Re: Re-inventing the PBM

[Grauwolf <grauwulf-at-yahoo.com>]

Greetings Frank and All,

Question: 
Why were folks here so excited about Wally World selling a 1/5 scale RC
tank?

Answer:
I would assume that it was because more folks (like those who do not
happen have a full machine-shop sitting in their garage, or don't even
have a garage to work in for that matter) might be drawn into this
sport. How many of these folks do you think will be drawn into this
sport if they find one of the basic requirements is having to own a
machine-shop to be able to modify those Wally World PBMs that are
designed to be large, bulky handguns just to play along?

>I can assure you that building your own cannons takes alot of
evolutionary iterations to get things right. Early gun designs had lots
of problems and often worked great in the workshop, but failed during
the battle.
 In warships, that wasn't a total disaster, because we had more than
one gun on board, but with a tank, if your cannon fails the game is
over.<

I think that most folks here are more than a little aware of the need
for field and battle testing a design. It has already been done at
nearly every engagement that has occurred. Hasn't nearly everything
that folks have come up with here been an engineering experiment of one
sort or another? I thought that was just part of the Fun.

>About two years ago, I successfully built a paintball cannon based on 
the pressure-powered design of the BB cannons used in warship combat, 
only larger.  (My approach was an evolution of some pioneering work 
done 
by Lief Goodson in the early 90's when we first started talking about 
tank combat.)  It was built from standard PVC and copper plumbing 
components, with a brass piston assembly that didn't require any 
expensive tools to make.  It worked, fired round after round without a 
problem, and the total cost was probably less than $25 ... but the 
project scrapped.<

That's Great! So why not let some of the folks here who wish to give
this a try see your notes?

>?....pushing each other to make better and cheaper markers?< 

??? Better look again. The name of the game these days is Less for
More. Like they say, "Buyer beware! You get what you pay for." Just as
you fear the reliability of a homemade system, the cheap-o PBMs are
little better and in many cases even worse than anything I'm sure that
folks here might come up with.


>When the tank hobby gets a little larger, I'm sure that one or more of
the marker manufacturers will develop a version that is specifically
designed for our purposes.<

Do you really think that those PBM manufacturers will go through all of
the cost of redesigning and retooling to downsized versions if there
are only a handful of folks who might have any use for them and those
folks are already buying and modifying their own larger bulkier
systems? 


>So, rather than spending lots of engineering time to save $25-50 on
the 
marker, I spent that time engineering solutions for other parts of the 
tank, that aren't adequately covered by existing products.<

And more power to you. If you like what you've got, well and good. Go
ahead and work on those other systems. But if there are those who might
be able to see a way of improving apon something that you are not
interested in, don't you think that they should be allowed to work on
that as well? Who knows, somebody here just might be the one who builds
that better mouse trap.



Dan



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