Posted 22 June 2017 - 04:06 PM

As some of you may have been aware, I've been working on a solution for a high-capacity magazine. I'm posting this to show that I have succeeded, and where my toils have led. I'm dubbing it the Mark-13 (prototype), since it's the 12th 13th blaster I've built or worked on/mostly built (After the Mk-8, it was a JSPB-style blaster, a PSCR, a 3d-printed Durendal, and Caliburn).



Without further delay, here's the janky prototype of possible doom:







This is my development. For those who haven't been following along, it's a 3s lipo powered 12v blower hooked up to some Carlon 3/4" ENT Flexible Conduit (alt link for a shorter section); connected to the PVC via Sch 40 3/4" PVC, a threaded/slip coupler, and a threaded ENT adapter at both ends, hooked up to a firing tube that flows freely into a flywheel cage (mine is from a Rayven). As-shown, it has a +/- 20' long coil used as a mag and I've successfully fired several shots off it, and fed a total of 61 full-length darts through it. 65 darts in +/- 30 seconds of continuous firing.



The distinction is because I found my connection from the end of the conduit to the FWC to be clogging up with darts. If I were able to spend more time building something right now, I could eliminate that issue. I'll get to it if you don't do it first, but I've been touting this thing for a while now and wanted to get a working prototype out there for others to build off of. No distinction, I've fixed it and it works fine.So far, I have fed it USC's, waffle heads, and stock darts and all fed fine. I suspect I could use the blower I've sourced with a larger coil-mag, but cut my tubing down yesterday thinking it was the issue. These ENT connectors do not like coming off once attached, so I might need to pick up some more prior to continuing coil-mag length testing.



This is absolutely a bench rig. It is meant for testing, and I'll need to make a shell for if/when I actually plan to use it in a war. Or I'll cram all that into an old Longshot, I'm pretty sure it'll fit. Or maybe I'll just tape it all together into some franken-monster. For the electrical guys, yes, I know I'm not supposed to use wire nuts that way but once I'd rigged up the FWC I realized it'd be a perfect fit inside 1/2" Sch 40 PVC so I just cut it and wire-nutted it back together.







This is the bench rig with the coil mag removed to show what is going on a little bit better. On the left, the aformentioned blower. This one appears very capable of clearing the 20' coil-mag I'm using. Leading from that is a section of 3/4" PVC that I've cut slots into such that it nests over the locking nubs on the blower (probably could achieve the same result by filing/sanding down the nubs, but I wanted to keep the blower mostly intact). The 3/4" has a hole cut into it for feeding darts through - in the future I'd like this to be a Y or a loading door, but this works ok for now and I didn't have either of those handy. Then there are the connectors and coil-mag, and a section of 1/2" PVC leading to a 1/2" PVC T (because I didn't have a coupler handy) leading to the FWC. That part was clogging at the coil-mag -> PVC connection, so I may need to create a fitting or nest some pipe and chamfer it or just feed through the 3/4 or something.



Update: I've figured out a different connector setup: From the coil outlet, ENT adapter, Threaded-socket 3/4" coupler, 3/4" pipe chamfered on the end toward the coil, FWC. My setup uses another coupler and a 1/2" T because my pipe was too short and I wanted a window to see what was going on.





Here's the wiring diagram. Negative blower and FWC go to the negative battery, positive blower goes through the trigger switch and to the battery; positive FWC goes through a rocker switch, then to the trigger switch, and then to the battery.



As for draw, this thing probably needs a much larger battery than I have available. The battery voltage has gone from 12.7 to 11.7 in several minutes of testing and loading. With careful attention, I could probably run this as-is in a war, but only for one 30-minute round and at this time I'd want to be checking it even during that.



For the astute among you, you'll have noticed an important omission - this has no trigger. It could, it'd probably be akin to a Zeus trigger or (for full-auto) a simple SNAP trigger. Currently, pull the trigger-switch and everything turns on and that's it. Flip the rocker switch and the flywheels don't turn so you can load more easily. It probably should have a real trigger at some point, since darts resting on the wheels seem to cause the the stock motors this is currently running to jam. Ideally, it'll have a trigger that mechanically forces the last several darts into the wheels so some lag in blower-pressure doesn't cause a firing lag. That's down the line though, I need to get my printer working again before I can really start to figure that stuff out.



Comments, questions, and criticisms accepted.

Edited by Meaker VI, 10 July 2017 - 08:28 PM.