DIY X-Men: Flame Throwing Wrist Guard


[everett] sent in his final project for his mechanisms class. In an attempt to create his own bolt on X gene, he built a wrist mounted hand activated flame thrower: The Pyro System. The wrist mount has an igniter and a nozzle for dispersing fuel. When he flexes his hand back, a switch actuates a servo on the fuel and fires the igniter. Quick disclaimer: Don’t try replicating this one! If you want to skip the movie clip, skip 33 seconds into the video.

30 thoughts on “DIY X-Men: Flame Throwing Wrist Guard

  1. not bad try replacing that arisol thing with a solenoid valve hooked up to a mini torch propane tank thing that can also take care the servo controller (what ever it would be)

  2. I’d suggest getting a fire-proof glove for that hand of his… not much distance on the flame, bit of a shame… great for getting rid of those pesky fruit flies and other little creatures tho

  3. He’s liable to burn all the hair off his palms if he’s not careful…….

    That reminds me of a mod I’ve seen for the robosapien with little propane torches. (i think they were propane, can’t remember)

  4. mike, I hate to bring this up, but as far as I know most human palms don’t have hair… *shrugs* But no, good idea, now add a few safety features and you’ll have something awesome

  5. I’ve had a few requests for schematics, etc. The formal writeup is due Tuesday, so I’ll have all the details about the project by then and I’ll post and submit them to Hackaday–maybe they can be linked in an extra or something. If you want to know more, wait ’til Tuesday. Thanks for the comments!

  6. Why would you put the flame source on the bottom… heat rises and using it in a normal hand orientation would end with some pretty severe hand discomfort (which I assume is why in the video it seems like he’s using it with his hand sideways or upside down) so why wouldn’t you mount the flame source on top and the actuators on the bottom?

  7. this is stupidly and unnecessarily unsafe. why would you locate the flame nozzle in line of sight to your flesh (ie, palms, fingers)? if you fire this at the wrong arm angle, you’re burnt!

  8. I trust the follow up, when Everett incinerates (hopefully) himself (rather than someone else or their property), will be posted ?

    The nerd wrapper of ‘it’s for my mechanisms class’ in no way mitigates the ‘hold my beer and watch this, dude’ abject idiocy of this project.

  9. jay’s just (old/bitter and) jealous because he can’t do this himself. it takes someone intelligent to do a project like this one, probably someone who wouldn’t wish harm (i.e., incineration) on a stranger.

    i think it’s perfect that the flame source is at the top, especially because it seems from the video that the whole point is to recreate the one from x-men. awesome work!

  10. Person: I think Mike was paraphrasing the old joke about “the first sign of madness is hairs on the palm of your hand”. Either that or he’s displaying the second sign :)

    tank, will d: it’s presumably on the bottom so you can make the “go web go!” gesture. If we’re going to be sensible about stuff, it’s a wrist-mounted DIY flamethrower- I think the only really sensible thing to do with this is carefully disassemble and place in a bucket of water, but as long as they are aware of the dangers and don’t do anything stupid with it then it’s up to them.

  11. John mistakenly believes that I’m wishing harm on Everett. Perhaps I worded my postly badly, but Nothing could be further from the truth. Nonetheless, I am hopeful that, when the inevitable happens, he incinerates _only_ himself.

    Other posters have flagged up the problems. There doesn’t appear to be any mechanism to arrest flashback. The method of extinguishing the flame is counter-intuitive. There’s no shielding between flame and hand. The positioning of the flame, while cool, in echoing that of Pyro, shields it from the user’s line of sight.

    As to jealousy ? Suffice it to say, I moved from making such projects to marking them about two decades ago. Old and bitter my students and I would probably agree with ;-)

  12. When I’m not hacking hardware, or writing software for a living, I’m a volunteer firefighter (an engine company Lt, actually). Having met severely burned people, and having seen a few major burns — and having had a few minor ones — this thing makes me cringe. I’ve been on an attack line at two structure fires in the last 10 days.

    On behalf of your neighbors, the 86% of firefighters in the US who are volunteer or call-responders — please don’t try this.

  13. i love how even the easiest sounding hacks have to most friggin wires imaginable :p nice project thought hope you got a safety switch so if you scratch your face you wont burn something off :P kinda reminds me of the spider man web shooter maybe you should attach the can to your wrist or something *thumbs up*

  14. In response to Jay, this isn’t a canister of acetylene or oxygen that will react with itself and it definitely doesn’t need a flashback arrestor. You don’t see flashback arrestors on barbecues do you? There is no way the fuel (butane/propane) inside the canister is going to ‘explode’ without the presence of oxygen.

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