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Printable Lightgun (ODCON)

Odwalla

Odwalla

Student
Joined
Jul 27, 2022
Messages
45
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97
Location
Dayton, Ohio
Hey all,
I haven't really made much of an introduction here, but based on some recent posts I figured it may be a cool idea to drop this on you guys.

Roughly a year ago I designed a 3D printable frame for the Gun4IR project based loosely on the PS1 GunCon45, the aim was to develop something that included all of the core features of the Gun4IR project like rumble, solenoid and multiple buttons, but also a reliable and punchy full-slide recoil.

1.png


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oteDE2-D4Yw

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5361060

I really didn't know what I was getting into at the time, I'm not an engineer and I'm not really skilled at CAD, if anything I think I've watched just enough YouTube to be dangerous.
But the design works decently well.
I've built two guns that have withstood a few hundred hours of abuse and I'm really happy with the look and feel of the current product.
But since this is something I built using electronic scraps I had laying around and the documentation is pretty rough I really can't recommend that anyone actually build it.

But this was a year ago, and I've been working to refine and improve the design and accessibility since then.

If anyone actually recognizes me from the Gun4IR space you know V2 has been a long time coming.
But there have been a ton of hurdles to overcome and several still to deal with before I have anything to release, and because Discord where I've primarily been operating is definitely not the kind of place to meaningfully document my project and there is likely some decent overlap here with the proper arcade community I'm going to make this my dedicated worklog for the continued project.

I definitely have more to post regarding this and I'll do my best to drop more info on it's continued development in future posts but for now I think I'll leave it at this.
 
Hey @Odwalla I was thinking of building a Gun4IR setup using your ODCON frame. You mention a v2 coming down the line. Think you'll release this in the coming months or is it further off?
 
@rewrite I did some digging on it and a number of people have printed and assembled this with what looks like solid success. Not looking to spend the $150-200 for a Namco gun to do essentially the same thing (slide recoil) and I'm always down to try a DIY build, especially if it's with a DIY product like the Gun4IR. In your travels have you come across an alternative that might fit the bill? Simply hacking a guncon 1 or 2 didn't check all the boxes for me.
 
West said:
@rewrite I did some digging on it and a number of people have printed and assembled this with what looks like solid success. Not looking to spend the $150-200 for a Namco gun to do essentially the same thing (slide recoil) and I'm always down to try a DIY build, especially if it's with a DIY product like the Gun4IR. In your travels have you come across an alternative that might fit the bill? Simply hacking a guncon 1 or 2 didn't check all the boxes for me.
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I think you misread mey intentions, lol.

He said he wasn't skilled in CAD, but then comes in with this full-blown detailed guncon file. Dude may as well have said "I've never kicked a football before" and kicked it through the goal posts from the 50 yard line!
 
Hehe, perhaps so ;) Your “sheesh” can mean many things man.

Because one look at the stls and some of the completed builds and I for one was well impressed.
 
I like how it went from making gamer chopsticks to a full on GunCon DIY Shell...lol. That's an amazing skill gap jump. If 2.0 isn't near, this 1.2 looks like it will suffice. Might have to try it.
 
Hey all!
West tracked me down and gave me the heads up about the thread, thanks for all of the positive comments.

V2 has been in a limited beta release for the last two weeks, a couple of the members in the Gun4IR community are helping me to iron out all of the tolerance and printability issues, once I've got the thumbs up from that team I'll release things publicly and start focusing on documentation and support.

The V2 platform has a core frame that most of the components attach to in an attempt to simplify the wiring and assembly, once it's built it just drops into the shell, and I've got a few more of those coming once this one is wrapped (Some of the gang has been twisting my arm for a Konami Crypt Killer shotgun)

I'll drop some progress and build photos in a subsequent post :thumbup:

-----------
rewrite said:
"I'm not really skilled at CAD, here's an entire gun that works just fine".

Sheesh.
Click to expand...

Yeah, haha, I've had a few people give me some grief for dropping that before. I've probably watched one too many Youtube tutorials to be saying that anymore.
But I definitely haven't grown out of feeling like I'm winging shit though haha.
plasticfactory said:
Let's see the design tree ;)
Click to expand...

ABSOLUTELY NOT lol.
I'd die if anyone that knew what they were doing looked at my modeling timeline haha.

raynex said:
I like how it went from making gamer chopsticks to a full on GunCon DIY Shell...lol. That's an amazing skill gap jump. If 2.0 isn't near, this 1.2 looks like it will suffice. Might have to try it.
Click to expand...

Damn, I totally forgot about those.
I made those at work one day because the office was sharing around some shitty Kickstarter for an identical product.
I traced their product photo, extruded the vector, added the finger grips and printed a dozen. It blows me away that stuff like that manages to fundraise.
 
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Ha, just giving you a hard time. Mine wind up looking crazy depending on if I think I'll revisit the project or not. Still, your work looks extremely good, regardless of experience level. What modeling software do you use?
 
Hey guys!
Sorry for the delayed response, I've been a little swamped with stuff, but it's a shortened Holiday week here in the States which means I'll be sitting at my computer pretending to work like everyone else so I've got some time to catch up on stuff like this.
plasticfactory said:
Ha, just giving you a hard time. Mine wind up looking crazy depending on if I think I'll revisit the project or not. Still, your work looks extremely good, regardless of experience level. What modeling software do you use?
Click to expand...

Man, no kidding... I did exactly that. This file is so messy, I had no regard for future me or anyone else touching these files lol.
I use Fusion 360 to do all of my modeling.
werejag said:
so v2 will be same shell?
Click to expand...

Initially it was.
The idea was that I was going to revise the original design and then re-release it. But over the course of the last 18 months or so I've had other users step in and develop tweaks and mods for the original model and it began feeling like it wasn't really something that needed doing anymore.

In that time I had been getting tons of requests and DMs regarding assembly and design concerns, so I wanted to tackle those instead with the new model.

The new design is easier to print, easier to assemble, is designed to reduce printing artifacts, and has almost no visible fasteners compared to the original.
I also wanted something a little cleaner looking to use on my home setup.

MicrosoftTeams-image (1).jpg


It's a loose approximation of the Namco Time Crisis pistol.
It retains the full slide recoil and the only screws visible will be the two on either side of the slide.

To resolve the buildability concerns a majority of the components are installed onto a central frame that then drops into the shell as a single piece.

MicrosoftTeams-image (3).jpg


I thought that this would make it easier to design the outer shell around too, that wound up not being the case though.
Designing the shell around this while also keeping the size reasonable has been a little more painful than I anticipated, so maybe this solution is dead after this release. Time will tell.

For reference, once I had settled on the central frame design and spent a month or two ironing that out, it took me another 3 months to trouble shoot and rework the design to have a shell designed that looked good, assembled nicely, and was functionally sound.
Normally on a good weekend if the ADHD is working in my favor I can knock out a rough gun like this Konami Crypt Killer in about 3-4 hours:

MicrosoftTeams-image.jpg

(not something I'm pursuing yet, but I've got a couple designs like this on the back burner)

So far I've had a couple successful user assemblies of the new gun in the Discord group, I'm ironing out the last of the issues with the model at the moment and should have it posted in the next few weeks. I'll be back before then with some updated pictures and maybe a short video like the original.

Thanks again for all of the positive feedback guys!
 
@Odwalla Beautiful work man. Been keeping an eye on the Discord group and it's awesome to see how everything is developing. Definitely looking forward to when you're happy with v2 and its release into the wild.
 
Wondering what the latest on this is, been eager to try it out. Keep up the good work.
 
Thanks, now I want to build an arcade gun. Words I never thought I'd utter. 😛
 
Here's hoping @Odwalla is well and we're close to a full release. :) I am also looking forward to building one.
 
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