Demoman's Grenade Launcher by Doltergeist

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

MATERIAL:
These parts are designed to be printed in taulman's nylon alloy 910 except for the grip, handleboltgrip, stocksmoothhandle, stocksmoothbutt, and all the bolts, which can be printed in PLA (or whatever plastic you're comfortable with).
This model is designed to work with a 60mm outer diameter (2'' inner diameter) pvc pipe for the barrel and a 41mm outer diameter (1 3/8'' inner diameter) pvc pipe for the 6 smaller barrels in the rotating drum. However, I don't know if your local hardware store will carry pvc pipe with the exact same outer diameter as the pipes I used. If you can't get a big pvc pipe with the correct outer diameter then I recommend either getting the closest possible one and scaling the whole model to fit the new large pipe (and then printing your own small cylinders for the rotating drum) or just printing your own large and small cylinders (although I myself haven't tried this method out and thus can't speak to its strength or aesthetics).
VARIANTS:
This model is designed to have a skateboard wheel bearing bolted in with the drum1's small center nook. If you don't care about building the bearing into it then just print drum1variant_nobearing instead.
In my experience, the nylon alloy 910 warped in the frame2 piece a bit. This required a larger latch to hold the model together. So, I'd recommend trying to make the model work with the standard latch piece and only printing the latchbackup piece if warping doesn't turn out to be an issue.
ASSEMBLY:
The model is designed to be bolted and screwed together mostly, since nylon alloy takes screws and bolts very well. Screws in this model are used to attach frame1, frame2, and frame3 together and are used as the hinge connecting frame3 to frameback. They are also used to attach the grip to the gripscaffold. 8 x 1 1/4 wood screws were used. Nuts and bolts were used to attach the barrel to frame1, to attach the stocksmoothhandle to the frameback, and to attack the rotating drum to frame1. Specifically for the rotating drum I would recommend using a locknut (self-locking nut) to allow the drum to rotate without being pinched by a too-tight regular bolt (or just use glue to hold a regular bolt in place, but I don't recommend this because then you won't be able to disassemble the model if a part breaks).
A small ball catch (designed for doors) is designed to be stuck into the cylinder in frame1 to make the drum click when it spins. Check your local hardware store for something like this but it's not an absolutely vital part of this model.
gripscaffold is designed to be zip-tied to the pvc pipe barrel, and then the grip can be screwed onto the gripscaffold.
Superglue was used to assemble the sight and trigger as well as to attach the cosmetic bolt pieces to the model and to attach the trigger piece to frameback. Epoxy glue was used to assemble the stocksmoothhandle/stocksmoothbutt, as well as to attach the six small pvc cylinders to the drum1 piece
THE PVC BARREL:
You'll have to drill four small holes in the main pvc barrel so that the zip ties can loop through and hold the gripscaffold onto the barrel. You'll also have to drill two holes near the base of the barrel so that you can bolt the barrel into frame1
You'll probably have to superglue the sightbracket to the pvc pipe barrel so that the sightbracket grips the sight enough to allow the sight to hinge up and down properly.
PAINTING/COLORING:
Nylon alloy 910 supposedly doesn't take to paint well so I used Rit Dyemore fabric dyes to color the appropriate parts grey and black. I recommend that the stocksmoothhandle/butt and grip be printed in PLA so that you can sand, prime, and paint them with wood textures (krylon fusion works well for this). I used some black rustoleum 2x that I had lying around for the pvc pipes, but krylon fusion might work better.
CONCLUSION:
The demoman's grenade launcher as it appears in game is a finnicky shape and thus it takes effort to make a real world one not just fall apart. This model is tricky to make, but with the right filament and enough time spent, you should be able to make something that's decently durable as well as cool looking.