World Web shooter shop class - Part 4

[the.Amazing]

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[Elxiah]

Hey guys! Check out my new video! Its a miniaturized version of my web shooter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDSJObCC4Kw
It has the same power! Only difference in performance is less fluid.

I'll make sure to check it out. Great job making those videos so understandable to non engineering-savvy people. Hope you don't mind those comments I put up on your vids linking to this thread. Again, great work man. Happy to have you as a new addition to the group.

 

[White_widow13]

To the.amazing: That's awesome! I'm always super impressed with your fabrication skills. You can take a basic home depot gift card and do things that blow me away!

To everybody:

Hey y'all. I wanted to ask your opinion on something. In about two weeks I'll post the results of my web shooter tests (whether successful or not). My only worry is that I only have half a pound of granular PVOH left. In trying to make a jar for display, I accidentally knocked over and wasted a good portion of my fluid.

So my questions are these:

1.)Should I add alcohol to my PVOH solution to reduce the boiling point (making it easier for everyone to be able to boil out the water)

Or

2.) Should I just use distilled water and not risk making a bad batch of web fluid?

 

[White_widow13]

two more things before I forget.

1.) I just found out that PVOH is soluble in hot hydrogen peroxide. I'd like to perform the elephant toothpaste experiment (yeast and hydrogen peroxide cause expansion and when funneled, acts like silly string) to see if it will remove some of the solvent right off the bat with the PVOH. This should create something like a sticky/strong (or gelatenous) silly string. Is it worth doing before my test on the 15th, or should I hold off? (I'm not sure when I can buy more 98% hydrolyzed PVOH.

2.) I'm not sure what everyone wants to do with their web shooters. Are they going for the cool web lines or do the wrapping/capturing function? (http://marvel.wikia.com/File:Spider-Man's_Web-Shooters_(Earth-58163).jpg)

For those who are interested in making bola launchers, I just had an idea while watching the spectacular spiderman for web shooters that fire fishing line bolas out, but with minimal space usage (like literally the size of peters web shooters from the 90's cartoon (http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/040/d/0/cartoon_web_shooter_by_technolgytheorist-d39745t.jpg)

Is anyone interested in exploring that with me? I have an idea that I think should be super simple and relatively cheap (by comparison to the liquid web shooter)

 

[Elxiah]

To the.amazing: That's awesome! I'm always super impressed with your fabrication skills. You can take a basic home depot gift card and do things that blow me away!

To everybody:

Hey y'all. I wanted to ask your opinion on something. In about two weeks I'll post the results of my web shooter tests (whether successful or not). My only worry is that I only have half a pound of granular PVOH left. In trying to make a jar for display, I accidentally knocked over and wasted a good portion of my fluid.

So my questions are these:

1.)Should I add alcohol to my PVOH solution to reduce the boiling point (making it easier for everyone to be able to boil out the water)

Or

2.) Should I just use distilled water and not risk making a bad batch of web fluid?

Im not 100% sure how your shooter works, but if the distilled water won't have any adverse effects on it, and this batch is for demonstration purposes only, id stay safe with the water.

Though, if you haven't tried adding more alcohol to it before, you might want to take a little bit aside to test it and see how it does

 

[the.Amazing]

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[the.Amazing]

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[the.Amazing]

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[the.Amazing]

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[the.Amazing]

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[Elxiah]

OK I'm currently 3d printing my new nozzles. In the meantime. I tried out that formula I posted with the milk curds and....

It behaved a lot like silly string.... SOME of the time.

The issue was it was clogging up, but I kept injecting hot water in through the other way, and when it happened to open up once in a while, a nice string came out occasionally.

THEN I opened up my web shooter, and guess what! There was literally a string inside the canister. Like a solid foam plastic string going from the bottom of the canister to the solenoid valve. Its all cleaned up now, but what does anyone suppose I can do to make that formula (I can't believe I'm gonna say this) LESS stringy?

(So I don't get clogs)

Well first off, with what you asked about the nozzle and pressure differences, we've found that a sports needle works very well! I'm talking about the kind that you would find on your ball pump. I'll attache a picture at the bottom of the post if you're still not sure.

Second, it seems that, from what you're telling me, your formula is kind of thick from the get-go. Most of us combat that problem by having it be a liquid, and then having it dry as it leaves the shooter. The way we found that works well to achieve this is the solvent. A solvent, incase you don't know, is a liquid substance that dissolves other substances (usually solids) within it, turning them into a liquid. It works like a powerful acid, except it usually is safe to touch and doesn't generate too much heat. There are several solvents that you can use, but the main danger is that depending what solvent you use, it might also disolve parts of your shooter itself! This may or may not be a problem depending on what solvent you choose, and what your shooter is made of. But if it is a problem, a popular solution that Wadaltmon found is to add water to the solvent, making it less potent so it won't dissolve your shooter, but still potent enough that it will dissolve your formula. But then the water also poses a problem. Usually, the solvent chosen is able to turn to gas with contact in air, causing you web to quickly dry out and turn solid as it leaves you shooter. But if your solvent will not dry out fast enough, either because of the type of solvent, or because of the water you might have needed to add, Wadaltmon also came up with an answer to this as well. At the end of your shooter (the nozzle) you can use wire and a battery to heat it up with the electrical resistance, resulting in something that dries out your web just as it leaves your shooter, resulting in a wonderful solid string! I'm not too good with heating coils myself, but Wadaltmon is the man to ask about that! Also, Wadaltmon happened to post a video online detailing many different kinds of solvents that we find usefull to use, and how they work as well as their properties. I'm afraid that I'm having trouble finding the particular video, but I'll link that channel.

I hope that I helped out!

Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXJ1AOxtXtzFVfV2bmNeYRg

Sports Needle:

 

[White_widow13]

To The.amazing: Man, where were you when this site had more than three active members?! You've been a busy bee...erm... spider.

Your current formula reminds me of when they used casein in button production. It was the polymer backbone of milk and they performed all of the steps you described up until the borax. I'm not sure what the borax does in the particular case of the silly string, but in the case of PVA, it acts as a polymerizing agent.

I bet if you adjust the borax amount on the second half of fluid production, that would cause less cross-linking, and thus a more fluid or gel based fluid.

On your note about causing the fibers to form before it hits the wall: It sounds like you are moving in the direction of die-casting. Like metal or playdoh, the material being extruded doesn't need to be heated or dissolved to be pushed through a die. It just needs to be a soft temperament, and as it comes out, it's often treated by stretching, heating, or chemical means. I'm not sure how to make that happen, but I guess that the longer you make the nozzle, the more inertia will allow for natural cohesion.

That's a cool direction you are moving though.

 

[White_widow13]

alright, I just tested part 1 of 2 of my web shooter test, and the result was... less than spectacular... (I'll put pics on later)

So to document: I used 99% hydrolyzed polyvinyl alcohol and boiled it in 3% hydrogen peroxide. First result was that it carmelized at the bottom of the pan, ensuring that no more ramen noodles could be consumed from the dish forever more. I continued the solution until I got a thin gel. I put yeast into the formula to create an expansion rate and cause the hydrogen peroxide part of the formula to split into other components. I put that in a small bottle and poked a miniscule hole in it to simulate a spinneret. After 2 minutes I opened up the bottle and realized that the hydrogen peroxide didn't expand. The aqueous polyvinyl alcohol ruined that aspect of it. So that fpr all intents and purposed is:

BUSTED.

I still have a couple days to try the fluid through a heated spinneret, but I'm starting to wonder if even with an evaporation chamber, it will have enough time to dissolve the water component. It took over an hour to dissolve the polyvinyl alcohol into the hydrogen peroxide (which I must add was just water with 3% H202)

I'm going to try the evaporator apparatus, but if not, I'm moving back to the fishing line idea. I have a new couple of ideas to make it possible to create one that is as small as spiderman's shooters in the amazing spiderman cartoon.

 

[Starlight1]

Hey, Im new to the forum and i kind of have been stalking it. I have a question.
white widow are you going to post pics to your blog of your web shooter?

 

[Elxiah]

Hey, Im new to the forum and i kind of have been stalking it. I have a question.
white widow are you going to post pics to your blog of your web shooter?

Welcome to the team kid.

 

[The Pie-Man]

Ok, so this is my first post but I have been tracking these forums since their inception in 2010. Recently, I've been looking back to see the creations of others and discovered that possibly the closest we've ever really come to making webshooters is Lerens webshooter from the killerforums. I think we need to shift our focus to something more simple. His webshooter focused more on a spinnerette that spun to form his webbing. From the tests I've done I've realized that the making of the shooter should be simple and using the proper spinnerette we can form the webbing. The spinnerette should be the more complicated section. Another idea that I would like to return to the table is using CO2 to freeze the webbing instead of heating it with a coil, it would be easier and would save power. Just bringing up new ideas.

 

[Starlight1]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but how do you keep the web fluid in the shooter while your not using it?

 

[The Pie-Man]

If you have a valve then your fluid shouldn't exit the shooter until you actuate it. However you should be careful because depending on your fluid and whether or not you have created an air tight seal it might dry up inside the shooter.

 

[Starlight1]

thanks

 

[Starlight1]

Whats the current web formula?

 

[The Pie-Man]

Whats the current web formula?

Well, everyone has their own formulas that they're working on. If you need help I would recommend going back and reading the webbing formulas pages. There are lots of viable formulas there. Also I would suggest checking the realwebtech website because it gives a really good basis on creating a shooter.

 

[Starlight1]

to the amazing: i found this video about homemade foam and remember your formula has something to do with foam. As in foam i mean silly string.

here's the video
https://youtu.be/8OvHkBBpQXo

 

[White_widow13]

Yay! New people! (not to say I don't appreciate older people; I do, but we've hit a creative rut it seems.) Welcome to the forums y'all.

Ok, so to answer your question starlight, I will put the results on the website.

For everybody at large, I wasn't able to try the experiment in the shooter (I left a few key parts at my partner's house during my trial day while he went on vacation). I did do an experiment where I tried to evaporate the solvent using heat to create a film... I'll show you the pic... DX

The result of the experiment is this: I'm not going to build a liquid style web shooter for now. It's too difficult to achieve the extrusion method we are using without professional grade equipment.

That being said, I'm going to work on a fishing line/ paracord method of the webshooter. Just as we've taken to calling the extrusion device the S.P.I.D/E.R. (strong polymer is drawn/extruded rapidly) I'm going to dub this version of the web shooter: The A.R.A.C.H.N.I.D. (Aramid rope accelerates, connected <to> Harness nexus <for> Incapacitating delinquents)

The arachnid is a harness system. It will have two wrist launchers. The launchers accept cartridges containing small barbs/hooks. The fibers (fishing line or paracord) are attached to the harness allowing for safe...and I never thought I'd say this...swinging as the pressure would distribute around your whole body vs your arm. It could also be used for a bola system, which I will explain later. Finally, there will be a dragline attached to the belt for that move that spidey does (https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/amazing_spiderman_2_game04__140504145553.jpg)

It's a big pride swallowing moment for me, but it will allow us to work on a functional web shooter project.


For a visual example, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMT3752GWiU
Chameleon&#8217;s imitation of the web shooters
10:00-10:09; 10:50-11:10 15:05-15:19 16:09-16:20

 

[The Pie-Man]

Well for my design I created a release valve that I am currently in the process of transforming into a solenoid. Currently it works with a pully system like your old minimus design. The good thing is that the valve is quite small, simple to create and holds quite a lot of pressure.

 

[Starlight1]

so ww is creating a shooter that shoots fishing line?