The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Guides and discussions about building water blasters and other water warfare devices such as water balloon launchers.
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The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by HBWW » Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:35 pm

Topic split from the Nerf SS thread. This is akin to the CAD discussion, but with more of a focus on 3D printing itself and what changes it may bring to both stock and homemade blasters of the future.

I don't see this history repeat (of better-performing blasters cannibalizing those of inferior performance [yet expensive] in the market) happening to be honest. Back in the 80's, the Super Soaker was completely new and the toys market (especially water blasters) had much more market dominance. Today, everyone's distracted by all sorts of other things, especially computer-related tech, iPhones, etc. as we've shifted into an information-based society.

The one thing I'm holding onto is the upcoming 3D printing revolution. I see two possible reactions from toy companies from this: Innovate and cut costs massively, or litigate and try to sue anyone who distributes/fabricates trademarked and/or patented stuff at home. Some companies may do both. What they won't be able to do however, is to pursue litigation attacks against people sharing items in the public domain. In the future, every house will have a machine that can easily spit out 40%-70% of everything you need to build a CPS 1000 knockoff, but the reactions from industries who have something to loose (if they don't innovate) will be harsh if they have enough power to enforce their interests. We almost see this now with GPS makers loosing to smartphones, but they haven't pursued any predatory litigation strategies as far as I'm aware of. Of course, 3D printing will stir up a lot more controversy than with intellectual property laws and norms. The debate regarding the right to bear arms is going to stir up aggressively in the future as well.

In the meantime, I expect everything to stay the same; Nerf SS continuing to make underperforming products, and BBT to keep doing what they've been doing; small, incremental improvements to their blasters in any direction they can. (Without really pushing performance/output past the CPS 1000, but they are likely to reach it particularly after the CPS patent expires.) You need a big event to shake up these sorts of things and change the status quo. Lonnie Johnson and Larami really did that well, but that time has long come and gone. We, as a community on the other hand, have been sitting in front of a forum thinking of how to accomplish this sort of thing for well over a decade now. It really takes a lot of understanding, leadership, and/or luck to be able to do that sort of thing by yourself, but the dynamics of the world around us cause this kind of thing to happen every once in a while too. (An example of which would be the Internet and its very productive impact on water warfare.)

Here's an article to ponder: http://on3dprinting.com/2012/06/07/why- ... aft-video/
Minecraft to 3D printing looks a lot more fun than Legos. Plus you don't have to disassemble anything unless you can't buy anymore 3D printing material. Then you can just melt things down or recycle them. Of course, Minecraft is nothing compared to being able to throw this stuff together in Sketchup, AutoCAD, etc.
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Re: Nerf SS

Post by Nemesis » Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:14 am

All too true CA99... That statement was just sort of a stray thought, but i appreciate such an in-depth response. Another stray thought, Has anyone played minecraft and just felt very limited in what they can do? I know how popular the game is, but i find it too simple for me, even for building things, and like you said, 3D printing them. It would be much easier to use sketchup or the like.
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Re: Nerf SS

Post by HBWW » Sun Apr 14, 2013 2:24 pm

I would've tried out Minecraft when younger, but after being introduced to new possibilities and 3D modeling, I didn't feel it was worth the time.

Now, people have 3d printed a working (albeit wobbly) bike before, but I'm still concerned on applications requiring various materials. I think internals will be standard pipe parts for quite a while, but we should be able to at least make our own fittings and even connect parts by o-ring seals like stock blasters do.

I do need to split off these posts into a new threads though. From Nerf SS having no future, I got too carried away about the future part of things.
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by isoaker » Sun Apr 14, 2013 6:55 pm

By the time 3D printing is more readily available to consumers, most patents involving the water blaster technology we'd like to see used more often should have expired. At that point, the only thing manufacturers could potentially sue for is infringing on a design basis as opposed to technology/patent violations.

However, while 3D printing will allow people to fabricate various shaped parts, allowing more complex designs to be created at home, I'm not as convinced about how well a 3D-printed pressure chamber could hold up. It will be an interesting time once 3D printing becomes more widely available. One thing for sure, it'll allow some concepts to be mocked up in full size faster, though I still think it will remain cheaper to buy a water blaster for awhile even when 3D printing is available. It wouldn't make sense for plastic to be cheaper for 3D printers than it already is for large scale manufacturing. What the price difference is remains to be seen, of course, and will likely drop over time, but while I could foresee a shift in the community more towards 3D-printed designs, the wider consumer market will probably still stick with stock water blasters for a much longer time.

:cool:
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by HBWW » Sun Apr 14, 2013 9:08 pm

That's why I mentioned that I think standard parts are going to stay for quite some time, but various custom parts such as O-ring holders for pumps could be printed. There will always be some level of assembly required for the foreseeable future, but I'm hoping for being able to make easy, easy-to-follow plans that produce effective designs. No ambiguity, no "figure this part out on your own", but instead, simply follow x instructions to get y results which may open up the homemades world to more people. Right now we're kind of stuck on basic designs that, while effective, are still lacking in usability and in some cases, reliability. (i.e. CPH pressure chambers.) The better stuff that mimics the advantages of stock blasters aren't very easy to do, and require you to separate the handling from the internals.

I'm finding that many stock blasters are making less and less sense for the long term of things, mainly in the maintenance aspect. Fix one problem and out comes another. Fix one blaster and two more break. Perhaps the 3D printing revolution will simplify some repairs though, by being able to fabricate replacement parts, then melt them down and re-fab if/when they break. (And bad parts such as 4100 triggers can be redesigned accordingly or can be made out of stronger materials.) Makes me wonder if buying those blasters at the community war was a mistake after all. =p

You are definitely correct on pricing though, but the price difference is made up for in extended performance and durability. Stock blasters are highly unlikely to increase in durability since it appears cost ineffective to do so, and by durability, I mean something that can take at least some degree of warfare abuse and last years with little or even no maintenance, so long as its stored cleanly and taken care of. Homemades have the advantage of easy disassembly so that water lingering in the internals can be emptied very easily, including water trapped in the pump. They could also perform the 1500-at-bottom-of-lake feat very easily since PVC is built to constantly take pressure for very long times.

That said, I know I'm just chasing dreams at the moment, but I'm also getting a bit frustrated at constantly having to look after every single little detail of every single stock blaster in the armory, and in some cases, being unable to come up with a good, longer term repair that lasts more than a few years. The idea in the end is to have to have less effort for more guns, more waterpower, and to make it easier to keep lots of equipment around so the durability aspect of homemades is alluring. Right now, there are no alternatives either; NIB CPS's are pricey, rare, and will also eventually break like every other stock blaster. Plus they're typically better as collectibles than for combat, although that defeats their purpose of being made.

Perhaps I just need to trudge through this a little longer and maybe my stock blasters will stay repaired for long enough, or I need to cut off that end of things and focus only on things that'll last and perform in combat.
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by DX » Sun Apr 14, 2013 9:18 pm

Homemades are almost always more expensive than just buying a soaker. Price is not exactly a high consideration when choosing to build one. Even a small APH still costs $35-50 to make. The real benefit of 3D printing will be the ability to make exactly what you want, such as a gun with easily-serviceable valves, custom parts that aren't available now, etc. Can't find the PVC fitting you need? Print it. Need some obscure connecter piece? Print it.
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by HBWW » Sun Apr 14, 2013 10:39 pm

It depends what you mean by "just buying a soaker", although nowadays that's correct for the most part as eBay prices have fallen. (As in, prices at which people will actually buy.)
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by Drenchenator » Mon Apr 15, 2013 6:35 am

I think rapid prototyping (3D printing) can help, and it's already making good stuff on hobbyist sites (an example), but it has a long way to go.

Granted, I do see how it can change the current framework of ownership -- if you could build anything instantly, why bother owning anything up until the point that you need it? -- but that change will take decades.

I cannot fathom using 3D printing to make pressure chambers or pressurized parts. For my senior design class, we were required to 3D print a part to aid in design. My group's part broke a few minutes after we got it, and that was just from touching. Most 3D printed plastics are very weak. To be blunt, 3D printing makes great mockups or decorative pieces, but it can't really make high-quality pressurized pieces (like what we would need). Granted, that could change as the process improves, but it's not there right now at least.

I see three areas in which 3D printing could help our community in right now: reservoirs, human-interfaces, and repairs.

Reservoirs have always been a big problem, because it's really hard to make a good one that holds at least 3L and is reasonably compact. A great example of a good reservoir is the CPS 2000/2500 one. It's about 3L, and it's reasonably compact and tightly made. Homemades use PVC pipe because it's readily available, but this usually means that the chamber is either really long, or it snakes around in a crazy fashion. A 3D printed reservoir is not limited to tubes, so we should easily see better reservoir designs, like the CPS 2000/2500 one.

Human-interfaces is an odd phrase I used as a catch all for grips, handles, triggers, and nozzle selectors -- things that people touch and manipulate. 3D printing can make much more ergonomic and functional solutions more easily.

Repairs are the most obvious one. Why bother fixing a cracked trigger when you can quickly fabricate a pre-made better one? Granted, the designer will still have to design with the 3D printed plastic's weakness in mind, but if done correctly I can see a 3D printed part replacing a broken stock part.

One a side note, I'm not too worried about the cost of building homemades. A CPS 2000 cost 39.99 USD in 1996, which is around 59.17 USD today. A basic APH is still around there in costs. Granted, more advanced designs (like Riptide) cost around 200 USD, but that's still well within an order of magnitude of the cost of a CPS 2000.

Edit: I accidentally used 1995 instead of 1996 in the inflation calculation.
Last edited by Drenchenator on Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by HBWW » Mon Apr 15, 2013 1:39 pm

I'd give it years to a decade at most, given how fast technology changes these days in general, although I'm not sure how things will go before we can make pressure containers. Until then, the stuff we have right now from hardware stores does the job quite well.

I was unaware that a CPS 2000 would cost over $60 these days if adjusted for inflation. This makes iSoaker's mention of price even more of a moot point than I thought; it's apparent that battle-capable blasters are not cheap to make, although I think $200 is really pushing it. One of the points of our hobby is (or ought to be) the low cost and barrier to entry, so I think that to be able to fabricate a homemade that's tactically effective for around the $60-$100 range would be ideal. Problem is, anything under $30-$40 these days (stock or built) generally will not perform at a useful level for most of our wars. (Unless you count the cheap APH that's cheap only because someone already has all the tools/pipe needed.)
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by Drenchenator » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:15 pm

I accidentally used 1995 as the year instead of 1996. I updated the inflation calculation. My point is the still the same: homemades are not extraordinarily expensive.

Something that would be interesting to 3D print would be just a regular, old squirt gun. This could act as like a "proof of concept" before anyone tries to make something more complicated.
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by spitfire » Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:59 am

I agree with the Drenchenator. homemades are not[in my experience] expensive- my ranger 20.7 was only like $20.00- $30.00, and that includes the external tank. As of 3d printing, if anyone has a 3d printer, can he print a water gun lamination nozzle? I'm still drilling holes in end caps...
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by HBWW » Thu Apr 18, 2013 1:09 pm

I use water balloon filler nozzles and have gotten amazing lamination from them. That said, you can only take a one-size-fits-all approach to that, as most fillers are, well, one size. However, it's great that you pointed this out because I could definitely see 3D fabrication technology being able to make much smoother nozzles than drilled endcaps. In addition, they could make it easier to build nozzle laminators.
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by spitfire » Sat Jun 08, 2013 3:00 pm

:D :D :D :D :D Found a 3-D printer, so it looks like I will be able to build the lamination nozzle, as well as another project I mentioned to isoaker
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Re: The future of the water blaster, and 3D fabrication at home

Post by HBWW » Fri Jun 21, 2013 4:24 pm

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/06 ... cheap-now/

The basic ones are becoming quite affordable, even to the point of an overpriced CPS 2000. They should be able to fabricate good plastics too, such as ABS. Looks like I'm going to have to get serious investing time in this. However, being too lazy to re-download and re-learn AutoCAD, I hope these support Sketchup as well.

I'm still holding off, but it'd be good to get some hands-on when I have the time and a steady income.
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