World Web shooter shop class - Part 1

[S1ru5]

I have an Amazing Design for a web shooter that i am working on, i'm taking a camelbak, and filling it with web fluid i designed (corn starch, flour, super-glue, baking soda, in case you want to know what it is so far.) I have designed a small web shooter that uses a Co2 cartrige, a liquid pump, and a spinning valve that should (mind you) make webs that look almost exactly like the comics. The fluid looks nice right now. Although its not solidiffying fast enough.

 

[Right-Brain Man]

Whoops, apparently I missed a couple pages of the thread because I saw a post involving an actual biothread earlier. If my previous post is null, then I again apologize.

 

[White_widow]

I'm thinking that biothread thing is a total scam. If you want to us a thread, you should make a grappling gun.

 

[S1ru5]

white widow, are you talking about that 900 dollar crap?

 

[S1ru5]

my scanner's broke so i can't show my awesome designs, here's a crude sketch i made on paint

http://deathsheaderik1.deviantart.com/art/web-shooter-1-315365282


sorry about the double post!

 

[White_widow]

interesting. It seems solid, but only if the parts in the shooter are the ones I think they are.

 

[S1ru5]

The parts are a co2 cartrige, two batteries, a storage/suction area that sucks the fluid out of the camelbak, a high pressure spinneret i designed that should make it look like actual webs from the comics, (much smaller and not even close to the amount of strength though.) and a place to put backup fluid or co2 cartridges. My fluid isn't perfected yet.t:

 

[White_widow]

Sounds good. I'm interested to hear about this spinneret.

 

[Right-Brain Man]

I'm thinking that biothread thing is a total scam. If you want to us a thread, you should make a grappling gun.

I was thinking more along the lines of actual spider silk. Kraig Biocraft Labs made genetically engineered silkworms that produced 2-6% dragline silk and counting the last time I read it. Within a few years they should have it much closer to 100%, and there will most likely be at least a small market for it. I know this is a very long term design compared to everything else this thread has seen (and I will work on other designs while I wait for this one), but a 1mm thick strand of dragline could hold the two of us at maximum swinging velocity without risk of snapping. Another thing is that due to spider silk being extremely thin, you could hold, I'm guessing here, a couple hundred meters on one spool if you wound it tightly.
Then again, I know much less than you do, so if it wouldn't work, please shoot it out of the water (or off the Manhattan skyline).

 

[White_widow]

I don't have a problem with spider silk, but it has to be a fluid or a crystal to be fired from the web shooter. Firing solid materials will be difficult to say the least. It's worth a shot though. If you ever have success, let me know.

 

[S1ru5]

It uses a little blade inside of it to cause the air pressure to rotate it very quickly, it has three holes on the outer part pushed back 1.0 millimeters from the valve, and a larger hole within, on the end of the valve there is a small no mobile hole that excretes fluid causing it to tie little knots around it.

white widow, what about a web shooter that could fire out stell cable that you could reload with spools? it would be tough, but i think right brain man had a good idea, (certainly not with spider-silk though, that would be uber difficult.)

 

[White_widow]

I still think that any cable firing is under the category of grappling gun.

The web shooter is a rapid polymer extrusion device. What you guys are describing is an ascension rig.

 

[Right-Brain Man]

S1ru5: The web shape like the comics (which artist by the way? The original Steve Ditkos or later?) would not only look really cool, but give the end of the web a lot of stability. My idea was that the spinneret (if that is the spinny thing on the end that spins the strands together, still really fuzzy on this stuff) would gain speed as the line was shot out. The front of the web line would be spun much more loosely, giving the end a wide cone/web shape (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCfTRMyjGU, watch the end of the line when it hits the wall at 0:22), and the rest of the line would be spun much faster so as to stay in a line. The problems I see here are that the woven strands could fall apart (this is without the whole charged-threads electrospinning thingy), and the whole line would be ruined, and that the unwoven strands would flail behind the better connected rest of the line, rendering the whole idea useless (this is, however, without testing, so I have yet to confirm either of these things). If these problems do occur, I hope your idea presents a solution to them.

Edit:
Aw, darn it! I suck at computers. Sorry about the weird double post (if it looks weird on your screen).

Edit again: S1ru5, I wasn't planning on retracting the line, if that's what you're getting at. I was thinking you would coat the front of the web (the web being made of the largely non-adhesive dragline silk) with an adhesive as it was shot out, a bladed solenoid would cut the web just behind the nozzle when you released the trigger and you would catch the line, then when you were done let go and that would be the end of it. It would be the spider inspired Oscorp adhesive from the movie, only the real thing. So if my shaky knowledge is right, it's still a polymer extrusion device, since fibroin is definitely comprised of repeating structural units. Bye for now.

 

[peterwebbedhead]

Sorry if I was'nt around my computer crashed but I managed to get a laptop but I won't be around talking to you guys so often though.So what has been happening the last time?I managed to build the webshooter but when I tried to shoot the webbing out the nozzle the CO2 pressure blew the shooters ballast disc into pieces now I have to start the whole thing from scratch.

 

[Right-Brain Man]

Aw, that stinks. What is a ballast disk? Sorry, I'm still learning this stuff.

 

[S1ru5]

S1ru5: The web shape like the comics (which artist by the way? The original Steve Ditkos or later?) would not only look really cool, but give the end of the web a lot of stability. My idea was that the spinneret (if that is the spinny thing on the end that spins the strands together, still really fuzzy on this stuff) would gain speed as the line was shot out. The front of the web line would be spun much more loosely, giving the end a wide cone/web shape (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCfTRMyjGU, watch the end of the line when it hits the wall at 0:22), and the rest of the line would be spun much faster so as to stay in a line. The problems I see here are that the woven strands could fall apart (this is without the whole charged-threads electrospinning thingy), and the whole line would be ruined, and that the unwoven strands would flail behind the better connected rest of the line, rendering the whole idea useless (this is, however, without testing, so I have yet to confirm either of these things). If these problems do occur, I hope your idea presents a solution to them.

Edit:
Aw, darn it! I suck at computers. Sorry about the weird double post (if it looks weird on your screen).

Edit again: S1ru5, I wasn't planning on retracting the line, if that's what you're getting at. I was thinking you would coat the front of the web (the web being made of the largely non-adhesive dragline silk) with an adhesive as it was shot out, a bladed solenoid would cut the web just behind the nozzle when you released the trigger and you would catch the line, then when you were done let go and that would be the end of it. It would be the spider inspired Oscorp adhesive from the movie, only the real thing. So if my shaky knowledge is right, it's still a polymer extrusion device, since fibroin is definitely comprised of repeating structural units. Bye for now.

No, i wasn't talking about retracting the line, in lumber stores they sell small spools of steel cable with i guess a few hundred feet of line, you could make it have a small amount of a super-adhesive at the end that should let it stick (however for swinging the adhesive would need to support your weight) you could reload it every once in a while when it runs out, i built a cheap sort of version of this when i was twelve that shot out two strands of thread that would wrap around each other.

this is what my web fluid looks like with the spinneret, (only much thinner)
http://www.zoom-comics.com/archives/4502

 

[White_widow]

Let's assume for a second that you want to swing from this stuff (I'm going to stand by the assumption that doing anything of the sort is stupid). You don't need some kevlar rope. You just need rope. Even toilet paper can be made into a substance that is strong enough to hold a man. What we are using (assuming we stick with the average polymer blend of 40-50 MPA) is going to be stronger than toilet paper by at least 50 times if not more. That means that we need to worry about the solidification of those strands, and the spinning of them into a rope. Now that's not necessarily a problem (the spinning bit), if duct tape ropes are any indication, but the solidification process in a way that increases strength is the hard part and what we should be focusing on. Bio-yarn or whatever it's called has no place in this as it's had to fire, cut, and coat a fiber at the length that we can a fluid.

 

[S1ru5]

Let's assume for a second that you want to swing from this stuff (I'm going to stand by the assumption that doing anything of the sort is stupid). You don't need some kevlar rope. You just need rope. Even toilet paper can be made into a substance that is strong enough to hold a man. What we are using (assuming we stick with the average polymer blend of 40-50 MPA) is going to be stronger than toilet paper by at least 50 times if not more. That means that we need to worry about the solidification of those strands, and the spinning of them into a rope. Now that's not necessarily a problem (the spinning bit), if duct tape ropes are any indication, but the solidification process in a way that increases strength is the hard part and what we should be focusing on. Bio-yarn or whatever it's called has no place in this as it's had to fire, cut, and coat a fiber at the length that we can a fluid.

I think you have to understand some of the people in this forum, they all want to be the spider-man from the comics, me included, however, it would take a very large amount of money to create all of parkers power synthetically, in the end, you wouldn't be spider-man, you'd have to be batman. however, i'm sure you could swing from it if you combined the super adhesive, steel cables and other junk like that, but in the end the web shooter would weigh about 30 pounds, and I'm working on two, what i REALLY want is a compound that solidifies instantly to add to my formula, right now, it solidifies hard as rock, but it takes a while to get to it, and how would i keep this from clogging my spinneret? because as soon as i can upload photos again, i'll show you a pic that shows pennies stuck to a box with the formula, and I CANNOT GET THEM OFF AT ALL. if this got in my spinneret, it would be bad, is there a substance to make it biodegradable?

 

[White_widow]

Sounds like an epoxy or cyanoacrylate. No, there is no way to make it biodegradable. It would stay solid. That's how a lot of those things work.

There are just a few ways to get something to solidify. There's only four ways that I know about.

1.) chemical bonding with a crosslinking agent (this is often non-biodegradable and even hard to dissolve) Think epoxy.

2.) Crosslinking with natural substance. (this takes relatively long time, think polyurethane glue)

3.) Changing it's physical surroundings. heat and pressure compress materials into a hardened material. (we can't heat a pressure vessel.)

4.) Have a solvent to turn the plastic into a gel or liquid. The solvent will evaporate leaving the hardened plastic.

Number four is the only one that REDUCES the ability to clog your shooter, though I've still managed to clog it with a polymer blend.

If you want it to be biodegradable, you need a polymer that is found or created in nature.

 

[nolder]

No, i wasn't talking about retracting the line, in lumber stores they sell small spools of steel cable with i guess a few hundred feet of line, you could make it have a small amount of a super-adhesive at the end that should let it stick (however for swinging the adhesive would need to support your weight) you could reload it every once in a while when it runs out, i built a cheap sort of version of this when i was twelve that shot out two strands of thread that would wrap around each other.

this is what my web fluid looks like with the spinneret, (only much thinner)
http://www.zoom-comics.com/archives/4502

scroll to the bottom of this page. I think it will help you.
http://realwebtech.webs.com/theory
If you can find a steel cable that can support your weight, that's great. However, that doesn't make it suitable for swinging. The forces that will act on it will be your weight, speed, and length of the web, plus an additional gravitational force. It really depends on those variables, but you could be facing forces WELL over twice your weight.

I think you have a good idea with steel cables. Fishing line has been suggested before also. Maybe there is something on the market that can hold the weight and forces of swinging. I think the problem is the adhesive.

The adhesive would have to dry incredibly fast, but not before it hit the building.

Then theres the problem of surface area. If the web hit the target in a small surface area it might just peal right off like a sticker.

and if the adhesive did dry very fast, there would be a problem of having to have webs at a near constant length so they would have around the same time to dry in the air. otherwise a short web would still be too wet when it hits the target and it would slip right off or a long web would have too much time to dry and it would bounce right off of the target.

Basically, I believe we can make (or buy) materials to make a strong enough line to hold our weight, BUT, I don't think we'd be able to we can create an adhesive that will be able to support our weight.

Care to elaborate WW?

 

[Wadaltmon]

I think you have to understand some of the people in this forum, they all want to be the spider-man from the comics, me included, however, it would take a very large amount of money to create all of parkers power synthetically, in the end, you wouldn't be spider-man, you'd have to be batman. however, i'm sure you could swing from it if you combined the super adhesive, steel cables and other junk like that, but in the end the web shooter would weigh about 30 pounds, and I'm working on two, what i REALLY want is a compound that solidifies instantly to add to my formula

Dude, we couldn't swing on this.
Yes, I, too, wanted to swing on my webs at some point. The closest we can get to a swinging shooter is the parkour shooter, which as I understand it, just provides a slight ballast or handhold to climb up a building.
Given the strength of a human tendon and the speed you would fall, your tendons would rip or your arms would come out of their sockets if you jumped off a building and tried to swing. Plus, it takes a really strong guy to hold themselves up and swing when hanging onto a line. I know White_Widow said this before, but I would like to re-iterate it.
NO ONE SHOULD SWING ON THIS WEB. IF YOU WANT TO SWING, TRY THE GRAPPLING GUN.
Nothing solidifies instantly; when you get down to it, it takes some time. The real problem is getting it out of the shooter without it drying, like you said before, and having it retain strength for an extended period of time.
I think I'd rather just have the web for detaining an enemy... plus, it would take an utterly large amount of pressurization to get a full web line, and it wouldn't work more than once or twice without re-pressurization or changing of a cartridge.
After reading "Spider-Man Noir", I noticed he never swings, and he gets along fine. I'd rather have webs like his, to just be a kind of long net to stop people from firing guns or to stick on them. So, that's what I'm going to do. I am making mine as a net.

Also, for those of you who think you can use a spinning spineret device, I realized something... if you are using a motor with a gear, and the same gear teeth on the outside of the spinneret, that may not work. The spinneret would have to have a secondary axis within the tubing leading to the spinneret... however, I would rather not make my tube coaxial, in case some web sticks to the middle axis and clogs the shooter.

On another note, my first prototype is under construction. It will just splatter, right now... it has no spinneret device.

 

[bbplyer]

To be Honest I have no idea exactly how a Spinneret works?? I think (not sure though) that the web fluid is pushed through the spinneret which has multiple tubes that lead to the opening. But wouldn't the spinneret spin? because if it spins while the fluid is being pushed through the tubes of the spinneret it would combine the web fluid by "wrapping" it around to create a thread?

Please enlighten me on how a spinneret works.

 

[Wadaltmon]

To be Honest I have no idea exactly how a Spinneret works?? I think (not sure though) that the web fluid is pushed through the spinneret which has multiple tubes that lead to the opening. But wouldn't the spinneret spin? because if it spins while the fluid is being pushed through the tubes of the spinneret it would combine the web fluid by "wrapping" it around to create a thread?

Please enlighten me on how a spinneret works.

You've got it basically right. However, it can't really spin if it doesn't have a central axis (unless it is suspended in some fluid, which is another animal entirely). It just makes a polymer into individual threads.

 

[S1ru5]

has anyone made an attempt to combine both a grappling gun and a web shooter?

 

[S1ru5]

Dude, we couldn't swing on this.
Yes, I, too, wanted to swing on my webs at some point. The closest we can get to a swinging shooter is the parkour shooter, which as I understand it, just provides a slight ballast or handhold to climb up a building.
Given the strength of a human tendon and the speed you would fall, your tendons would rip or your arms would come out of their sockets if you jumped off a building and tried to swing. Plus, it takes a really strong guy to hold themselves up and swing when hanging onto a line. I know White_Widow said this before, but I would like to re-iterate it.
NO ONE SHOULD SWING ON THIS WEB. IF YOU WANT TO SWING, TRY THE GRAPPLING GUN.
Nothing solidifies instantly; when you get down to it, it takes some time. The real problem is getting it out of the shooter without it drying, like you said before, and having it retain strength for an extended period of time.
I think I'd rather just have the web for detaining an enemy... plus, it would take an utterly large amount of pressurization to get a full web line, and it wouldn't work more than once or twice without re-pressurization or changing of a cartridge.
After reading "Spider-Man Noir", I noticed he never swings, and he gets along fine. I'd rather have webs like his, to just be a kind of long net to stop people from firing guns or to stick on them. So, that's what I'm going to do. I am making mine as a net.

Also, for those of you who think you can use a spinning spineret device, I realized something... if you are using a motor with a gear, and the same gear teeth on the outside of the spinneret, that may not work. The spinneret would have to have a secondary axis within the tubing leading to the spinneret... however, I would rather not make my tube coaxial, in case some web sticks to the middle axis and clogs the shooter.

On another note, my first prototype is under construction. It will just splatter, right now... it has no spinneret device.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has a deep desire to go out and be a real spidey vigilante!