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Author Topic: Idea for black light blaster  (Read 1432 times)

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Offline minorhero

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Idea for black light blaster
« on: January 08, 2017, 08:18:09 AM »
First off I should preface this whole topic with the knowledge that I am very much a noob when it comes to saber smithing and related fields. But I saw the thread on self powered projectiles and got the idea of a black light blaster.

Essentially the blaster would fire a projectile (likely a ball but possibly a disc) that has been coated in something that fluoresces under a black light. There is quite a lot of options here and toys exist that are ready made. You can actually buy ping pong balls in quantity that are red or green or other colors under a black light. The blaster would also have a forward facing black light that would fire when the trigger is pulled. The effect would be an object that upon exiting the blaster would be in line of sight of the black light and would fluoresce until out of range of the black light. I have no idea how far away from the blaster that would be but I imagine the range of fluorescence would be pretty small (5 feet? 10 feet? more if there is a powerful enough light source). Looking into it a bit there are such things as black light led's mounted to stars. 5w singles appeared to the most powerful I could spot but possibly there are others.

Has anyone done anything like this before?

Offline jbkuma

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Re: Idea for black light blaster
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2017, 08:40:14 AM »
I think there are three texture here: confinement, intensity, and tracking.

You'll need to confine the beam angle to maintain intensity, but that will make tracking the projectile more difficult. The projectile will not move in a straight line, and will most likely have some movement in all 3 dimensions rather than the ideal 2D parabola or ballistic flight. At best I think you can expect a few feet of illumination.

Offline eastern57

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Re: Idea for black light blaster
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2017, 02:16:03 AM »
I made a blaster using an airsoft tracer unit.  It used glow bbs, and they get charged as they exit and look like tracers.  You can get other color bbs too, so's to mimic other blaster bolts.

Then I tried scaling it up.  I got a nerf zeus, and some glow balls.  The intent was to either charge the balls as they exited or charge them in the magazine, since it's clear.  But the balls were terrible, they didn't take a charge and looked super dim.  I eventually just gave the whole set up to my friend and his kids, that was my good deed for the day.

 

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