Working Web Shooters You Can Swing From

All right, we're finally doing it. Probably the most requested project on this channel, make some spider-man web shooters you can actually swing from. You see, I listen to you guys, which is why you should comment right now what I should build next. Like, the next thing I make is probably going to be the most liked comment idea from this video. And of course, toss a like and subscribe, please, because I put a lot of work into this. As you guys already know, I've made tons of stuff like this in the past. While those were cool, you can't actually swing from them. I've done other variations too, like retractable ones where you could shoot it at something and reel it in. And if you don't mind slight punctures in your item walls and your dignity when everyone makes fun of you for being a nerd. All right, so things we need. A web. And this web has to be strong enough for us to swing from. We also need a web shooter. Then we need a way for the web to stick onto whatever we're shooting it at. So we need the web to have enough stuckness, like stick, stuck-titude, so that it won't break when we try and swing from it. And lastly, we need a way for the web to release when we're done swinging, or else we'll end up on one of those rope swing fail videos. Yikes. But before we do any of that, we've got to look the part. We've got this pretty cool mask. We've also got to fix this whole beard situation. I think me and Peter Parker would have the same facial hair growing abilities. You know, patchy at best. Thankfully though, Harry's sponsor of this video is going to help us out. So whether you can grow a full one or you're rocking the more prepubescent look like me, Harry's quality German-engineered blades are sure to help you out. We've got blade refills for only two bucks, and they got 100 years of experience and 100% money back guarantee. Of course, they deliver it right to your door, because it's 2020 and that's how it should be. In the case of this pandemic, you don't even have to go outside. So we got a razor, five blade cartridges, foam, shave gel, and a travel case. Nice. So if this interests you at all and you want to support my channel, you can get your trial set for just three bucks, link below. It's harrys.com slash jlazer video. All right, let's start with the blaster because I want to shoot some stuff. So we could use a CO2 cartridge. They're small, they pack a punch. Everyone else who I've found that did stuff similar to this used it. You know, it's the obvious choice. Psych! You know what's way cooler than soda burps? Explosions and fire. So I essentially made a pipe gun. I actually shouldn't say that. I don't think YouTube likes the G word. Uh, rephrase. Completely harmless, soft cotton, uh, for entertainment purposes only blaster. Basically it's a pipe with an arc lighter in one end. So if we pack a bit of nitrocellulose or flash cotton down the barrel and get a good enough seal, arc lighter ignites the flash cotton. Whenever you shove down there, blast out the barrel. We can get a ton of power out of this. Like you just got to add more cotton until something explodes. I've got a gram scale too. You can figure out the optimal amount of cotton. Somewhere between a dollar store squirt gun and uh, Hindenburg. Turns out it's about 0.15 grams. Now we need a web to blast and a way to make it stick to stuff so we can swing on it. Now while a dart would be ideal, we can't really count on them to hold our weight. So we're gonna go with the good old fashioned grappling hook. And because a big metal grappling hook is a bit too clunky for this Spider-Man gadget, we're gonna use a small self-latching grappling hook. So it'll loop around something and attach back to itself. A few other YouTubers have done stuff like this. I think the Hacksmith did one recently. Also Greek Gadget Guru, Alan Pan. Definitely check them out as well. All good channels. So for the webs, we're gonna use some Kevlar cord. It has a load capacity of about 2,000 pounds. And it's thin and light. So for the time being, I 3D printed a grappling hook that I think is gonna work. Printed it 100% infill and had it print the layers so it'd be aligned with where the force is pulling it. Hopefully it can hold my weight until I find a way to make this out of metal. I'll put the model down below if you guys want to check it out, but I'm not responsible if you end up hurting yourself. I used a screw for the center of the hook and attached the Kevlar to the end. Now we have ourselves a hook that works pretty well. I got it to stick about 80% of the time. So did 10 shots, 8 of them stuck. Also learned a couple ways to make the stick better. Like right after you shoot it, if you pull slightly and wave your hand back and forth, the rope will sort of tangle up a little bit better and have a better chance of it sticking. And you don't really need to be good at aiming either because all you have to do is hit anywhere above the thing you're trying to wrap around. It'll go over and then wrap itself around and hopefully stick. And to release the hook, all you got to do is shake the line gently and it'll come unstuck and pop right off. Sometimes you can catch it too, it looks pretty sweet. Then I 3D printed a wrist mount to hold the launcher that would store the rope in such a way that it would be able to unspool as we shoot. This actually has room for a ton more rope too. So I did a bit of testing to just sort of get used to the recoil of the blaster and I practiced getting good grappling sticks. The last thing we need is a way to release the web when we're done swinging so we can eventually, you know, continue on to the next swing. Double tap to release and whip it out again. To do this I was originally thinking like a simple friction mechanism. Instead of just straight up holding the rope like that and trying to swing, that's pretty much impossible. What you want to do is have something that hooks onto your waist. So just pretend this is hooked on there. And then what I was thinking is we would wrap the string around it a couple of times. So then the weight's going directly through my waist and all we'd have to do is keep this rope attached to this thing. But because we have these loops, we just grab on and the friction would actually do most all of the work for us. And then when we wanted to release we just let go and then it'd unspool off like that. But I figured it'd be much better and cooler if we could just press a button and release like that. Because in the future I want to pair this with like my wall climbers so I can't be like holding onto rope. I need my hands free for that. So I decided to use a quick release paired with a super high torque servo. So we just hook in the rope and pull the latch whenever we wanted to drop. The latch pops open and we pop off. The only thing is the more weight on the latch, the harder it is to release the latch because of the friction. Luckily this 20 kilogram servo is a beast. I did a little testing and with my full body weight on it we need about five pounds of force to trigger the quick release which the servo can provide no problem. So one 3D print later and we have this servo attached to the latch. We've got the lever arm right here. So this lever arm pulls the latch. Latch pops open and on the other end of the latch we've got this bit of Kevlar cord. We can strap on a bit of rope that goes to the harness on our waist. So then none of the tension is through our hand. So wrote a bit of Arduino code. Control this with a push button and it seems to work pretty well. So this is what it looks like when everything's put on. We've got the rope grappling system down here. You can see all of the line tucked into this little pocket. Grappling hook shoots out of this port. Arc light over here. Explosion chamber right here. Boom. Grappling hook shoots out. I'm just gonna simulate this. You can see the string easily flows out. When it gets to the end it catches on this hook mechanism back here. So that's resting on my wall climbers I made in the last video. So that pops out. I just 3D printed a little backing. These have spikes on the tip that let you climb trees and such. And then this is the tensioning mechanism. Say the grappling hook's hooked and there's still a little slack in the line. What you can do is this is a one-way. It falls this way but doesn't let you pull that way. And then this clip is hooked on to our release mechanism right there. These two buttons. We have the fire button and then the release mechanism button on the front of our hand right there. So if I just click that boom pops off. Releases off. You drop down just like Spider-Man. And that's pretty much how it works. Of course we had to add some sweet decals to the side. I think it came out pretty good especially for version one. But it doesn't matter how it looks. It's about performance. So let's go test this thing out. Now since I'm not in a city I am fresh out of skyscrapers. So we don't really have anything to test this on like Spider-Man. So if we built some like scaffolding like structure something like this we could uh could like shoot our rope up here and maybe like swing off of this side. That'd be pretty sick. Wait a minute we already built it. So during testing we did have a couple problems. First being the Kevlar cord strength. Yes the cord is super strong like you can swing around it no problem if you're just sort of hanging there. But when you start to sort of like jump off stuff put a lot more force on it. Especially because Kevlar is static so that means there's no like give to it. So the cord kept snapping. So to fix this we tripled up the cord just braided three pieces together. I don't think this should be too much of an issue because the gauntlet could already hold way more line than we're putting into it. So once we figured that out the line wasn't snapping anymore. Then the release mechanism started to give way. Like all this stuff yeah it works if you're just hanging there but when you start actually putting a ton of force on it like me falling onto it and repeated use it starts to wear out. So what happened with this every time this thing opens under tension it bends slightly. So right now it's fine but if I were to use this this piece right here would start to bend and what that does is it makes it very hard for you to lock it and open it so it sort of gets stuck. So we need a way to take some of the force off of this and I think I have an idea for that. So we're going to pretend right here this is the adjustable clip that hooks onto the web. So I've got this rope right here which is attached to my harness at one end and then there's a loop at the other end. So what we're going to do is loop this through here about three times. What this is going to do is allow us to use friction to actually help us out. So I can hang off of this right now. I can actually hold myself up because of this friction. Not very hard but as soon as I let go everything falls off whenever I release. It is much easier on this system and honestly with this new friction method like it's a small enough force for me to hold myself on where I can just do it with my hand if I wanted. So we technically don't even need this part. I don't know if I'm going to use it still but hey now we got options so back outside. Before we test this though I want to show off some projects that you guys made and sent to me on Instagram. So if you made anything cool send it my way and of course toss it a follow if you want. Alright moment of truth. We actually did end up making a metal grappling hook just sort of bent two pieces of steel and put it around the bolt. Don't know why I didn't think that before. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to try and do a shoot, a latch, a swing, and a drop all in one take. Before we get into any fancy edits or whatever I want to show you guys that this actually works. I might speed ramp it a little bit just while I'm working up the courage to actually swing but I'm not going to cut anything so wish me luck. Alright no cut starting now or whenever I fire it because this might take a couple takes. I don't know. Just wanted to make sure it was a good stick. Let's go. One take. Now let's have some fun. So we're going for about the 10th swing of the night. So here's kind of the order. Basically we shoot this grappling hook. Try and get a good stick onto that post up there. We sort of leap off of this swing down there and hopefully drop off before we run into that wall. Alright let's get it. Nailed it. Well that about wraps this one up. No pun intended. We actually made it out alive with minor scrapes and bruises. So obviously if you like these videos definitely subscribe. I don't need to tell you this. I'm pretty pleased with how this came out. Not only the invention but the quality of the videos lately. So if you guys keep liking them I'm gonna keep making them. So thank you very much for watching. We'll catch you in the next one.