3D Printed SS100 Clone

Guides and discussions about building water blasters and other water warfare devices such as water balloon launchers.
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reenact12321
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Joined: Thu Sep 23, 2021 5:39 pm

3D Printed SS100 Clone

Post by reenact12321 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:50 am

Hi all,

I stumbled on the 2006 era APH guides last year during the peak of lockdown cabin fever and nostalgic digging through stuff from my childhood. Finally I decided to make an attempt at my own APH (Nothing like building a water gun in November in Wisconsin). I ran into some hitches, I attempted to make a piston out of 3/8" PVC (Expensive and hard to find, and ultimately too small) and a wooden dowel. I also used a pop bottle PVC adapter to allow a 20oz or 2 Liter bottle to be put in on top rather than a backpack hookup like on the OG APH. I think my tests with a 20oz just didn't offer enough volume.

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This year I was gifted a 3d printer, and tinkered around with it before the hunk of PVC sitting in my closet came to mind, I printed a perfectly sized piston, o-ring grooves and all and it worked great. (the build still has other issues and probably would need to start over)

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I decided to see how much I could design and build for my printer. Reservoirs, pressure tanks etc will still need to be made of tougher stuff, but body parts, trigger etc would be a nice change from stiff ball valves and the like.

So far I've designed a body and controls as well as the pump (1/2 PVC outer cylinder, a scaled down piston based on my testing with my old APH), and the "Barrel" (really a guide for the pump and a conduit for tubing just like the SS100) will be 1/2" pvc as well.

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I need to tear apart the body design and add the reservoir and pressure tank, but I'm waiting on some 1/8" tubing and small fittings/check valves to mock up first.

My thought is a 1L bottle as a reservoir and 2" PVC unit on top.

If the 1/8" tubing is too constricting I will use it only for the final run so the trigger can crush it, and use stiffer, bigger 3/8 tubing to mock up a second draft.

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Current iteration work is on the grip. I want to make sure my screw holes work with #4 self-tapping screws before I got further, because then I can use those at other points to assemble the body shell.

SSCBen
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Re: 3D Printed SS100 Clone

Post by SSCBen » Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:50 pm

Welcome to WaterWar.net!

Nice work so far. I would definitely recommend making the parts under continuous pressure out of tougher materials. Fortunately for a SS 100 style blaster the components that are under pressure (reservoir, tubing, check valves) are readily available aside from the pump. You seem to have a good solution to that problem, though.

I've been interested in seeing more use of 3D printers in homemade water guns but I have no time to do so myself. A pinch trigger and more ergonomic design should be easy with 3D printing.

Keep us updated on your progress. :)

Drenchenator
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Re: 3D Printed SS100 Clone

Post by Drenchenator » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:06 am

Yes! This is one of the most interesting projects I've seen on here in a while. I would recommend improving the grip, though, perhaps by using using a real pistol grip. I used one on my own homemades previously and it was a good choice. You can of course also 3D print one, which would fit with the rest of the gun, but I just wanted to note that a pre-fabricated option does exist here. You've put a ton of great work into this and I'd really love to see the results when it's done.
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench

CDMT
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Re: 3D Printed SS100 Clone

Post by CDMT » Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:54 pm

That's really cool project . It will be awesome to see it in action. But I would shy away from making the barrel out of 3D printed material since it will be acting as a guide for the pump handle and needs to be both smooth and strong. In my experience every Super Soaker 100 and 200 I owned as a kid failed at the barrel by cracking. I would also reinforce the barrel attachment point. If you are wanting similar capacity as the original the reservoir bump up capacity to at least 1.5 liters. I would also make the nozzle easy to screw off as the needle like nozzle of the original traps sand.

HBWW
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Re: 3D Printed SS100 Clone

Post by HBWW » Fri Nov 12, 2021 12:35 am

Finally, someone did it lol. There is massive potential here to modernize the hobby, though getting the last bits will require a lathe and perhaps injection molding. But a ton can already be done with FDM printing and even more with SLA.
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