# I need your help .... Starship.



## Danny0663 (Mar 15, 2011)

I need some input from fellow members. The good and the bad would be greatly appreciated ... :bowdown:

I've been thinking of making a Starship lately, and with the posts from Gary, MJ, Wingshooter and Can-opener it sealed the deal. I just have to make myself one !

i've looked at some videos gathered some information and some of the features i wanted on mine.

So the objective is:

*Interchangeable slingshot forks, and adjustable fork height. *

-User would be able to change forks with the choice to have wider/narrow shooting gap.

-Possible other attachments such as slingbow.

-Slot in the front forks to allow for adjustable fork height.

*Removable hand grips/scales (inspired by Magpul Miad pistol grips)*

- Customizable to suit individual shooter

- Ability to change different grips for function and aesthetics

- Easy access to main frame with the option to re-finish the frame if needed.

*Flow through construction with skeleton body for maximum lightness*

- Reduces weight without altering with mechanical strength for slingshot application.

*19mm or 12.7mm thick 6061 T6 aluminum body for mechanical strength and stability. *

- thick stock allows stability and mechanical strength needed to allow maximum draw length of 50 lbs.

-6061 T6 is suitable for this application as it already tempered from annealed state and relatively easy to machine.

*Forearm pad/support needs to be interchangeable and adjustable to suit individual shooters. *

-Adjustable forearm radius with foam insert will allow individual shooters to adjust to their forearm structure.

*Easy accessibility to change band/tube sets quickly with minimal tools.*

-Clamping system similar to the King Cat and Can-opener's allows quick and easy methods to accommodate flats/tubes.

Currently, i'm in the very early stages of designing. I still need to build a mock prototype from plywood or MDF to test ... the final design will by cut from 12.7 (1/2") or 19 (3/4") thick aluminum.

With measurements in mm (come to the dark side of the superior metric system  )



Without measurements



From a building standpoint, one of the issues that i can currently think of is the drilling of the front forks. I somehow need to drill the holes on an angle ..... the green represents the hole in order to tap and thread two bolts.



I still need to design the front forks and forearm support. I'll upload them later on the day when i have some more spare time.

Thanks.


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## Can-Opener (May 11, 2013)

Hi Danny, It seems to me that you are designing a universal starship that will fit anyone. In making my starship I only had to worry about what fit me. When I was building it I thought about what it would take to make it a universal fit starship. Here are some of my thoughts.
Make the arm cuff rotatable so it can be canted to fit the arm. also needs foam inserts to fit small to large arms. consider making them velcro attachable like bike helmet inserts are.

Make the main handle so it can be twisted and locked in place and movable forward and back so the arm rest hits in the right spot.

The front forks are an easy switch out with your screw design. My channel lock flat band clamp works awesome and you are free to use it if you like.

Make the arm cuff so it can be raised and lowered to fit the shooter. It is the same as a adjustable stock comb on a shotgun.

I feel it was very important the bands are lined up with the frame when sighted down to keep the forces running up the arm and not trying to pull the SS sideways

I simply bent mine until it fit and it was lucky that the one I sent Geoduck fit him. I was worried about it.

Everything above your hand in the design is essentially the same as raising the fork tips. That is why I ended up using 1/4" 6061 t 6 My original design was a tubular body and had your interchangeable fork tips and they could be canted to where ever I wanted. As soon as I started bending pipe and looking at what happened that is when I realized everything above your hand is like raising the fork tips.

As for your angle drill problem I would make a drilling jig out of alum to clamp on the end of the frame and use a hand held drill with a stop on the bit to drill it. That would last for lots of builds and when it wears out I would just make another one 

Just some of my observations Your design looks cool as all. I am sure you will get lots of input


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## Btoon84 (Nov 22, 2011)

:yeahthat:


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## Aussie Allan In Thailand (Jan 28, 2013)

Oh that is such a cool idea my man.

I can' wait until you head into production.

But I would definitely be in the market, provided you would sell Sir.

Myself, I am having made here an 18 inch extension one.

To which I permenently attach one of my Hathcocks, with an 11 inch relaxed rubber.

Giving me with my normal to the pouch ties 45 inch draw, a 63 inch draw with triple TBG bands.

Without a proper working Chrony, I will have no idea the FPS; but I figure even my 12 mm ball ammo will penetrate; and my sharpened bolt cuts being even lighter......well go figure what they may do.

Cheers Allan


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## ash (Apr 23, 2013)

What CO said, plus what I said in your gallery.

I don't thing there's much need for tall forks. When I had a 20mm lead ball smash the forks on my Tron starship I just cut them shorter and it was better. Anything from 20-40mm fork height should work equally well. probably the only way fork heigh would matter is if you feel that the sight line along the frame extension has an effect on aiming. That's really more a function of the offset/drop of the arm rest, though.

Which raises the question of adjustable arm rest angle. The King Cat has that, I believe. Could be useful, but I haven't bothered myself. My starship is for power and speed, not accuracy.

How about a polymorph arm rest that can be heated and shaped to suit the user?

As per my earlier suggestions, a bolt-on handle would save you a lot of material and make nesting easier when laying out the sheet for cutting. It would also give the opportunity to move the handle forward or back. Two M6 cap screws from the inside of that cut-out would do it. Maybe have them screwing into a dovetail slider for back/forth adjustment. A bit like that recent folding shooter.

More ideas as they come to brain...


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## Danny0663 (Mar 15, 2011)

Thanks for the detailed reply CO, i really appreciate the input.



> Make the arm cuff rotatable so it can be canted to fit the arm. also needs foam inserts to fit small to large arms. consider making them velcro attachable like bike helmet inserts are.


I just made some few adjustments so i could allow rotatable forearm braces. Instead of having a single piece of pipe cut in half. I will cut out two sections of a radius with 1 bolt each in the main frame. This way you can rotate each radius to fit your forearm structure. One thing that concerned me was radius ... people may have smaller/wider forearms. So the nylon velcro idea will fix this problem, I'm planning to have the forearm radius at 57mm. Taking into account that the foam will be around 2mm thick so the actual radius will be around 55mm.

I hope this picture will explain what i mean by two pieces by two sections of radius.





> Make the main handle so it can be twisted and locked in place and movable forward and back so the arm rest hits in the right spot.


I'm really scratching my brain with this one, with the current handle configuration. I can't think of any solution to make it rotate unless i used a thicker stock main frame, i can make it go forwards and backwards by milling a 5mm x 100mm slot into the main frame vertically. But rotating ... i'm not to sure. What are your opinions and advantage of having a rotating handle?



> The front forks are an easy switch out with your screw design. My channel lock flat band clamp works awesome and you are free to use it if you like.


I just watched your video, really nice idea.



> Everything above your hand in the design is essentially the same as raising the fork tips. That is why I ended up using 1/4" 6061 t 6 My original design was a tubular body and had your interchangeable fork tips and they could be canted to where ever I wanted. As soon as I started bending pipe and looking at what happened that is when I realized everything above your hand is like raising the fork tips.


I thought about this when i started designing the forks, i fixed this problem by adding a single slot in the middle of the forks so i could adjust the fork height, the lowest adjustable point will be 55mm from the top of your thumb which is including the main body and fork height.



> As for your angle drill problem I would make a drilling jig out of alum to clamp on the end of the frame and use a hand held drill with a stop on the bit to drill it. That would last for lots of builds and when it wears out I would just make another one


I actually asked my brother about this and the solution was really rather simple. All i had to do was adjust the drill press table onto the side, clamp the frame onto a drill vice, make sure it's leveled, drill. Problem solved... hah. 

Thanks again CO, that really helped.



> Oh that is such a cool idea my man.
> 
> I can' wait until you head into production.
> 
> ...


Speed freak! 

I'm thinking of cutting two of these out, the current one will be around 550mm and the other one will be around 700mm hopefully ...


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## Danny0663 (Mar 15, 2011)

> I don't thing there's much need for tall forks. When I had a 20mm lead ball smash the forks on my Tron starship I just cut them shorter and it was better. Anything from 20-40mm fork height should work equally well. probably the only way fork heigh would matter is if you feel that the sight line along the frame extension has an effect on aiming. That's really more a function of the offset/drop of the arm rest, though.


The lowest fork extension will be 56mm which includes the height of the main frame. I could tweak the design around and extent the slot to allow 35-40mm ... might do that right now. 



> Which raises the question of adjustable arm rest angle. The King Cat has that, I believe. Could be useful, but I haven't bothered myself. My starship is for power and speed, not accuracy.


Would adjustable armrest angle be necessary though? one thing i picked up during my research from other starships was that the relationship between the arm brace handle grip position. Some had lower and higher position ...

For example:

My arm brace to handle position is similar to these ...

I would consider this as a med/high armbrace to handle position.

Obviously this one is adjustable, but some of the other starships had similar fixed positions.










Where as this one i would consider low as it leveled with the bottom of the grip.










My current design is similar to the first one with med/high armbrace to handle position. The green horizontal line illustrates this as it would be inline with your middle finger in the pistol grip postion.



What are your thoughts on this? is there an advantage? disadvantage?



> How about a polymorph arm rest that can be heated and shaped to suit the user?
> 
> As per my earlier suggestions, a bolt-on handle would save you a lot of material and make nesting easier when laying out the sheet for cutting. It would also give the opportunity to move the handle forward or back. Two M6 cap screws from the inside of that cut-out would do it. Maybe have them screwing into a dovetail slider for back/forth adjustment. A bit like that recent folding shooter.
> 
> More ideas as they come to brain...


I like the idea of the dovetail, i actually had this idea initially but two problems came into mind.

- I won't be able to get the pieces perfectly parallel, which will lead to ugly joint lines.

- I would need another bolt behind the grip for stability which will restrict movement.

The green line illustrates the total movement horizontally. The white vertical lines are the bolts holding the grip in place, all you would need to do is loosen these two bolts to slide the pistol grip in position.



I still need to think about the sliding pistol grip ...

Thanks for the suggestions Ash. :bowdown:


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## squirrel squasher (May 17, 2013)

I thinck that you want a bigger angle on the pistol grip. So you wrist will lie flat, and the design will be smaller


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## M.J (Nov 1, 2010)

I'm not a master builder like the guys above in this post, but I have done my share of starship shooting and building.

Have you considered making a straight body/brace section?

My two favorite 'ships, the Saunders WRP and my own "Star Destroyer" both have straight bodies with the handle below. I feel like people over-think the curve because they want everything to be "lined up" when they shoot when that is really an illusion. Check out Tex-Shooter's WRP vids. When he draws back it looks all "wrong" but he pretty much never misses with it.

That being said, I've never made one with a curved body and have only shot one like that few times. If somebody wants to send me one to try maybe I'll change my opinion


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## Danny0663 (Mar 15, 2011)

> I'm not a master builder like the guys above in this post, but I have done my share of starship shooting and building.
> 
> Have you considered making a straight body/brace section?
> 
> ...


What i really need to do is actually make couple prototypes from plywood or MDF with all different shapes and just test how it shoots and feels.



> I feel like people over-think the curve because they want everything to be "lined up" when they shoot when that is really an illusion.


This is the exact problem i have at the moment, i'm so used to hand held slingshots. I keep thinking "everything should be lined and parallel with one another ....


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## ash (Apr 23, 2013)

Danny0663 said:


> Would adjustable armrest angle be necessary though? one thing i picked up during my research from other starships was that the relationship between the arm brace handle grip position. Some had lower and higher position ...
> 
> What are your thoughts on this? is there an advantage? disadvantage?
> 
> ...


Adjustable arm rest wouldn't be absolutely necessary, but I do imagine that different arm lengths and body shapes might lead to different preferences. In the context of this project, the priority is to make something that suits you first and maybe think about adjustability if you go on to sell them. Maybe when you make some prototypes you could test out whether there is much variation in alignment on larger or smaller people than yourself.

A dovetail would need milling, yes. That might not suit your facilities. There are other ways though. I don't think a sliding adjustable handle is as important as getting the arm rest angle right or improving the nesting. Bolting the handle on from its inside is a more elegant and practical solution and could still be adjustable in a step by step way with a series of tapped holes in the frame rail to choose from. If you email me your Draftsight file I can draw up what I'm talking about to better illustrate the idea.



M.J said:


> Have you considered making a straight body/brace section?
> 
> My two favorite 'ships, the Saunders WRP and my own "Star Destroyer" both have straight bodies with the handle below. I feel like people over-think the curve because they want everything to be "lined up" when they shoot when that is really an illusion.


My Tron is a straight frame deal and I think I'd prefer it curved or bent for aiming. It is a lot longer than most, though, with the arm brace going right up to the bicep rather than forearm or elbow. Whether you shoot it sideways or straight up and down might be a factor here. The bent frame also affects the direction of loading in your hand. I feel like the band tension is trying to lever the handle out of my hand with the straight frame. By positioning my straight frame like it was a bent frame (ie lower arm rest axis) it acts like it has lower forks. Playing with it right now and thinking I might do a bit of cutting and pasting to that effect. I can also see that sideways is the only practical option (for me at least).


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## Imperial (Feb 9, 2011)

you lost me at , " come to the dark side of the superior metric system  " Imperial refuses to submit to the metric . 

i get what you're saying in trying to figure out some sort of universal design that'll accommodate people from popeye forearms to spaghetti arms. short to long. some like it to rest on the wrist, others on the forearm. In the end its all about user preference and individual comfort . im liking the angle of the forks in your design. once you make your prototype, i'm sure you'll tweak it a lot more. good luck.


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## Danny0663 (Mar 15, 2011)

> Adjustable arm rest wouldn't be absolutely necessary, but I do imagine that different arm lengths and body shapes might lead to different preferences. In the context of this project, the priority is to make something that suits you first and maybe think about adjustability if you go on to sell them. Maybe when you make some prototypes you could test out whether there is much variation in alignment on larger or smaller people than yourself.
> 
> A dovetail would need milling, yes. That might not suit your facilities. There are other ways though. I don't think a sliding adjustable handle is as important as getting the arm rest angle right or improving the nesting. Bolting the handle on from its inside is a more elegant and practical solution and could still be adjustable in a step by step way with a series of tapped holes in the frame rail to choose from. If you email me your Draftsight file I can draw up what I'm talking about to better illustrate the idea.


Yeah, prototypes are definitely in my list to do.

Thanks Ash.


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## Wingshooter (Dec 24, 2009)

I am glad to see you on board the starship craze. Looking forward to what you come up with. Me I am taking mine out tomorrow to see if I can bust a rabbit. I see you angled your fork I ended up with 35 degrees on mine I think it helps if nothing else it looks cool.


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## Aussie Allan In Thailand (Jan 28, 2013)

In an absolutely perfect world, everything would be adjustable.

From fork extension length; to pistol grip position, and angle; to forearm support angle, and length; to forearm rest width adjustment.

With all main structural components being light steel fixed with pins through holes, rather than aluminium, which we all know can bend under stress.

Of course all this would likely make anything so made, totally disproportionately too much work; likely too heavy; and extraordinarily expensive.

Just my two pence worth in a perfect world, which we all know will never exist, at least in my lifetime.

Cheers Allan


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