I’ve been puzzling this one out, too.
I think I’ll save it for my second wand. I have enough on my plate for Halloween as it is. Still, I’ll have a few months afterward to rig it up at my leisure. Definitely a spring, though. I want that sucker to CLACK in place.
Putting me on the spot huh?
Well, I’m still figuring it out because I take issue with both that video that has been posted (for the barrel extension mechanism and other things) and the way other members have done because it does not leave a lot of room in the gun body.
I’m stealing some ideas from nosiliT and my basic idea will be moving the spring into the barrel and out of the gun body. Then extending an “arm” from the clear barrel into the gun body and having a hook and latch system in there. I might start work on a prototype soon. I wanted to put it in my current gun I have but I can’t get my front barrel apart because everything is PC-7’ed together . . . its never coming apart.
Oh you know it baby!
i like the idea of moving the spring into the barrel and having a small rod inside the box instead of a large sleeve.
You might could try Exoray’s “Electronics In-Pack” gun kit, made specifically for guns with very minimal room inside.
Oh you know it baby!
i like the idea of moving the spring into the barrel and having a small rod inside the box instead of a large sleeve.
How camp does this post look? LOL 
I actually started working on a prototype today. I’m going to see if I can get it into current gun. I need to tear my gun apart to do it, but if I think I can get it done before the end of October, I might do it!
Okay, this is what I have so far.
The basic idea is the brass bar is secured to the clear tubing in the front grip and there is a spring behind the clear tip. The brass bar reaches back into the gun body.
That leads to the next part of the set up, this:
There would be picture wire tied to the back of the brass peg. The wire is feed parallel to the front of the gun body, to another brass eye hook, then feeds along the wall of the gun body to the green lever. When you pull down on the green lever, it will pull on the picture wire, which will pull the peg out of the brass bar, letting the spring in the barrel to extend the clear tip.
The spring attached to the brass peg will hold it in place.
Here’s a diagram of the set up:
All these eye hooks will be screwed into pieces of .125" styrene, with the excess thread sawed off. Then these pieces of styrene will be glued via PC-7 into the inside of the the gun body.
That’s my idea so far. I’ll let you guys know how it goes the closer I get to finishing it.
Here’s a variation on the idea: rather than a hole in the bar, the bar has a notch cut into it, something like this:
Triggering it then becomes a downward motion to nudge the peg out of the notch. A spring still holds the peg in the latched position. The tapered end will help guide the peg back into the notch when you retract the barrel. When you hear the click, you’ll know it is latched.
In this drawing the notch faces down, but really it could be oriented any direction, whichever is most practical in terms of not getting in the way of the electronics and simplifying the linkage to the lever.
Loving these ideas, if they don’t inter fear with the electronics then this will be awesome
Yeah, that’s exactly why I’m trying this out. I want there to be enough room for the electronics in there but to have this still work. I mean, they made it work in 1983, I’m sure we can figure something out . . .
Here is my plan for my next gun:
Wow, you guys sure like to over complicate things. As for the electronics issues for not fitting in the gun the simplest solution is to put the boards in the pack and run your wires up to the gun. Now you have room in the gun for the barrel extender, how ever overly designed you want go. Fellas and lasses, the more complicated you make things the more chances for breakage, keep things simple.
You are correct. If we put the light boards in the pack and ran the LEDs into the gun, we would have a lot more room.
I guess, the reason I decided to design the prototype I’m working with now, is because in my first pack, I did have this set up:
But I ran into problems with this set up. The first and foremost was obviously space. Currently, for the electronic impaired, there are only 2 people offering kits that can be fitted into the pack and ran into the gun and both kits run for alot. So, I decided to get the mechanism out of the way of my current electronics as best I could.
The second problem I had was with cracking the plastic clear tip in the gun. I’m actually still trying to figure out the best way to get the clear tip to safely stop inside the front barrel with it getting the brunt of the shock.
But I do agree, the more moving parts, the more likely something can break. I’m hoping my current thing I’m trying does not get any get any more complicated for my own sake and does not take up too much more space. That would defeat the whole point.
Maybe put a stack of O-rings or some other rubber bushing around the clear tube to cushion the impact at the end of its travel.
have you guys thought about gutting nerf guns and looking at reverse engineering the mechanics?
I’m suprised this video hasn’t been posted…check it at the 2:00 mark.
holy shit, the pack is 99% screen accurate and the thrower is 98% screen accurate. he’s got those nailed down to percentages . . .
that means the entire setup is 197% screen accurate!
dumb
mburkit, please make your clear tube pop out properly, please! there are too many pack out there that dont do it right.
…and too many people that bitch about others work when they can’t even build it themselves.
I totally understand where you are coming from, I ran into the same problem in my test phase before I padded it up. It sheered the catch clean off. I did a fix to it, but it is an issue with the design. So anyone going with the lever design, remember to pad up the stopper first, then test the spring. Those springs have some force to them.
Good luck with this, looking forward to seeing how it works out.
There’s this place, called the Internet…
They were khaki.
Wait…what were we talking about?
