MkIV Belt/Half-drop Pistol Holsters

 It's about time we got around to doing these. We've had the prototype sat on our 'belt mounted' washing line since we made it in the field at Green Cloaks Event 1 last June. It's a simple concept: use our Universal Belt system pattern to raise mount a pistol holster on the belt.

Unfortunately for us, all MkIV compatible blasters are a little large for a true belt mounted holster and so this was our compromise. Add a belt loop and a single thigh strap to form a sort of 'half drop' configuration. It still has the advantage of being off the thigh and so won't cause as many fatiguing problems as a true drop leg holster.

For someone who has been using a full drop-leg pistol holster for the last year and a bit, the higher elevation of the pistol grip on these is a weird transition. The extra height makes it more comfortable to remove the upper grab strap when accessing your blaster.

These holsters are about offering more options to folks. Our line of drop-leg holsters is our most successful and we'd like to be able to offer them in as many different configurations as possible. Keep your eyes peeled for a MOLLE mounted cross draw variant soon.

The MkIV belt mounted pistol holster is available from our website for £14 for black and £15 for a wide range of colours and camouflage patterns. That price is inclusive of UK/EU VAT at 20% so US, Australian and other non-EU customers will pay £11.67 and £12.50 respectively. Lead time is 2 weeks and most international destinations will receive their item within 5 days of shipment (assuming Customs don't get in the way!)

Creative Commons Licensing for Blastersmiths UK

We've been a little lax on getting to this, I mentioned in my earlier post that small things like this tend to get put on hold as bigger challenges throw themselves at you. Well, a few disputes have reared their heads in other places over the last couple of weeks so we thought we'd tighten things up our end and sort things out.

We have an open ethos here at Blastersmiths UK and we aim to make a living but also to help the communities we work with grow and develop. We've developed a content licensing policy that reflects that Creative Commons is a fantastic way to implement that, they do the legal leg work for you and you simply put a license to your stuff.

So, what does that mean for you? Well, it means you can use our images, blog posts and website content provided the following conditions are met:

• You don't make any money from them or use them in a service that will generate revenue for yourselves
• You put a (c) Blastersmiths UK mark and then link to a) the original source and b) the license as provided at this link.

The scope of the CC-BY-NC-SA license also means you can remix and use our work in the context of other projects provided you link back in the same way as if you were using the material wholesale. If you've got any questions, give us a shout by clicking 'Contact Us' on the website.

The exceptions to the above are our shield device logo and any image that contains it. Those are (c) Blastersmiths UK All Rights Reserved and only may be used with our explicit permission.  This is to protect our brand identity and is the only compromise to our commitment to openness when it comes to our content.

Of course, all our patterns and designs are All Rights Reserved but that's for commercial reasons and is beyond the scope of this article.

So, get out there, share our images, use them in your own works, share our guides all over the place. Just make sure you comply with the license terms and we'll all be happy!

I'm off back to the production bench,

Mike Harratt
MD, BSUK

Development Pipeline Case Study: Helmet Torch Bracket

In our recent feedback survey, lots of people were asking for insights into how our products become a reality. We post a lot about our development on our Facebook page and the new and innovative products we develop keep the company moving forward. So how do products come to the market?

The idea or the product need:

First of all, we need to identify a need. Sometimes a customer will have done that for us and come to us with a problem "I need something like this" and ask us to solve it. Other times, ideas will arise as we're playing or watching others play. Things will be difficult or awkward or simply botched together. We then look for solutions to that problem. The development isn't always a group thing, sometimes our people will just forge ahead with an idea and only discuss it later with refinements. It allows for individual creativity for the good of the company.

In the case of our example, a clip-on helmet torch bracket, the need came from needing light in a camp area that may be demilitarised at a LARP event. Given that LARP usually runs 24 hour (or a close approximation there of) night lights are important. In this case, a head lamp or similar would be fine but given a number of systems are mil-sim that may not always be possible. Keeping the hands free is critical as it allows other things to be done. All of these criteria provide the backbone of our Design Specification that informs further development.

Drawings and Models:

Most of our stuff  gets sketched out on the back of envelopes or in paper development notebooks. There are half a dozen of these scattered around the office covered in the spidery scrawls of our staff. The example in question actually skipped this stage so there's not a lot to show.

Next come the patterns and 3D models. I'll deal with fabric products separately in another post. For 3D printed parts, we use a variety of CAD programs to develop our software but the final stage is always OpenSCAD. If we don't do all of it in that package, it's certainly useful for unifying disparate STL files from various programs and cleaning them up. It produces excellent quality STLs and our GCode interpreter for the printer absolutely loves it so there's no complaint from this quarter!

First prototypes aren't the prettiest things!

First prototypes:

We export through to GCodes for our development printer (a tricolour RepRap Prusa Mendel) to interpret. The printer will then dutifully out put a file according to our 3D model. Essentially, it's magic. Either way, you get a first prototype out at the end of it. Often they're over bulky, have a number of flaws and aren't fit for purpose. 

Testing is sometimes simple, often not

Assess and review:

We then take the prototype and match it to our design specification. Does it do what it was supposed to do? If so, how well? If not, why not? Does it need to be changed? As you can see from the photo the first prototype of the helmet bracket was a little over-engineered and it needed slimming down.

This stage often includes a degree of real world testing. For a lot of products that involves taking them to BUZAN (our local indoor HvZ group) and throwing them at experienced players for them to break. Products that are 90% complete get this testing and everything eventually goes through it.

Implement changes:

Version 0.2 - ready for testing

We slimmed down the piece and figured out a way of printing it in one piece. In doing so we managed to cut the print time by 60%. Further improvements were made to the GCode to tell the printer to print more densely for increased durability and product lifespan. We also noticed that the clip didn't quite settle on the helmet correctly and, over time, would fatigue and fail. We made a few alterations to the model and threw it at the development printer. We also removed one of the torch holders for the production version as normal people don't need two torches. We got a second prototype and it worked - it passed testing, there were no bugs and it was ready to proceed.

The cycle of test, review, implement, test can be repeated dozens of times for a product. The stock extenders and the MkIII holster are examples of products that took (or are taking) many, many cycles to get right. By contrast, the torch bracket in question only require a 2 step process. It very much varies on the product in question.

Final deployment:

After successful combat testing and some regulatory paperwork, the product is handed to the management team who then price and market the product through the website etc. The joy of our business model is that we can produce something once, pop it on the website for sale forever but not need to keep stock floating around. Provided we have the patterns and the people to make it, we can dig out products that haven't been made for months and months and put them together as though the gap didn't exist.

Final product ready for sale!

Keep an eye out on our website for new products as they develop. The LARP season is starting up again so expect to see lots of development as we move forward. We'll be playing and watching players in an environment very different from our home system so it should give us plenty of new ideas and product needs.

Our response to the March 2014 Feedback survey

First of all, thank you to everyone who took the time to fill in the feedback survey. It's really helped to make us think about what we do and how the real world perceives our work. There was a lot of positive stuff in there and plenty for us to work on.

The responses were annotated on anonymised printout for me to annotate to develop responses to. It stretched to over 11 pages of feedback which is fantastic! Having annotated it, we’ve put together a set of responses to the key themes and most common things raised.

In use photos and videos

Time and again people raised this one and it's fair enough. We're Nerf tactical gear designers doing this full time so photography isn't our strong suite. Sometimes getting photos isn't easy. That said, we've got a few ideas in mind on how to fix that.

Video is probably a while off yet. The feeling we're getting from this and when talking to others it would be the icing on the cake as opposed to a key ingredient of the cake itself. We like cake. Icing we can take or leave. The time and resources involved in video editing and other post-production stuff makes us hesitant to invest at the moment. For now, we're going to have a chat with a couple of our photography friends about touching up our photos and getting some in-action shots.

One of the particularly challenging thing about some of our products is they're very difficult to show on the body. By their definition, they're supposed to be low profile and body shots are just hard. We're in a great community and we know some great people we can go bother about that one and maybe get some hints and tips with it.

We'll be working on more guides and the like for people to demonstrate our products. The MkIV still doesn't have a guide at the time of writing (though it really ought to) so that's first on the priority list for the next couple of days.

General website:

I said above, we're designers and makers so websites are a little difficult. A decent, functioning website that does what we need it to do is a challenge to develop and maintain. The wonderful thing about these surveys is that they spur us to do things we know we should have done a while back. When running a small company, other things can get in your way and there's not always a minion to delegate to. By other people feeding back and telling us to fix things, it gives us a kick in the posterior to fix that nagging problem that's been with us for a while. Expect to start seeing some changes going forward in the next couple of days.

Website photos:
We'll add whatever we can where photos are missing but sometimes we do forget to take them before a new item leaves the shop. Since we can't photograph prototypes, a new photo can't be taken until a new one is made or ordered. That's fine if it's kit the team wants but that's not always the case. Putting a sign up by the door might be a way to remind us to do that. It's one of the little niggles of our business model.

The visual layout looks fine. Agreed, there are areas for improvement, the plain black can be a little daunting and gives the website a bit of a dark overtone. We'll look into brightening that up a little bit shortly. We're sticking with the white on black for the time being.

Alternative currencies and international shipping:
We asked our web guy about an alternative currencies option. He nearly cried. We couldn't work out whether that was because it would be really, really, really hard or if he hadn't got over the trauma of fixing the international shipping bug. Which he did fix and international customers should have no further problems with having to email to order. Of course, custom items will always have to come through a human being but for everything else, there's the website.

Categories and taxa:
We'll get the categories sorted in due course. With the growth of external accessories, the resolution there needs improving. A few of the blaster things need sorting too. We'll see if we can get rid of the unsorted items at the top of the category page, we've been meaning to for a while but haven't gotten around to it just yet. We agree, it's ugly and serves no purpose when there's a full list of stuff below.

Order of products:
We trying to work out how to Strongarm (see what I did there?) the e-commerce software to behaving on that front. We're not quite sure how that works so we'll keep poking it with a stick until it responds to our commands. We'd like our holsters and such to be up front but it currently insists on having products listed in date order. Sorting by price is something we'll look into, too.

Products and development:

I'll take some time to go through a few things in terms of products and the development pipeline in this section. First of all, there is an upcoming blog post on the development pipeline detailing how our products become a reality. It uses our latest innovation: the PASGT helmet mounted torch bracket as an example product as we had the presence of mind to get full photos as we went through the design process.

Lead times:
We appreciate that people want to get their stuff as soon as possible but our 2 week lead time policy isn't going to change any time soon. Iit gives us a nice glow inside to know people are that eager! Priority dispatch aside, 2 weeks gives us enough time to dodge the curve balls that life seems to love throwing at us. Everything from fabric suppliers turning up their toes to staff illness means that sometimes the manufacturing process doesn't go as smoothly as we like. With a 2 week space to make your stuff and get it shipped, we can keep the promises we make. For us, that's a critical part of our mission. We don't want to be that company that takes your money and delivers 3 months late or when we feel like it. If we can't keep our promises, we let you know and if you're not happy with the solution we offer, you get your money back without question. We're getting that message across, we had no problems with customer service feedback!

Drop-leg MOLLE platforms:
We've avoided adding any extra drop-leg stuff to our store for the very simple reason that too much weight on the outside of your legs is going to fatigue you disproportionately. Seating things on your belt is a far better way to preserve energy levels in combat. However, given the volume of requests we're getting for them, we'll put them in the pipeline and let people determine what they want to do with their kit.

Krydex holsters:
We had a couple of requests for Krydex holsters. In short, it won't happen at our end. We lack the manufacturing and machine capability to make them a reality. Further, the size of Nerf blasters and the hardshell of a Krydex holster is going to result in a holster that is bulky and inflexible. Our current holsters are designed to ensure that you don't notice they're there until you need your blaster. That pancaking, as we like to call it, is a design feature, not a bug. Krydex, while nice for small arms like your average Glock or Smith and Wesson won't work for your Strongarm, in our considered opinion.

Sock bandoleers and general sock holders:
We're Humans versus Zombies players ourselves, first and foremost but our system doesn't use socks. It's an unusual situation (usually it's the other way around, socks but no Nerf) so we never had much of an imperative to develop them. However, we are working on a few designs and there will be an in-depth blog post made in the next few days regards a sock bandoleer that's just been commissioned by a client. We'll look into sock loops for other stuff in the interim period, too.

Masterkey Brackets:
Just to clear up the Masterkey brackets, the reason the list is as restricted as it is is because each bracket is designed specifically for the blaster combination in question in order to allow for a best fit.

Large Zip Dump Pouches:
A couple of respondents flagged up the Large Zip Dump Pouch and the open ended zip problem. We'll take a look into fixing that, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to fix, it'll just involve sewing the gusset a little further into the system.

Miscellaneous points:

A few final points to respond to particular people's comments:

• The font we used on our logo was called Prototype, Google it
• Diaries of a Nerf Armourer is the personal blog of Mike, our Managing Director and the mods he works on with a few friends during his spare time. It's not affiliated with company, Mike just happens to be an employee of the company.
• There will be a guide for the Vambraces on what each selection entails - photos too when things get made up.

I think we've addressed most of the core things raised by our respondents. Thanks again to everyone kind enough to feedback to us. It's been a most useful exercise and we hope to continue to strengthen the company based on this and other feedback.

Good night, folks!