There’s a war on, and while this over-the-top water blaster is certainly an escalation in the Water Wars arms race, that’s not the war we’re referring to. We’re talking about the Documentation War. Hackers, you’re on notice.
If you want to see how a project should be documented, look no further than [Tim]’s forum posts over at WaterWar.net. From the insanely detailed BOM with catalog numbers and links to supplier websites, to scads of build photos with part number callouts, to the finely detailed build instructions, [Tim] has raised the stakes for anyone that documents any kind of build.
And that’s not even touching on the merits of the blaster itself, which has air and water tanks plumbed with every conceivable valve and fitting. There’s even an inline stream straightener made of bundled soda straws to keep the flow as laminar as possible. It looks like [Tim] and his colleagues are obsessed with launching streams of water as far as possible, and although bad weather has prevented an official measurement so far, from the video below it sure looks like he’s covering a huge distance with a stream that stays mostly intact to deliver the full blast to its intended target without losing a drop.
For as much fun as amped-up water guns appear to be, we haven’t seen too many grace these pages before. Going way back we covered a DIY super-soaker. For something much less involved than [Tim’s] masterpiece, you can pull together this pressurized water pistol in an afternoon.
don’t cross the rays!
It would be bad.
Nice BOM list. EVERYTHING is on there…
QTY: 1 DESC: Christmas Ornament Hook SUPPLIER: your mom PN: N/A Rated PSI: N/A Blaster PSI: N/A
Ohh, my sides hurt!
Just change some details and you have very good flamethrower.
It does look remarkably similar in design to a ROKS-3 flamethrower, the only thing missing is a nozzle with ingiters.
http://www.ww2incolor.com/d/683036-2/burn
First and second link are the same.
FTFY
If only some of us could build our own crap, full time and didn’t you know, have a life with bills to pay and a full time job.
I have racked up hundreds of not thousands of cool hacks and builds over my lifetime, I even have tons of photos. But I don’t have the time or energy to sit down and document any of them! One, I like my own stuff just fine. I’ve never been huge on needing validation from other people. I guess that’s sort of a generational thing? It would seem that way seeing how some of my younger co-workers from the millennial era behave…. I guess I don’t care if someone else thinks what I’m doing is great and since I am enjoying what I do or build, I could care less if someone else builds it, let alone showing them how. And if they think what even I’ve done sucks, I don’t really care either.
But great super soaker. I’m sure this guy is a hit with all the 10 year olds and college frat kids.
Yes. It’s tedious enough to do documentation on projects in the job.
You could have saved yourself a bit of writing by writing “Waahhhhhhh what about me? Guys? Guys? Guuuyyyyyysss?”. Your problems are entirely self made, only you have put yourself in the position of not having enough time to do things like this and I feel no sympathy towards you. Get your own life in order.
Heavens yes… that was the most self-pitying thing I’ve read all day.
Or maybe he just gets as much satisfaction from documenting his build as he does building it.
No need for the psychoanalysis. Not everything is a generational fault.
Yes, all millennials are the same, fantastic generalization work.
Perhaps he thought “You know what! My hack is cool and beneficial to people beyond myself, and I’d like to share that know-how and instruct people on how to do it” That’s how communities grow, people learn, and our tech improves. To me, documenting isn’t about validation, it’s about showing people what can be done with some basic skills, tools, and parts. The whole point of a scientific experiment is that it’s repeatable, and documenting what you did and how you did it allows the scientific method to work. You seem to say “I don’t care” a whole lot, and that’s not a good thing. You would really tell someone interested in replicating your work/project that they should get lost?
That last line is kind of a rude, backhanded compliment, isn’t it. Just because you find something ‘trivial’ or ‘beneath you’, doesn’t mean that his work has been relegated to children and frat kids. You claim in the previous paragraph that you don’t need validation, but apparently get your kicks judging others?
Documentation isn’t about self-validation. It’s about helping others do cool stuff and building a common public knowledge base, and often results in great feedback that helps you inprove. Give it a try!
Hear! Hear!
I also think this kind of work should go on your list of past projects when job hunting. An engineer who documents their fun projects to this level is an easy hiring choice.
This guy gets it!
“I guess I don’t care if someone else thinks what I’m doing is great and since I am enjoying what I do or build, I could care less if someone else builds it, let alone showing them how.” But I sure do want everybody to know just how superior I am to them. Wasting time writing up their projects when they could be trolling on the hackaday comments, what losers!
Great to see something like this on hackaday! When I was at school I was fascinated with Super Soaker Central (http://www.sscentral.org/). I never did make my own although I bought some of the parts… maybe it’s time to go back to the project.
It would be cool to put RBG LED in the nozzle head to color the water stream. Then make the pack and gun look like the ghost busters proton pack.
Get ready for a boatload of big fat over-regulation. You voted for big government, so enjoy it.
Let’s hope it’s not used in a sex fort!