I finished the Nerf Nuke!

this video is sponsored by bamboo lab the Nerf Nuke is real and a terrifying reality begins to set in it's bad enough that a device like this exists but it's even worse that right now if a hand is hovering over the launch button that hand would belong to a human who is just as flawed as you how did we get here well we should probably recap my last video left off with the Nerf nuk completing successful testing of the launch system and demonstrating 99% efficacy with oxyhydrogen propellant and you probably noticed that the Detonator was

a time delay system that starts when I pull a filler tube out of the bottom this is because the Nerf Nuke has to be launched into the air before it fires out 100 darts this launching will be accomplished by our Silo and initiated by the launch control briefcase but we'll come back to that once we wrap up the nuke itself now you might think that there's a timer inside the Nerf Nuke but it's actually way simpler than that it all starts with a cap for our chamber core but this cap needs to hold more than

just the heating element that ignites the oxyhydrogen the power for a heating element now has to fit inside the nuke and has to be able to supply a lot of power at once since heating elements are incredibly electrically demanding that much current in this size can only reasonably come from some capacitors now there is a limit switch that's held open by the inserted oxyhydrogen tube this switch activates a relay when the tube is removed and then that relay sends all the power that stored in the capacitors through the heating element the element was able to

ignite some flash cotton and more importantly a little chamber full of oxyhydrogen one okay but getting the heating element just right is difficult if it's too thin or draws too much current it will burn out but if it's too low current or too thick it won't get hot enough to ignite the gases but when it does work it still takes a second to get up to temperature which will hopefully allow it to launch the darts as it reaches its apex for the perfect midair detonation from the perfect height darts Will Rain Down onto everybody in

the room assuming we can get it into the air thankfully though I've got a plan originally I wanted to have a case that opened up and then the nuke launcher would tilt upright very dramatic but as I was looking into it I was starting to have doubts so I've looking at different cases like pelican cases and I'm leaning more and more towards finding something that's already vertical because it's just one less variable to figure out you know I'm all about repurposing so what's the existing mass produced form factor that's already close enough to that so

I've searched toolboxes I've searched storage containers I've searched buckets and with so many existing containers out there it was only a matter of time until I found something really cool so it's 1111 and I just ordered a trash can off of Amazon the listing said two and it showed two trash cans and it showed them in two different sizes the description said 12 L but I want the 28 L version one which they show in the pictures and then when you look at the dimensions the dimensions seem to match the 28 L version now it's

already kind of got a cool look to it and just with a few little embellishments it might be the perfect little Nerf Nuke Silo that is if it's the right size now while we wait for that to arrive let's check in with the Nerf football no not that kind of football this kind of football when we last left off the internals had been roughly designed by my brother Charles that button is amazing though Charles that that's that's really cool now just like the movies and television I wanted this thing to have his as much drama

spectacle and awesome Aesthetics as possible all contained within this plastic thrift store briefcase 650 I was like wait a second so while my brother and chat GPT were squashing bugs in the code I got to work on the case itself we decided that the main panel should be blue anodized aluminum but with a Twist as I cut the holes for the switches and other components I oversized them to reveal the thicker structural panel that would be mounted underneath it made of fluorescent orange acrylic but while CNC machined parts are what I've experienced with they have

their limitations especially in the third dimension thankfully my brother had already been prototyping some of the mechanisms for the case on his personal bamboo 3D printer and that was before they even sponsored this video oh you already have a bamboo printer right yeah yeah I have the P1 s and you like it oh man it was out of the box in printing in 10 minutes and once they sent me their A1 printer with a multifilament set setup it was super convenient to make things like the big orange and black button or the scissor lift platform

which is actuated by a Servo motor you see I thought I'd have to export things to like a card and then carry that card over to the printer each time that I wanted to make something but actually you can just do it remotely over the network and then even remotely keep an eye on the printing with the built-in time-lapse camera which is like super convenient I mean you can even use your phone now most of the designs that we used were modified versions of free online designs and I'll link those below but before the scissor

lift can dramatically push the button up through the opening in the aluminum face plate an acrylic cover has to slide back which is accomplished by another Servo with a 3D printed rack and pinion now I knew that making 3D Parts is where the bamboo would really shine after all it's in the name 3D printer but what really surprised me was how good the multicolor printing was like the 2D face of the button by printing my Nerf Nuke logo in black and orange face down on the texture Hot Plate I was able to get this great

textured finish that looked really well finished and the same thing goes for the orange and black key covers that's right Keys you need two of them turned at about the same time for the cover to slide back and the button to rise up but it doesn't stop there because we also need six toggle switches and four potentiometers in order to have a proper launch sequence in The Silo you see this briefcase sends commands wirelessly and surprisingly none of them go directly to the nuke itself the whole thing starts simply enough with a four button remote

relay each of these buttons remotely turns on a switch on this circuit board and we're going to need all four of them the first thing that we need to be able to do is to open the top of the silo do we have a silo yet it finally came is this my perfect Nerf Nuke Silo these bottles right into these Corners I love finding something that exists that's already perfect perfect it's like you're discovering this wonderful puzzle piece that was just left there for someone to find now if you remember from part one these are

the electrolysis bottles that produce the oxyhydrogen which is what gets ignited to propel the darts out of the nuke and this Silo will have two of them for quicker fueling and to literally top it all off there's a self openening lid in addition to holding the Nerf Nuke the trash can Silo needs to do three main things charge the nuk's capacitors fill it with oxyhydrogen and launch it into the air so I designed an interface that can do all three with just two tubes the central tube is the launch pressure tube now the nuke has

its own small metal tube that is capped at the top and you can slide that tube down onto the launch tube by running CO2 into the launch tube the pressure should push on the nuke tube and early tests were promising I just heard you say tally ho and then a metal bar shot into the ceiling the second tube dispenses the oxyhydrogen as well as triggering the ignited when it gets pulled out now to charge the capacitors I connected a negative wire to the launch tube and a positive wire to the oxyhydrogen tube the nuke core

is then grounded onto its own Central tube and then the metal flap of the limit switch itself becomes the positive contact since it already has a spring that holds it tight against the oxyhydrogen tube so once I painted the bin from Blue to a slightly different blue and hooked up the CO2 I decided to see if it would uh go 3 2 1 we blew out the fitting now part of the problem is that the two tubes weren't the tightest fit meaning CO2 could be escaping between them before they reach high enough pressure so I

greased up the tube in order to fill that Gap it's also important to note that at pretty much any phase of this project I'm quite sleep deprived technically speaking that was not enough now crappy or not these tests just wouldn't be conclusive until I built a proper base to mount everything got tighter fitting tubes and then try it again but it would help to understand what I'm aiming for here I'm aiming for the ability to aim the higher up the nuke is the farther out the darts will go so if your targets are spread out

you'd want a higher launch and a later detonation but if your targets are close together you'd want a lower launch and a quicker Deton that's where the potentiometers come in you see even though our four remote switches can only be turned on or off we can control how long they turn on or off for example if we turn the switch that sends power to the capacitors till it's fully charged we will have plenty of power to get the heating element red hot right away and detonate quicker but if we stop before we reach the maximum

voltage it will take longer for the heating element to get hot and give us a later detonation by the same token if we open the CO2 solono valve for a long time we'll have a higher launch than if we just open it for a short burst that is why when you flip a switch on the briefcase the arduo will read the corresponding potentiometer value and then activate the corresponding relay for the duration determined by that value it's not just a big orange launch button it's an entire remote launch control system and it looks so freaking

cool if you're going to feel cool holding this thing and carrying this thing and using this thing you know he'd never written code before but with the help of Chad GPT I think my little brother Charles did an amazing job and meanwhile back on The Silo I had just designed and cut a parts enclosure base using some acrylic these two clear plates are mounted together by standoffs and then they'll mount to the bottom of the silo but before that I needed to test the new tighter fitting launch tube and even though I already suspected that

this might take a lot of trial and error to sort out okay I still knew I I had to make those errors first that's uh not so good ah no so I tried to learn from my mistakes but no amount of learning or minor successes could make up for the increasingly evident fundamental design flaw it's promising that it's going but it's not going high enough we need more you see the 800 PSI of a CO2 tank is a lot of pressure but that's just the p in PSI the amount of force that's applied changes based

on the amount of surface area that's applied to 800 lb per square in the stroke diameter of these tubes is only A4 inch severely limiting our push power but I can't go too big because our nuke core had issues igniting when I originally had a large launch tube even finding two tubes with a close enough inner and outer diameters is a pain in the butt but I searched and found new tubes that I hoped would be the perfect balance for all of these variables these two tubes are much larger than what I have in there

right now now this increases the amount of area that it has to push on significantly it also increases the strength of the launch thing that one's just a little weak it's really easy to bend it's not robust this is now the tubes didn't initially fit but I worked down the diameter of the inner tube on my drill press with some sandpaper until the the fit was buttery smooth and then I tapped the end for a pressure fitting but now I also had to remove the N core and the top cap redesign and recut them for

a larger tube 3D print a new launch tube plug remove all the components from the old one and then squeeze them into even less space and I was running out of time we are at Wednesday December 4th I do not have a working Nerf Nuke system much less a video about it here's that plate that was damaged and you see I've done here is that ancient Japanese art where they take the gold and they repair the cracks and the pottery and the gold represents kind of like the growth process and how our scars end up

becoming our strengths except in this case it's superglue and the super glue represents my desire for this thing not to freaking break again because I don't have time to make another one hopefully by the end of the day this thing launches with some Force I hope so too Joel so I mounted the new launch tube then inserted the new core set it up on my floor and touch the solenoid wires to the battery well how about that these launches were looking much better and then I switched to an even bigger CO2 tank wa okay I

now had enough proof to carry this design forward to completion but there was still so much to do like opening the top the trash can lid opened really fast and though I tried modifying it it it just had a bulky motor mechanism that made it hard for the nuke to fit so instead I cut an orange acrylic lid and got a linear actuator which is much more dramatic especially when you include the homemade smoke machine built into the base also in the base is the four relay circuit a three cell battery to run it a

large single cell battery to run the electrolysis a voltage converter to Output the 5.4v max capacitor charge as well as run the smoke machine and Power the linear actuator as slow as possible if this sounds like a lot it was which is why it's a dang good thing that I had this dang good 3D printer to knock out quick Parts like the CO2 tank brackets or the lid hinge like I've been running my partially homemade CNC machine for years but before this video I'd never 3D printed anything so as a novice printer who also has

extensive 3x's experience it's crazy to me how well this thing runs itself with multiple filaments and at such an accessible price point check out the link in my description check out bamboo lab check out the A1 it's a seriously impressive printer and a great way to support my channel through commissions now the Nerf Nuke system was getting closer and closer as I plowed through issue after issue like the fact that the electrolysis relay was getting too hot requiring me to replace it with a separate larger relay or that I had to limit the current going

to the capacitors otherwise the new core wires might overheat or melt the limit switch I had to cut a new foam base and paint it paint the briefcase repaint the briefcase repaint the briefcase I mean if I pulled this off the big test would be incredible but would it really be worth all of this this is Thursday morning and I'm feeling I mean I'm busy you know somebody's saying in the comments take some time off because you know we had another kid and um this is what allows me to stay at home with my family

this year was a tough year I almost had to walk away from YouTube for a bit so baby is born but if I don't do these videos and I don't do a dang good job and if I'm not passionate about it then they're not going to do well and then I won't be able to afford to stay home with my family anymore so imagine my relief then when it seemed like the Nerf Nuke was finally ready it was time to pack up and head to Quincy's warehouse but I wouldn't be alone oh okay all right

come on dude come on Matt from the channel big rig creates was the first guest to stop by and witness the greatness of the Nerf Nuke but I was nervous so nervous in fact that once we set up for the first test and I pushed the launch button I realized I'd forgot something kind of important I looked at him I'm like the Top's still on it all right we're opening up the top but the next time I remembered to include the dramatic opening sequence and I was ready for the big payoff what the heck just

to make it clear there were two big issues Not only was it not going high enough to clear the launch Silo but now twice it hadn't detonated so Charles and I started taking things apart looking for answers but ultimately we decided to just give it more oxyhydrogen and turn up CO2 delivery duration to ensure that our second test visitor Patrick would get a good show you're going to want to see this part all right one two 3 Charles you want to do this one [Music] sure damn it dang it listen like I said I didn't

know what I was walking into I'm trying to make a new fuse but it's a finer gauge wire so it's probably going to burn out but it'll get really hot before it does Charles is over here trying to loosen this up because for some reason it's really tight on the tube which I think is inhibiting it from being able to launch we've had three Duds you know in the movies when everything seems lost and you're finally ready for that sweet Underdog moment well real life isn't always that predictable I don't know what do you think

would be a good thing to say I would just give up yeah I mean it it sucks it sucks I was very optimistic and so the fact that not only did it not launched properly but that then the darts didn't go off it's like how do you proceed then when your perceptions are clearly so faulty if there was a silver lining though it was that the boys were there to each comfort me in their own way I know what you you need [Music] he you could put like the little sound bite from Call of Duty

you can have that Lu Mission filed we'll get them next time so obviously I'm going to fix it right I mean I'll have even less time to edit the video but I'm going to fix it right well the first thing I did was stand up the CO2 tank as being on its side can cause some issues but when that didn't fix it I scoured the internet for a high pressure higher flow valve with next day shipping and got this that well that fixed it but the fuse was kicking my butt I decided that the hot

wire was just too unreliable and ordered one of those Arc lighters but unlike the hot wire it creates a plasma Arc as soon as you hit the button so I would have to figure out another way to delay the activation for a half second meet the homemade gravity switch which should activate once the nuke changes Direction at the peak of its flight right well actually gravity seems to act equally on everything inside the Nerf Nuke as soon as it's no longer being Ed on by another outside force meaning as soon as it leaves the launcher

that's when the switch activates so then I tried to do something with capacitors to make some kind of a delay for when the relay would trip but I'm just not that good with circuits and without the time to research and Order and ship specific Parts I needed something now so remember how I said I didn't use a timer and it was much simpler than that well that changed and not to be left out my iconic shelf of Creations decided that it was ready for a change too thankfully most things were fine most things and I

could go back to the relay timer circuits I had to try four different kinds that I had lying around until I could get one to function properly on the 5.4 volt capacitor voltage by swapping its 12vt relay for a 5vt one and then I had to run power up from the capacitors through the 3D printed cap in order to power this circuit though the AR ligher had issues without its own battery but at least everything was now contained and could be reused many many times without needing to remove the cap for recharging I was done

messing around and just a few days after my last failed test it was time to head back to Quincy's warehouse for one more try and even though that first launch was technically a bit of a fail it showed me that everything was at least working better than before okay need to angle it more forward so when the next launch didn't detonate I was worried that the igniter circuits were just too sensitive to survived the impact when the nuke hit the ground but I also realized that I had forgotten to top off the capacitors after the

oxyhydrogen so we set it up again what happened so fast halfway through its flight half of the darts launched out of the Nerf Nuke so with a couple more minutes of oxyhydrogen would we finally have our full launch yep three like like right in the nuts 1 2 3 4 96% I got hit a lot that's a success so 8 minutes of oxyhydrogen was about The Sweet Spot and man does it look sweet in fact we wanted to capture this sweetness with as many different slow motion camera angles as possible and we also have some

special darts to try but we can only do all of these things if it survives each punishing launch cycle and each subsequent smack into the ground but after three solid months of work baby I'm ready to roll those dice even get a little goofy with it 1 2 3 button is pressed here we go baby ow you all right they got hit by like 12 which I guess makes sense did you get hit no not at all so even though we lost some of our briefcase control by switching to a relay time and even though

the launch height seemed to be more affected by CO2 pressure than by the solenoid duration it was actually working really well and this sometimes happens in my projects you know when it all pays off and it's pretty surreal you know my mom is a third degree black belt and she worked at a karate studio as a program director for like over a decade and whenever the black belt candidates would complain to her about how hard it was she would pull out the supply catalog and offer to order them a belt right then and there like

here's the black belt no need to do the hard part and every time they'd immediately get it like the belt's only as good as what it represents and what it represents is what you become in the process of facing immense difficulty don't run from your challenges even if they're unfair for better or worse they're your challenges and if you Faithfully face them down one day you might even be able to choose which challenges you take on and after successfully facing some of mine watching this thing go off time after time is just it's just awesome

what do you got here Chief Special darts that Charles has prepared meticulously you know those Nerf darts that whistle well you can modify a regular Dart pretty easily to do the same thing and we really wanted to hear what 100 of those at once would sound like [Applause] could you even hear that no I guess the boom was too overpowering at least in this enclosed space it's amazing how much of a beating that this thing could take and still keep working and it's got me wondering could I make a fully 3D printed version with flexible

filament for the outer shell I could take everything that I've learned and then with 3D printing I could create a more threedimensional shape that shoots darts in all directions much more like the Think Geek Nerf Nuke and then I can make a Fallout style shoulder launcher like many of you suggested in the comments so let me know in the comments what would you like to see thank you so much for your patience and your support in this process merry Christmas happy holidays I'll see you next time that's not so bad