Half-Life Tau Cannon

[01binary]

Tried two bending springs today: one inside the pipe and one outside. Exactly the same result, no point in posting more pictures. The pipe exploded inside the spring and the part being bent has separated from the rest of the pipe. The spring that was inside shot out to the other side of the room on the first attempt, and stuck inside on the second attempt, so both bending springs were destroyed in the process.

Looking at two other options: using solid rods (since there is no point at all to them being hollow) and ordering pre-bent pipes out of another metal, then painting them to look like copper. I order most metal parts from Xometry these days, and they do pipes, but not copper.

 

[joberg]

Wow...I didn't know it was so difficult to bend copper pipes Lesson learned for me

 

[01binary]

I finished with assembly last week and onto painting this week.

Explored a few ways of putting together the copper pipes and ended up trying a cold butt-weld using 5000 PSI JBWeld. Using 90 degree fittings from the hardware store with cut-off ends and an inside aluminum tube for strength.

There are still some signs of the bonding cement so I got a polishable copper blend that can be painted on and then sanded to cover it up.

The large flexible tube has also been installed, and covered with a black nylon braid.

I also added a targeting computer, running on Raspberry Pi 4B and processing a webcam video feed with Open CV software library to highlight people detected by the camera and draw little targets over them. It's running off of real batteries mounted on top just like the model from the game, and has a little HDMI screen that mounts on the photography handle.

I am mocking up some designs of what I want the HUD to look like on the little screen:

 

[joberg]

Those pipes are looking good for sure

 

[01binary]

Getting really close to being finished, just being held up by minor issues like wrong screw sizes, misfit, some parts needing to be attached a different way than originally anticipated, etc.

 

[joberg]

Looking sharp for sure