sharpie and open the shells up. Mark where a slot must be cut in the swarmfire shell to allow for the clip to still feed through it (much simpler then it sounds). Cut it out with a dremel, and call it good. Unfortunately, this won't take 6 shot mags or drum mags, cause of the way the shells meet, only the 18 shot mags, but I was ok with that. It would be easy to cut away more of the swarmfire shell to allow for use of drums and 6 shot mags, but I think it looks better this way, and flows more with the shell and theme of the blaster, and 18 shots a clip is plenty for me, especially with an additional 20 in the front turret. Now we get to the fun part, wiring.


My stampede ran on 2 7.2 volt RC battery's, as stated earlier. However, I didn't realize at the time, but my circuit was actually in PARALLEL, meaning that it only used the power from one battery to run the stampede. Yes, 7.2 is less then the normal 9 volts the stampede runs on, but it doesn't really matter, cause the amps are higher then normal d battery's will provide, and amps is what gives tork, which is what's needed to compress the bow spring. I actually like the slightly slower firing, it gives a half a second more to adjust and be more accurate with shots. Put you could always put as many volts through it as you like, I just like 7.2 Anyway, one battery will power the stampede just fine, so I can use the other one to power the swarmfire. The goal was to be able to EASILY fire them one at a time, or at the same time, which made me want to link them both to the stampede's main trigger, then have different, easy-to-reach kill switches for each blaster. The normal kill switch for the stampede (the one that you flick with your right thumb) is actually in a really nice place for a swarmfire kill switch, as I could turn it on and off with the same hand as the stampede. Now the problem is finding a new kill switch for the stampede. I ended up just going with pulling back the jam door, which trips the top sensor and won't complete the circuit.






Here it is



See the new switch next to the trigger mech? I took that from the front of the stampede, used to be a clip lock sensor, which I found very much unneeded. Simply glue it in there, and make sure it compresses fully on a trigger pull. I'll have a full wiring diagram up tomorrow or the next day, to tired to make one right now and take pics for it.



Another note, both battery's fit in the back of the stampede shell were the original battery tray was located (glued them in). I thought the way I achieved this was pretty cool, and can be useful for other RC battery integrations on blasters. Here's how it works. I cut a slot in the shell for the outgoing battery port, so it can be charged without removing it from the blaster. Then a cut a second slot for the wires that will connect to it, bringing power to the circut, also external to the shell. Now, they can be disconnected and then connected to an outlet to charge, and then reconnected to the blaster in a few seconds, no tools required. It's only semi clean, but it works flawlessly.




(disconnected for charging)




(connected to blasters)




As of right now, I had the whole thing assembeled a few days ago, and it works pretty well. I took it apart again to continue modding the swarmfire, as not much has been done to it yet (soon to have PETG barrels if they ever get here, and rear loading). I also have a few other changes to make, but for the most part, I'm satisfied, but it will defiantly be getting a paintjob in the near future. I'll be posting the rest of the "write-up" tommorrow hopefully.

So, lots of us Im sure have the swarm fire by now. The internals aren't to impressive, but the blaster it self is, well, a blast to modify. Everything is incredibly simple, and there's alot of room for improvement. After removing the AR's in the turret and plunger tube, and throwing in a night finder spring (along with a smaller one from a crossfire I believe), I was pulling off around 45 to 50 feet consistently. That was ok, but I wanted a little more bite from such a cool blaster. The turret to plunger seal is incredible, so I didn't see anything that needed to be done there. After examining the rotation mech, I decided it would probably be strong enough to push brassed barrels, so I decided that was the next thing to be done.

Most of nerf's barrels are beveled, as we all know. When experimenting with the turret, I noticed the back half of the barrels had a part that curved in and held darts with the same tightness and seal as 17/32's brass did. They made a perfect seal with the turret plate, when in turn makes a great seal with the plunger, so I didn't feel a need to remove the whole barrel. Here's where the fun part comes in, only about half of each barrel is brassed. Before I completely did up the turret, I checked the range difference between a fully brassed barrel, and one that only had brass in the front. After multiple tests, with the same tagger darts, the ranges where identical. Thus, I present, the hybrid turret.

Start out by doing this mod: link

Once the pegs are removed and sanded (as shown in above link), take out a cone sanding bit and snap it onto your dremel. Lightly, sand the front part of the stock barrel, until you can ram a peice of 17/32's brass into it. The first few are touch and go, just a little bit of sanding, and then check the barrel fit, but after about 5 barrels, you get a sense for how much should be sanded. The barrels should fit VERY tightly, but should still be able to be pushed into the plastic.










(yes, I did a bit of the turret before I started taking pictures, just so I knew it would work correctly. So sue me)





Push the brass into the turret as far as it can go (till it hits the part of the barrel that matches it's size) and draw a line with a sharpie.











My barrels were each about 1.25 inches long. Then, cut the barrel with a metal cutting disc or pipe cutter. If using a pipe cutter, make sure to then widen the barrel again so it remains the same size the full way through. Then, sand down the edges of the brass, and the inside, making sure there are no sharp edges or metal files still attached. I did this by starting off with a belt sander, and then moving to fine gritt sand paper.















Take your nice, shiny piece of brass and push it into the sanded barrel. Make sure it goes all the way in and meets the point of the barrel which is ment to remain plastic. As assistance in pushing in all the way, I placed the turret rounded side up on my work table and pushed down on the brass with the end of a screwdriver. It's important to simply push and not hammer, as to not dent or warp the brass.



Before pushing in




After pushing in





And that's it! Now repeat that. 19 times. Enjoy










And then your left with a shiny new turret








Here's the one I had going the full way through.



(it wasn't cut in that picture yet)




Install that back in your swarmfire, and enjoy. I saw about a 10 foot range increase, bumping my ranges up to 55-60 feet flat. Keep in mind, I still haven't found a good spring for it, and when I do, Im hoping it goes around 70. I haven't had any problems with the rotation mech handling the extra weight, it takes it quite well. While this mod is repetitive, it's actually alot of fun. Hope you found this useful.