Foam Dart Integrated Load Bearing System (FD-ILBS)

Image (c) Blastersmiths UK, kindly retouched by Marcus Hoare

This is a complete version of our new, modular modular Foam Dart Integrated Load Bearing System (FD-ILBS) or Phyllis for short.

It is designed as a multi-part system formed of two components and both have plenty of MOLLE space for pouches, panels and the like. This represents a shift in our thinking for tactical vests and rigs. We're looking to lower the barrier to entry to a modular system by breaking it up and allowing people to invest in stages rather than in a large chunk at once.

Essentially, we have 2 large components of the system and we can work through them in turn. The Molle Cuirass in navy blue at the top of the photo and the Battle Belt at the bottom of first photo. These are 2 distinct line items available to purchase separately but they are designed to work together as a single unified vest piece.

MkI Battle Belt - Half of our new FD-ILBS system that includes integrated magazine storage

Battle Belt Reverse

I'll start from the bottom up. At the bottom you have the MkI Battle Belt, a 30" wide piece of Cordura and mesh covered with plenty of MOLLE webbing. This allows ready attachment of dozens of accessories and ready expansion of your rig. Uniquely for our torso equipment, it contains integrated magazine holders. This is a battle ready piece of equipment straight off the shelf. Adding this to your load out not only offers immediate additional pouch and accessory attachment but also magazine space. The one size fits most design is secured at the back using the ladder loc system inhereited from the MkVI tactical chest rig. Off the shelf, it will fit a waist size up to 48" but we can expand that if necessary upon request (just email us when ordering and we'll sort something out). It is secured at the front using side release buckles for ready access, you can quickly don and doff.

The Battle Belt is available from our website (link in the description) in a range of colours and camouflage patterns on a 2 week lead time.

MkI MOLLE Cuirass

For your chest, there is the MkI MOLLE Cuirass. We designed this because people moan about vests being too restrictive. Covering the kidneys warms you up, restricts movement and is a common gripe for many a player. By leaving the abdomen exposed, we sought to fix these issues. Sitting just on your rib line, this vest is designed to be out of the way while providing all the MOLLE space that you would expect from a vest. Even though it is designed bespoke to your measurements, this rig has plenty of adjust-ability to maximise comfort. The ladderlocs securing the under-arm panels to the back plate are inspirited by the South African pattern assault vest so common here in the United Kingdom and they allow for shaping the cuirass to a number of different body shapes. A unisex design is often overlooked in this hobby so we thought we'd accommodate the many female players we encounter at LARP systems across the UK and beyond. As with the battle belt, side release buckles form clasps over the front of the rig for quick doffing and donning. The vest is built from our usual durable Cordura and is lined with mesh for maximum comfort and breath-ability.

These two pieces link using a set of Velcro links to secure through loops present on each piece (pictured right). This locks the two together into an integrated system that is as flexible as any modular system you could ask for. Available in a range of colours and camouflage patterns, we make everything to order in house so if you've a specific requirement, please don't hesitate to get in touch.


Both of these items can be purchased through our website or as a complete system from 30th May 2014. If there are any questions, please drop them in the comments. There was an intention to get a video demonstration of this one but we ran out of time before launch as other, even more exciting items pushed their way through the development pipeline. We will endeavour to get one in short order but for now, rest easy with the photos. :D

Links:
MkI Battle Belt at £25 inc VAT at 20%
MkI MOLLE Cuirass at £35 inc VAT at 20%

-Mike Harratt
Blastersmiths UK

Stryfe Battery Tray Expanders

I hate cutting, drilling and sanding because it gums up the printers, the sewing machines, leaves the minions sputtering and is generally a faff. To that end, a lot of what we do within the company is aimed at reducing the tooling burden a number of mods require. We're currently working on making Rapidpistols relatively painless (once you get past the band saw stage) using the 3D printer and a while back we released a battery tray expander for the Stryfe so we didn't have to dremel the interior of the blaster and create lots of dust that would cause problems in our workshop.

Problem solved. By printing one of these and removing the orange battery braces in the stock Stryfe tray, we're able to wire in a Deans connector and have lots of fun with Litihum Polymer batteries.

The battery in question is a 2S 1000mAh 20C Lithium Polymer battery pack from Hobby King. We elected to swap the stock XT60 connector for a Deans connector because of spacing constraints but that turned out to be unnecessary. There is plenty of internal room once this tray cover is placed.

It comes complete with a matching screw because the stock one was a little too short for our purposes. Granted, it does make the lopsided-ness of the Stryfe worse but it's a worthwhile compromise if you can't be bothered with drilling and cutting all over the place.

These are available on our website for £5 in a variety of colours. Lettering and logos can also be discussed if you contact us via email.

Out with the old, in with the new!

Small zip dump pouches. Originally, their design brief was somewhere to store your keys and such when you're in a fight. We didn't intend them to be quick grab pouches for darts and such, there was a different product in the pipeline for that. However, for one reason or another people prefer the size and shape of the current SZDP and so we converted it fill that niche.

We've had a fair bit of feedback about it and we've made some revisions regards that. The chief change has been the zip. We've moved from the small 15cm closed end zips to full 30cm closed end heavy duty zips which are more durable and now wrap around the edges of the article to allow for a larger opening, easier access. They do come with the slight draw back of not being as weatherproof by virtue of that large aperture.

Prototype of the new format - the fraying in the nylon is perfectly normal and is simply cosmetic

These pouches are the same size as their predecessors and hold a goodly number of darts or 6 dart magazines.

These changes take immediate effect and will cover all orders that have not been dispatched to date.

We are constantly working to improve our product portfolio here at Blastersmiths UK and there are a number of other changes on the way to existing products. Sometimes, they can be as small as this or they can be a complete overhaul of a product like our transition from the MkII/MkIII to the single MkIV. Until something is close to perfect, we won't stop tweaking it.

Next up, large zip dump pouches. :)

Lightweight Shoulder Rig

We usually make these in black and it's a pain to photograph them on actual people because actual people have arms. Annoyingly, it's frowned upon under British law to remove someone's arm for the purposes of taking a photo (or at all, apparently). When a customer recently ordered a Lightweight Shoulder Rig in Multicam, we took the opportunity to take some photos using our fourth employee: Jamie.

Jamie is our multi-use tailors dummy that we use to demonstrate our wares at shows and events. With a 38" chest, he (or she sometimes) also makes a brilliant fitting dummy for our average clientèle. Built from polystyrene covered with black polyester, it's a bit of a pain to see how our stuff works. However, with Multicam, with the different shaded buckles and straps, it's very easy to see how the rig fits together. This particular edition had a pistol holder for right hand draw and a MOLLE panel for holding either a small zip dump pouch or, in this case, an 1812 magazine holder for extra magazine storage (not shown).

The belt loops secure the hard points to your belt using a simple Velcro system. Older models have a Side Release Buckle there but there was too much stand off from the belt and that caused problems in smaller people. Each hard point is connected to the shoulder strap with a simple side release buckle. In future, we plan to sell hard points separately for the ultimate customisable rig.

The rig over all is as lightweight as it suggests. It is designed to explicitly stay out of the way of most motions when you're moving and playing. By being as low profile as possible, it makes for an excellent addition to any other belt system you might have as there is sufficient stand off to allow you to use use current accessories. It also has the added bonus of introducing people to the MOLLE system which is a fantastically flexible system that everyone in the world ever should be using.

Lightweight Shoulder Rigs can be bought from our online store in black for £28 inc UK VAT. Custom colours and fabrics can be commissioned upon request. The Multicam version demonstrated here would cost you nearer £55 inc VAT as it is a speciality item and we can't order the fittings in such bulk as perhaps we would otherwise to bring costs down. If you're interested in a system that isn't in black fabric, drop us an email and we'll get you an invoice sorted out. There is a chance that we'll start stocking them as a listed item in the future but until then, email is the way to go.

NOTE: The authors would like to apologise for the pug ugly Retaliator sitting in the holster in these photos. All of the pretty blasters are out of the office at the moment so we had to make do with that hybrid abomination. :/

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.