Airsoft in the YubaCity / Marysville area.
Intel on NEW Tornado Grenades and Assesories.
This taken directly from "Airsoft Innovations Rep",
Hi guys. I just got back from Japan and am severely jetlagged. Ugh it'll take me awhile to get back to work tomorrow.
Anyhow to answer some questions:
Impact Grenade:
-Trigger sensitivity is quite good. Grenade goes off reliably from a 2" drop onto concrete or 3' on grass. It was surprising how easy it was to get the trigger working on concrete and quite frustrating getting it sensitive enough to go off on grass.
-Trigger is not overly sensitive. You can shake a grenade as hard as you like. As long as you don't clip yourself in the forehead, changing directions when shaking a grenade takes place in about 8" when you hold it in your hand and jostle it. It's nothing like a 2" bounce off of the turf or a fractional inch collision with concrete. Collisions result in much higher G forces than shaking
-Before bringing ANY grenade back into the safe area, remove the valve cover to disarm the grenade even if you think it has gone off. I can't stress this issue enough. I find a lot of players bringing their expended grenades back into the safe area armed. We need to treat all found grenades like unexploded ordnance instead of picking them up like a souvenir and bringing them back to base.
Bounding Mine:
-Accessory attaching to standard Tornado Airsoft Grenade to turn it into a tripwire bounding mine
-Tripwire pull has a wide tolerance to pull direction. It does not have to be perfectly lined up to trigger the mine making setup easier.
-Grenade launched up to a height of roughly 5' in current build (last one went higher) which is actually a fairly light lob even if it gets you in the junk. If you're standing, the grenade loses roughly half it's kinetic energy by the time it sacks you so it's that the energy of a 2.5' upwards lob at that elevated point of impact. Worse case scenario is to crawl prone over a buried mine and get it in the windpipe, but then I've also run full tilt into tree branches once.
-Launch is spring powered. Grenade initiates at 2' height from ground. The launch mechanism can also be deactivated so the grenade initiates on the ground which is also kind of interesting. I've been goofing around with an attachment to the bounding mine to add a shootable trigger plate so you can even set it up as an exploding target for use in a faux meth lab scenario or a fight in an industrial setting with explodable targets (don't hit the BBQ tank!)
-Expected cost is to be pretty reasonable I think. I'm aiming for around $40 for the kit but nothing is settled until the design is finished and the mould is made.
Launchable Grenade:
-40mm launcher compatible projectile
-Very light launch weight at approximately 60 grams for the current build. I am trying VERY hard to keep this weight down. Considering the current hand grenade is 260g I'm pretty happy that I got the weight down of the launchable as low as this.
That's about all I can say at this point. These projects are still early work in progress projects for me. Of the lot of them, the impact grenade is closest to launch because it uses a lot of injection moulded parts common to the standard timer grenade. The other two projects require new injection moulds that will take me some time to finance. I also have to be more careful with their design because changes are much more difficult when I have to do mould rework.
More questions were asked of the "Airsoft Innovations Rep" and he responds,
Kicking the impact grenade would probably set it off, but if you're going to kick a bomb, it should go off.
The 40mm is only triggered by impact to the nose via a trigger plate. The impact grenade has a multi directional impact trigger which responds to impact to all three axis and two degrees of twist.
I plan to use a special driver charge to launch the launchable grenade which sleeves into the open tail end of the grenade so you have a total load length comparable to a 165bb moscart round which is an easy length to handle. I'm trying to keep it backwards compatible to bb show type grenades, but you'll have to load two items (projectile and driver) separately using other manufacturers driver cartridges. I did consider an integral launch pneumatic in the grenade, but I dropped the idea as it made the projectile heavier and more complicated. I'm trying to keep the flight weight down.
So far, no promises on maximum range on the launchable grenade. I have to first determine what the max acceptable muzzle velocity is for the current projectile for a hit at point blank range. There are far too many meatheads out there for me to be comfortable releasing a product which would knock a players goggles off or bust their windpipe. I will be engineering features to prevent my product from being launched excessively fast which will disappoint some, but I can't be creating serious new safety threats on the playing field.
It continues . . . "
I'm going to do what I can to make the launchable grenade safe and difficult to mod to make dangerous. Sorry, I love awesomeness, but the entire pool of airsoft players does not have enough responsibility for me to stick my neck out and create new serious threats on the airsoft playing field. You'll note that the current Tornado Grenade has two overpressure safeties. The overpressure relief valve is easily defeated, but the blowout plug requires some work to defeat so if your grenade blows up because you filled it with liquid CO2 I have some decent defense (from liability) to show that the user went through some trouble to improvise a dangerous condition.
I will unfortunately have to take a similar tack with the launchable grenade design. Players often do not exercise good barrel control or trigger finger discipline inside our safe areas. I'm not saying that everyone is a meathead, but there's always a few trolling about the safe zone. I'd say that at about 1/3 of games I attend , there is a negligent discharge in the safe area. With a rifle that tends to not result in someone getting blinded because they're not aiming at anyone's face, but with a launchable grenade you first have a relatively heavy projectile getting shot which will then explode displaying no safe direction behavior. I will have to first make sure that a close hit to the body or throat does not result in a serious injury despite what one would attempt to increase muzzle velocity. I will also have to limit the output velocity of the grenade pellets with overpressure protections to reduce the safe zone accident hazard.
All sorts of crazy stuff happens on the gaming field: blindfire, a partner popping up in front of you and getting hit point blank in the back of the head... I am not going to be the purveyor of potato cannons on our fields. If I was going to be making products which could easily made to be significantly dangerous, I would leave airsoft and make stuff for riot control or law enforcement. There's lots of business in that industry and it's products are wielded by disciplined officers trained in use of force. I like airsoft so I'm still here, but it means I won't be making stuff that can be made seriously dangerous.
When questioned about how the 40MM will detonate when at the target . . .
Uh yeah. And I could also add a microchip which communicates with a rail mounted laser range finder to preprogram an airburst range. I wish I could do a bunch of things, but keeping cost and weight down as well as releasing the product before the sport morphs into something completely different are also important concerns.
The RS round has a spin detecting arming mechanism. When the grenade whizzes down the riflings two weights pull outwards when the round spins and arm the grenade. Some even have electronics which initiate the grenade after a long (30s) time delay in case the thing has thudded down into a soft mud puddle which fails to trigger the detonator so friendly forces don't have to run over their own UXO. Unfortunately I can't use a centripetal arming mechanism because we don't have any riflings to work with. Also the spin would be much weaker unless we have a very steep helix angle because our muzzle velocity would have to be much lower. I am currently hoping to use the gas pressure from the launching impulse to arm the grenade, but it's taking quite a lot of thinking.
In case you wanted to view the discussion for yourself:
http://www.airsoftretreat.com/forums/index.php
Hi guys. I just got back from Japan and am severely jetlagged. Ugh it'll take me awhile to get back to work tomorrow.
Anyhow to answer some questions:
Impact Grenade:
-Trigger sensitivity is quite good. Grenade goes off reliably from a 2" drop onto concrete or 3' on grass. It was surprising how easy it was to get the trigger working on concrete and quite frustrating getting it sensitive enough to go off on grass.
-Trigger is not overly sensitive. You can shake a grenade as hard as you like. As long as you don't clip yourself in the forehead, changing directions when shaking a grenade takes place in about 8" when you hold it in your hand and jostle it. It's nothing like a 2" bounce off of the turf or a fractional inch collision with concrete. Collisions result in much higher G forces than shaking
-Before bringing ANY grenade back into the safe area, remove the valve cover to disarm the grenade even if you think it has gone off. I can't stress this issue enough. I find a lot of players bringing their expended grenades back into the safe area armed. We need to treat all found grenades like unexploded ordnance instead of picking them up like a souvenir and bringing them back to base.
Bounding Mine:
-Accessory attaching to standard Tornado Airsoft Grenade to turn it into a tripwire bounding mine
-Tripwire pull has a wide tolerance to pull direction. It does not have to be perfectly lined up to trigger the mine making setup easier.
-Grenade launched up to a height of roughly 5' in current build (last one went higher) which is actually a fairly light lob even if it gets you in the junk. If you're standing, the grenade loses roughly half it's kinetic energy by the time it sacks you so it's that the energy of a 2.5' upwards lob at that elevated point of impact. Worse case scenario is to crawl prone over a buried mine and get it in the windpipe, but then I've also run full tilt into tree branches once.
-Launch is spring powered. Grenade initiates at 2' height from ground. The launch mechanism can also be deactivated so the grenade initiates on the ground which is also kind of interesting. I've been goofing around with an attachment to the bounding mine to add a shootable trigger plate so you can even set it up as an exploding target for use in a faux meth lab scenario or a fight in an industrial setting with explodable targets (don't hit the BBQ tank!)
-Expected cost is to be pretty reasonable I think. I'm aiming for around $40 for the kit but nothing is settled until the design is finished and the mould is made.
Launchable Grenade:
-40mm launcher compatible projectile
-Very light launch weight at approximately 60 grams for the current build. I am trying VERY hard to keep this weight down. Considering the current hand grenade is 260g I'm pretty happy that I got the weight down of the launchable as low as this.
That's about all I can say at this point. These projects are still early work in progress projects for me. Of the lot of them, the impact grenade is closest to launch because it uses a lot of injection moulded parts common to the standard timer grenade. The other two projects require new injection moulds that will take me some time to finance. I also have to be more careful with their design because changes are much more difficult when I have to do mould rework.
More questions were asked of the "Airsoft Innovations Rep" and he responds,
Kicking the impact grenade would probably set it off, but if you're going to kick a bomb, it should go off.
The 40mm is only triggered by impact to the nose via a trigger plate. The impact grenade has a multi directional impact trigger which responds to impact to all three axis and two degrees of twist.
I plan to use a special driver charge to launch the launchable grenade which sleeves into the open tail end of the grenade so you have a total load length comparable to a 165bb moscart round which is an easy length to handle. I'm trying to keep it backwards compatible to bb show type grenades, but you'll have to load two items (projectile and driver) separately using other manufacturers driver cartridges. I did consider an integral launch pneumatic in the grenade, but I dropped the idea as it made the projectile heavier and more complicated. I'm trying to keep the flight weight down.
So far, no promises on maximum range on the launchable grenade. I have to first determine what the max acceptable muzzle velocity is for the current projectile for a hit at point blank range. There are far too many meatheads out there for me to be comfortable releasing a product which would knock a players goggles off or bust their windpipe. I will be engineering features to prevent my product from being launched excessively fast which will disappoint some, but I can't be creating serious new safety threats on the playing field.
It continues . . . "
I'm going to do what I can to make the launchable grenade safe and difficult to mod to make dangerous. Sorry, I love awesomeness, but the entire pool of airsoft players does not have enough responsibility for me to stick my neck out and create new serious threats on the airsoft playing field. You'll note that the current Tornado Grenade has two overpressure safeties. The overpressure relief valve is easily defeated, but the blowout plug requires some work to defeat so if your grenade blows up because you filled it with liquid CO2 I have some decent defense (from liability) to show that the user went through some trouble to improvise a dangerous condition.
I will unfortunately have to take a similar tack with the launchable grenade design. Players often do not exercise good barrel control or trigger finger discipline inside our safe areas. I'm not saying that everyone is a meathead, but there's always a few trolling about the safe zone. I'd say that at about 1/3 of games I attend , there is a negligent discharge in the safe area. With a rifle that tends to not result in someone getting blinded because they're not aiming at anyone's face, but with a launchable grenade you first have a relatively heavy projectile getting shot which will then explode displaying no safe direction behavior. I will have to first make sure that a close hit to the body or throat does not result in a serious injury despite what one would attempt to increase muzzle velocity. I will also have to limit the output velocity of the grenade pellets with overpressure protections to reduce the safe zone accident hazard.
All sorts of crazy stuff happens on the gaming field: blindfire, a partner popping up in front of you and getting hit point blank in the back of the head... I am not going to be the purveyor of potato cannons on our fields. If I was going to be making products which could easily made to be significantly dangerous, I would leave airsoft and make stuff for riot control or law enforcement. There's lots of business in that industry and it's products are wielded by disciplined officers trained in use of force. I like airsoft so I'm still here, but it means I won't be making stuff that can be made seriously dangerous.
When questioned about how the 40MM will detonate when at the target . . .
Uh yeah. And I could also add a microchip which communicates with a rail mounted laser range finder to preprogram an airburst range. I wish I could do a bunch of things, but keeping cost and weight down as well as releasing the product before the sport morphs into something completely different are also important concerns.
The RS round has a spin detecting arming mechanism. When the grenade whizzes down the riflings two weights pull outwards when the round spins and arm the grenade. Some even have electronics which initiate the grenade after a long (30s) time delay in case the thing has thudded down into a soft mud puddle which fails to trigger the detonator so friendly forces don't have to run over their own UXO. Unfortunately I can't use a centripetal arming mechanism because we don't have any riflings to work with. Also the spin would be much weaker unless we have a very steep helix angle because our muzzle velocity would have to be much lower. I am currently hoping to use the gas pressure from the launching impulse to arm the grenade, but it's taking quite a lot of thinking.
In case you wanted to view the discussion for yourself:
http://www.airsoftretreat.com/forums/index.php
Views: 9
About
© 2024 Created by Komissar.
Powered by
