Airsoft Innovations Posted May 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Finally up! two new videos: Airburst: Reloading: Much nicer resolution downloads direct from our site: http://www.airsoft-innovations.com/Grenade.html Link to post Share on other sites
uscmCorps Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Videos are awesome! I just placed my order for 3 of them! Quick question: In the new grenade loading video on your website (excellent video BTW, why isn't it on YouTube?) I notice that you're using propane + one of your AI gas fill valve adapters to gas up the grenade. Since you're adding the specialized grenade lubricant directly to the grenade, does that mean that oil does not need to be added to the propane adapter as standard operating procedure with GBB fills? BTW Carl I sent you a PM. Link to post Share on other sites
Airsoft Innovations Posted May 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Woot! thanks for your big order. Nothing makes a self powered inventor happier than finally seeing his product starting to sell after a long dark journey of blowing bucks and time. Truth is I didn't think I would get very much compliance from users if they had to remove their adaptors with every grenade fill. Frequent lubrication (every other throw) is an unfortunate requirement with this product and having to keep remounting adaptors gets tedious when you have to fill a rack of grenades. Dripping a couple drops into the piston opening is easier than having to put it in the adaptor. The effect is quite similar as the liquid propane sloshes around and ends up picking up the oil you drip in. When it blasts out the oil atomizes and ends up depositing everywhere it's needed. Unfortunately because the grenade dumps it's entire gas charge in one go, it also blasts out it's lubricant pretty fast. In testing, grenades would get completely dry in about four blasts which resulted in seized mechanisms and very long delays. This doesn't damage the grenade, but an armed and not so ticking grenade does present a safety hazard if you take your dudnade back into the safe area without removing the valve cover. To free the stuck delay mecanism, you have to vent the gas charge by poking the fill valve with the tip of a propane adaptor before you can open the piston opening and lube the grenade. A doubleshot of lube and a shot of gas will relube the grenade, but the first blast will have an inconsistent delay. I'm working on a troubleshooting guide to publish in the next week or so, but at the moment I'm drowning in manufacturing issues. The importance of removing the valve cover before bringing ANY grenade back into the safe area is paramount and I'm going to be dwelling on it a fair bit more. We have to put grenade disarming into our "unload and make safe" routine when returning to safe zones even with grenades we think are expended. I went through some significant pains to make this grenade easy to disarm to encourage users to disarm them. You'll note that the loading scheme forces the user to disarm a grenade before they can start loading bbs. The pin is difficult to accidentally remove. It takes a deliberate tug to remove. The design of the grenade forces a loading sequence that is difficult to circumvent and cause an accidental discharge when loading. Videos are awesome! I just placed my order for 3 of them! Quick question: In the new grenade loading video on your website (excellent video BTW, why isn't it on YouTube?) I notice that you're using propane + one of your AI gas fill valve adapters to gas up the grenade. Since you're adding the specialized grenade lubricant directly to the grenade, does that mean that oil does not need to be added to the propane adapter as standard operating procedure with GBB fills? BTW Carl I sent you a PM. Link to post Share on other sites
greg Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Sorry, could you please clarify: Does it only need the oil when using propane (which has no added lube)? Or all gas, (including Green) which already has lube in it? Also any idea when they will be available from a UK supplier? (I guess via Dred Wolf) Greg. Link to post Share on other sites
greg Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Not tried mine yet (I have a job, too! ) The box is surprisingly small, but I've not even opened it yet. Cheers. Irony like wot Shakespeare rote: The only bloke in the country to have one is too busy to try it out & let us lesser mortals know what it's like!! See, A.I., if you sent me one, I'd drop everything to give it a go. Only kidding, I understand that appropriate priorities have to be made & that playing with toys is hardly life & death but please put us out of our misery,,,,,,,,,,,,,what's it like? Greg. Link to post Share on other sites
Airsoft Innovations Posted May 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Sorry, could you please clarify: Does it only need the oil when using propane (which has no added lube)? Or all gas, (including Green) which already has lube in it? Also any idea when they will be available from a UK supplier? (I guess via Dred Wolf) Greg. Not enough lube in green gas by far and whatever is in there isn't thick enough. I tried to design it to be less lubricant dependant, but dumping the whole lot of gas in one blast hoses out lubricant very quickly. It seems that the rapid expansion of the liquid propane has an ability to blow lubricant off of every surface inside the grenade very effectively. I'm guessing that gas explode/boils off of every available surface which lifts the lube and pushes it out the grenade. Link to post Share on other sites
wyrwolff Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 I ordered 4 to save on the shipping since I knew some of my teammates would want one, and to make sure of the durability across units (a problem I had with the Thumper TG-6). Link to post Share on other sites
snowman Posted May 22, 2008 Report Share Posted May 22, 2008 Ultra crappy video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8rhZQXoSlU Sorry, but my SLR doesn't do videos and my old camera's video is pretty poor. Looking at it frame by frame, it seemed to miss the moment it went off. I loaded about 80 BBs and propane (twice) and found about 10 BBs over the two firings. The BBs I found were in all directions from the Grenade's position and the furthest I've yet found was about 10m away. Proper review when I can think of a way to test this Cheers. Link to post Share on other sites
minimiman Posted May 22, 2008 Report Share Posted May 22, 2008 Ultra crappy video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8rhZQXoSlU Sorry, but my SLR doesn't do videos and my old camera's video is pretty poor. Looking at it frame by frame, it seemed to miss the moment it went off. I loaded about 80 BBs and propane (twice) and found about 10 BBs over the two firings. The BBs I found were in all directions from the Grenade's position and the furthest I've yet found was about 10m away. Proper review when I can think of a way to test this Cheers. If you want to try it for 'skirmishability' we have a private game on saturday. Pop down and throw it at a few unsuspecting players in the killing house Link to post Share on other sites
snowman Posted May 22, 2008 Report Share Posted May 22, 2008 Thanks for the offer - I did wonder if I might take it to a skirmish site and let some of the guys try it out, but you're a bit far away for me this Saturday. Cheers. Link to post Share on other sites
DEVGRU14 Posted May 23, 2008 Report Share Posted May 23, 2008 sweet just inspired me to buy 2! Link to post Share on other sites
greg Posted May 27, 2008 Report Share Posted May 27, 2008 Not enough lube in green gas by far and whatever is in there isn't thick enough. I tried to design it to be less lubricant dependant, but dumping the whole lot of gas in one blast hoses out lubricant very quickly. It seems that the rapid expansion of the liquid propane has an ability to blow lubricant off of every surface inside the grenade very effectively. I'm guessing that gas explode/boils off of every available surface which lifts the lube and pushes it out the grenade. In short, we have to use additional lube every other load? Whatever the gas. & the answer to the second part of the question???? Any idea on availability via a uk supplier? Greg. Link to post Share on other sites
Airsoft Innovations Posted May 28, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2008 In short, we have to use additional lube every other load? Whatever the gas. & the answer to the second part of the question???? Greg. Sticking to the lubrication scheme outlined in the maintenance section of our manual is critical for the consistent operation of our grenade. It doesn't matter what gas you use. Any idea on availability via a uk supplier? We have made an agreement with RedWolf who will have exclusive rights to UK distribution when we finally open wide resales. Currently we are still in a pilot run mode where we refine our processes and make far too many defective grenades to meet reseller demand. Currently we exclude defective product from shipments by removing them with a rigorous testing program, but it does slow down our production of worthy product significantly. Not only do we not produce as much acceptable product, we have to devote effort to capturing defective product to keep it from entering the market. Our processes are getting significantly better every day. We're gradually knocking off all the causes of defects and we'll continue to improve our tooling and processes until testing becomes unworthwhile. At some point the cost of properly handling a fractional percentage of defective product that makes it to the field becomes less costly than a testing program. When we get to that point, we can reduce our testing program and put more effort on manufacturing so we can make reseller demand. In the meantime, we're making the sucessful product we produce available direct for sale from us. Currently available product is quite good. It's just expensive for us to produce it because we have to spend time filtering out all the junk until we stop producing an appreciable amount of junk. Final production run product will be very similar to this pilot run of product. We are not making design changes to the product. Link to post Share on other sites
greg Posted May 28, 2008 Report Share Posted May 28, 2008 Excellent. So no idea then? Guess I'll just have to order direct! Greg. Link to post Share on other sites
Airsoft Innovations Posted May 28, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2008 Excellent. So no idea then? Guess I'll just have to order direct! Greg. Well, I'm not too keen on publicizing predictions. I kind of got a little screwed starting the marketing too soon. I thought that I was finally out of the woods and would be cranking out grenades by the bushel a few months ago. Instead I found a new host of gremlins when I started mass manufacturing. Making a few dozen prototypes work is a much easier problem than developing tools and procedures to make hundreds with a work crew. With the prototypes, I was the machining and assembly monkey. With the pilot run, I had to outsource the machined parts and train an assembly team to use my custom tooling to assemble the product. It's kind of crazy really. First you invent and refine a product. Then you have to invent all the tooling to efficiently assemble it. Simultaneously you have to develop processes and a quality control program and train a bunch of people to do everything. It's a whole new level of design that I'm learning as I go. Still, I'm staying positive. Lots of direct sales demand fuels my enthusiasm. It keeps me focused on keeping a high standard of quality. I realize I can't compete with low cost Asian labor so I have to leverage my strengths and provide a very well engineered and documented product. Link to post Share on other sites
greg Posted May 28, 2008 Report Share Posted May 28, 2008 Understandable, keep your chin up pal. I look forward to seeing the finished product. Greg. Link to post Share on other sites
4boost Posted May 28, 2008 Report Share Posted May 28, 2008 I for one support your efforts. Ordered one this morning. Can't wait to surprise the team with it, lol. Keep up the great work! Link to post Share on other sites
John Dee Posted May 28, 2008 Report Share Posted May 28, 2008 These look good (I have just ordered 3 of them) But 2 questions 1) What type of lube can you use in them? 2) Is there any ware on the grenade that you can attach a piece of ribbon to it (this is to help look for it after a throw) Thanks John. Link to post Share on other sites
uscmCorps Posted May 29, 2008 Report Share Posted May 29, 2008 1) What type of lube can you use in them? According to AI, their grenades require a specialized lubricant that they sell. One bottle of their relatively cheap lubricant is enough for about 500 detonations!!! For me, that's probably as much as the entire life cycle of expected grenade usage. Link to post Share on other sites
Airsoft Innovations Posted May 29, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2008 According to AI, their grenades require a specialized lubricant that they sell. One bottle of their relatively cheap lubricant is enough for about 500 detonations!!! For me, that's probably as much as the entire life cycle of expected grenade usage. The oil we offer is a silicone lubricant that we sourced from an industrial supplier. We did try RC car shock oils as we hoped to find an easily available goo, but we found that this industrial stuff worked best. I don't have the facilities to figure out exactly what made it the best stuff, but we did do some pretty substantial testing to find out that it offered the best timing consistency out of over a dozen silicone and teflon based lubricants we tried. It's not really feasible for use to try everything under the sun so we're not going to be able to endorse the usage of anything we can't control ourselves. 1oz = 32mL, 1mL = 20 drops, 1oz = 640 drops 640 drops @ 2 drops/fill = 320 doses, 320 doses @ 1:2 discharge lube cycle = 640 lubrication cycles Not really exact so we claim a conservative 500 cycles which is probably longer than the expected life of a grenade. We actually never wore out a grenade in testing as we usually gave up at around 400 cycles to explore other functional improvements. You kind of get tired of loading bbs after awhile. Link to post Share on other sites
uscmCorps Posted May 29, 2008 Report Share Posted May 29, 2008 Just to clarify, by me saying "that's probably as much as the entire life cycle of expected grenade usage", I mean that I'd be honestly surprised if I ever actually detonated any of my four grenades 500 times the entire they will be in my possession. I'm guessing maybe 100-200 times each at maximum. Link to post Share on other sites
Airsoft Innovations Posted May 29, 2008 Author Report Share Posted May 29, 2008 I did nearly 8hrs of demoing prototype grenades at an airsoft expo in Toronto. I had only 2 grenades and they were being blasted as frequently as we could load them. Frost started building up on them so I had to gun them with a hairdryer while bbs were being loaded with an electric loader. With full time assistants prepping grenades we only managed about 50+ blasts per grenade. No failures between the two despite being thrown and loaded almost continuously. Link to post Share on other sites
JoshB Posted May 29, 2008 Report Share Posted May 29, 2008 This thing loos awesome. Has anyone used them in any games. do they hold uo well in the field and not just in test situations? Link to post Share on other sites
Blitz1000 Posted May 30, 2008 Report Share Posted May 30, 2008 How long does it take to ship to the U.S when ordering from you guys at AI? Link to post Share on other sites
greg Posted May 30, 2008 Report Share Posted May 30, 2008 How long does it take to ship when ordering from you guys at AI? & how much to get it to the UK? Greg. Link to post Share on other sites
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