Update time.
Final disassembly. Happy to reach this point and start full-time imagineering.
So first up is the pistol grip section, source of many squeaks, rattles and the toy-like feeling of the original prop. Like a car with a wrong-feeling steering wheel. The trigger moves most of an inch to shoot and is super spongy. No wonder. It appears they used the spring from a ball point pen to work it. It is the wrong shape to the game gun so it gets replaced by something smaller, firmer and with a crisp break.
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The inside of the pistol grip showing trigger assembly.
The reload switch is also inside the pistol grip. This actually has a pretty tidy installation that works well. It is probably the only feature I'll keep unchanged. Of course in the future it will be communicating with the Arduino rather than the factory electronics.
So I do have some serious challenges with the pistol grip area. Like I said, it is weak and squeaky. I plan to line the inside with fiberglass and fiberglass the halves together. I will then permanently bond the grip to the upper and lower portions of the spaceframe. that means that I have to design the trigger and reload switches to be able to be serviced from the small opening that will be at the top.
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Small board for the reload switch.
At this point all that is left in the upper housing are a few stray electronic components. I plan to cover as much as possible of the inside with fiberglass mat to strengthen it and join pieces together permanently. To do that I'm going to need to remove quite a few screw moldings and other features.
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Hot glued (and detached, naturally) blue LED board for side lights. Opening on the right side bottom is where the pistol grip attaches. I will run stips of fiberglass through there to permanently bond the grip to the upper housing.
All the way to the rear of the upper housing lies a tiny 0.5 watt speaker that has been asked to do too much, resulting in fairly distorted sound effects. The plan: fiberglass this area smooth then have my CNC milling machine drill hundreds of tiny and nearly invisible holes for the new speakers, a pair of 5 watt jobs. I have an amp coming to make sure I can get the best quality and best volume from them. Spartan Jess has already pulled and cleaned outstanding sound files from the H2A needler. The end result will be miles ahead of the original sound system.
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I didn't know you could get a half-watt speaker.
After splitting the upper half of the nose there were just a few LEDs and the clear blue details. The glue they picked to glue in those blue lenses is just about the only quality item used on this guy. I had a hell of a time chiselling them out. Most are cracked now. That's fine. I need to mold and cast them in pink for the H2A variant that I'm modelling.
I learned this week that for Halo 2 Anniversary the Needler for campaign and multiplayer are entirely different. In the campaign the lights on the Needler are pink and the shell has a purple to gold iridescent finish. The multiplayer needler has blue lights and the shell is violet purple. Huh? So I am going for the campaign variant with the pink lights.
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LED panels and beyond superglued clear lenses.
Victory is mine. I've fully separated the electrical harness from the prop. Now I can sort out what does what and what to keep, modify or replace as I graft it to my Arduino-driven airsoft components.
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The underdeveloped brain of the Needler is on the right. I think it belonged to Abby Normal. trigger and reload are on the upper left of the harness.
With everything stripped, I wanted to check out what my space frame plan looks like in the flesh and see if I would be able to reach components way up in the nose. I think I will have to design in clips and slides so that I can dig up in there with tweezers and get parts in and out. So everything in the next picture will end up as one solid piece. Clearly the lower rear area is going to be a focus of reinforcement. Since the title of this thread has the phrase 'metal and fiberglass' in it, it's probably time to dig out the metal and place some ribs under my fiberglass work. This thing is going to be so amazingly solid once I bond the spaceframe together.
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Glorious spaceframe. Say goodbye to all the screw holes seen here. They won't be needed after the fiberglass is done.
So I've been cooking up some really outside-the-box ideas for making this a very different airsoft gun and very true to the Needler's game play. I've been rounding up the science bits too. The next update is going to show off some really cool pieces and crazy ideas. Two words: Tracking BBs
Redshirt
Guess who's not coming back from the Slayer match--the guy in the Red Shirt
Signature Project: Halo 3 Working Airsoft Spartan Laser in Metal & Fiberglass
