That moment, right there – was the culmination of two years of work
trying to prove to myself that it is possible… to swing like Spider-Man.
This video’s sponsored by KiwiCo. G’day, I’m JT. So I wasn’t kidding
when I said swinging like Spider-Man has been one of my main goals over the last two years.
In 2019 I got an engineering internship with Hacksmith Industries trying to make it real.
We made a great video, but the 6 weeks I had there weren’t enough to get the result
I was dreaming of. So then last year, when I was preparing for my university thesis project
in electro-mechanical engineering, I proposed the topic “Investigating the possibility of Spider-Man
swinging as a novel form of locomotion” (which is just Academic-speak for “I want
to be Spider-Man”). And somehow, they said “YES! Just don’t do all those parts that aren’t safe.”
[Falling like a chump] So then after graduating I took
some of those parts that weren’t safe and made a video about them [cool btwist], which you can
check out in the description. But in summary, to replicate Spider-Man’s web, I made a device that
I call a hookchain – built with alloy steel and the world’s strongest polymer. It was inspired
by Velcro, to work by wrapping around objects and catching onto its own rope with tiny steel hooks.
Now, I know it doesn’t look like Spider-Man’s web in the movies, and yeah, ideally it should stick
to objects instead of wrapping around them. But really, my number one priority is to swing like
Spider-Man, and no other method I've tried in the last two years has worked as well as this one has.
So here’s my old system, and here’s my new one. The old one is a cool looking, wrist mounted
webshooter, with custom safe grappling hooks, a backpack full of compressed
air to shoot, a harness to carry your weight, a microcontroller to electrically manage the firing
and the disconnecting based on hand gestures from some Spider-Man gloves.
The new one is a hooky rope. What can I say; simplicity is king.
But to be fair, it is a little too simple right now, cause I still need a way to hold on to
and let go of the rope, and to launch the web at a target. So let me show you my new solution:
[blammo] Yeah, it’s a pipe. OK, so my solution was: what if you could make one cylinder that did
everything? You store the hookchain in one end, the launching mechanism in the other,
and then you can just hang from the whole thing like a handle! I could just make a bunch of those
and store them on a belt or something. Once you’re finished swinging on one,
you grab the next one, fire it, and let go of the old one, and as long as they’re small and
cheap enough, there’s no problem just leaving them there – I mean, Spider-Man already leaves
his webs all over the city anyway, and no-one’s managed to pin the littering charges on him yet.
For the power source of a launcher, there are two main options people use. Compressed air is what I
used in my grappling gun, but trying to design it for one handed operation would probably get bulky
and expensive. The other option is combustion, commonly used in things like potato cannons.
These launchers work by igniting propane, which expands out and shoots your projectile.
I tried that, and it did work - but I wanted a bit more power. So – although
people usually use compressed air OR propane, I thought “why not use COMPRESSED PROPANE”?
To show you how it works, please excuse me for a moment while I chop my prototype in half.
[offscreen grinder noise] So basically, it has a chamber,
and a barrel. And you can see that they’re welded together at this flange here. I can fill
the chamber using this cut-down Schrader valve that allows flow in, but not out. And the gas is
kept in the chamber by an air-tight seal against this burst disk – which is just plastic circle
that I cut out of one of my university folders. Then I use a piezo sparker from a BBQ lighter
to zap across this tiny spark plug I made, which ignites the fuel mix – and that explodes outward,
bursts the disk, and accelerates the hookchain out of the barrel. [blammo]
I should mention, making some of these parts was really only possible because I got myself this
monstrous 70yo lathe. It took days to fix up but it’s been so helpful so far!
I’m able to afford a big machine like this thanks to this video’s sponsor, KiwiCo, who I’m
really happy to be working with (say that bit as convincingly as possible), and I’m not just saying
that cause it’s in my script – actually, I reached out to them because I really like their mission to
teach kids problem solving and “STEAM” skills so that they can grow up and change the world.
They do that with monthly kits like this cool hydraulics one I just built, and they
can ship to 40 countries across the world, but unfortunately not back in time, which is a shame,
cause I really would have loved this as a kid – I still have this well-worn science
magazine that I used to love reading, well over a decade ago – and it’s great! But problem is,
I’ve always been more of a hands-on kinda guy, so I would have used the heck out of these crates!
If you – or your child – feel the same way, you can get 50% off your first monthly crate by going
to KiwiCo.com/BuiltIRL in the description. Going back to the design, my big challenge
here was that – to properly seal – the disk needs to be pressed against the gasket with
a force equivalent to about 15kg. To achieve this, I first tried making a
two part launcher that threads together at the disk, but that was very bulky and weak.
So I made these polycarbonate cartridges which not only hold the hookchains,
but also help to transmit the force from the front of the launcher back onto the disk – and that way,
I can keep the handle as one strong piece. To apply this force at the front, Initially
I bolted a collar on every time I loaded the webshooter. But that sucked, so I knew
I needed to think of something more ergonomic… and that was when I had a light bulb moment.
bayonet connection, where you press and twist, and a spring locks it into place. I wanted to
make something similar for the webshooters. So to replicate these little arms, I stud welded
some round stock onto the barrel using the world’s least correct method of TIG welding.
Then I needed to design a much stronger version of this twisty bit. Since my design was a complex
shape, I 3d printed it – and here’s how it fits on. Unfortunately, it wasn’t strong enough.
Not to worry though! By switching to a more isotropic material and simply redesigning it
another.. 8 times, I eventually got it! Here’s my concern, though. This part is
under 35 pounds of force while the webshooter is pressurized, and – although it’s strong
enough to take it, I’m worried that an impact might push it over the edge. [blammo]
Yeah, so it really should be made of metal. I mean, I wonder if I could have
this 3d printed in steel? [sees price] Uhhh… or, let’s just not drop it then!
Now with that settled, the last thing to do was to add the grip, and
sew on the straps – and… we’re done! Now for the highlights: this webshooter’s
got a low profile fill valve, a custom spark plug, all stainless welded construction, a 200bar
combustion chamber, a heavy-duty nylon strap, an ergonomic ABS grip, a clicky-button… thing,
polycarbonate reloadable cartridges, and a custom Twistlock compression element.
Building this was dramatically more work than I expected…
and now I have to make seven more of them.
Ok, with those all done, let’s talk fueling. You see, like in a car, getting the air-fuel mix right
is actually not trivial. So I built this fuel rig. To fill one of the launchers, I rest it here,
turn two levers, screw on the valve, turn the other levers, unscrew, and we’re good to go. So,
let’s go find a suitable testing location. [Cool flips]
Welcome to Rush trampoline park! Now in the movies, they even admit that webshooters aren’t
100% reliable, and unlike the movies, this – would kill me.
But here, there’s a giant foam pit which they’re kindly allowing me to use – so, when
I inevitably fall, I’ll have a nice soft landing! OK so I’m up here on this platform that they use
for tricking practise [cool front 540] – and there are three roof beams that are safely above the foam pit
that I’m going to try swinging from. Now in the movies, when Peter’s first trying out swinging,
he just.. goes for it. And it works fairly successfully for him, so let’s give that a go!
OK, not… great. It turns out: like any other skill, this needs practice, and unfortunately,
I only had about an hour each evening between Rush closing and South Africa’s curfew at the time,
so between practicing and filming I had to go in on eight separate days
to do my Spiderman training. It started off a bit bleak.
But, soon enough, we were definitely getting there!
And not long after that, I had two swings working pretty reliably.
That’s what I’m talking about! Now Spider-Man might leave his webs behind,
but I only made 8 of these – so I had to reuse them. But to do that, I had to get them down.
Speaking of unexpected issues, I was so intent on making webshooters that could fire halfway up a
skyscraper that even on the minimum setting, the power turned out to be too great for the swings
I was doing. So I actually needed to rework them for atmospheric pressure fuel instead.
But it’d be tragic to have all that power and not even show you!
This is the maximum power this launcher can put out without going to metal twistlocks. [blammo]
Probably just fine for skyscrapers, I think! Going back to the swinging; I went ahead with
my plan to clip the third webshooter onto a belt so that I could try three swings.
The belt worked well, but I couldn’t quite get the three swings in. I kept trying,
but I eventually realised that the spacing was just off. I was trying to fire at the beam when it
was directly above me, and I couldn’t use the beam further along because then I’d leave the foam pit.
So that was a bit disappointing. But at least the two and a half swings
I could do shows that - if you’ve got the right geometry and you take enough attempts,
you could probably just keep swinging as long as you’ve got new webshooters on your belt.
And I think I’d quite like to explore that more in a future video.
Massive thanks to Damon, Richard, Aneez, Asheeq and Zaahier for helping out at Rush,
to Jeremy for filming, and to you, for watching. I’ll see you in the next one!
By the way if you want to see more stuff like this every month or two, [cool back 720] please consider subscribing!