WW Orca - Internals/Modifications
Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 4:15 am
Well, in the last hour (hey, I wanted to relax...I was bored, even though it's late), I opened the Orca. I'm just writing some things down before I forget. Hopefully I'll have pictures tomorrow, but you guys know my history of picture promises...
The Orca strikes me as a well-built blaster. Actually, all of BBT's guns do. Perhaps less than ten screws for a gun that's larger than my CPS 4100; and the CPS 4100 had maybe twenty or thirty screws. The center screw here was embedded deep in the wide body though, and I had to use a tiny flathead jeweler's screwdriver (you know those sets of 6 in the little cases) with a monkey wrench to get it out. The rest were fine though, some were a bit tight, but none were rusted since the gun is new and I've taken relatively good care of it.
The pump cap was easy enough to pry off.
Once all the screws and the pump cap were out, the top half of the shell neatly folded out; the electric wires were just the right length. I don't know what problems Duxburian had with the wires, maybe he wanted to move the two halves much farther apart.
One thing to note is that the electronic pressure gauge really is a pressure gauge; it's not a fill gauge, as is more common, at least with CPS water guns. A little blue tube comes off the central "barrel" tube and leads to a box that has wires also going in; I can only assume this is the pressure gauge. There's nothing that actually measures how much water has been used up or how full the PCs are. So all I can say is that the water gun must not really have too constant pressure after all for the pressure gauge to be able to detect the difference.
You know the four red decorative plastic "cables" that go over the front PC? They actually have notches at each end, and they neatly slide over either half of the water gun case. The pictures should explain in more detail. Pretty neat, and easy to remove.
To get the two red pieces on the other side, I had to remove the PCs from the case a little. There were three screws holding the PCs into the shell - solid design. Most water guns just stick everything in there. But not this one.
Once I lifted the PCs a little to remove the red pieces in the back, it was clear that that's where most of the weight was. The bottom of each PC (I think there are two individual PCs) comprises a massive stainless steel (I hope) circular frame. Large screws every quarter inch or half inch (?) around the perimeter hold the metal base to the rounded, plastic PC cover.
I'm willing to bet that's why BBT can't have more powerful PCs; the HydroPower system creates a lot of force pulling the rubber apart from the metal. If so many screws and a metal base are necessary for medium power, I can see why they don't want to go high power.
Tomorrow I'm going to open the PCs. If I ever see rubber sheeting, I'll be sure to get some, perhaps to modify this water gun. Not too heavy a mod, just a few extra layers of rubber.
I'm also going to see if I can't add a connection for a backpack reservoir. I'll check out the solar shower system Ben got a suggestion about, and I'll probably get one of those, if only for a different project. I'll measure the tubing diameter and add a hose barb with a ball valve to the bottom part of the Orca. Near the base of the pump tube, right in front of the grip, there's a perfect location, in front of all the check valves, to cut a hole and epoxy in a hose barb. I'd run the barb through the bottom of the handguard and out the back, but there are two screws in the way that I would have to omit. One screw is a possibility, but removing two might jeopardize the rigidity of the case.
I can definitely see why power is lacking for the larger nozzles. My recent nozzle theory was that as you increase nozzle size, the flow coefficient and the stream velocity increase until the nozzle becomes significantly larger to places in the internals. At that point, the flow coefficient is no longer limited by the nozzle, and the flow won't increase with larger nozzles; so the stream velocity will decrease. Unlike old-school CPS water guns, the Orca has miniscule internal tubing (perhaps so the ball valve at the front can be easily actuated by the trigger), so larger nozzles have terrible performance.
Speaking of which, I love the trigger system. No weak spring on the trigger itself, just one strong one on the valve. It's a ball valve like those in the Max-D series, so it has high but variable flow; but it doesn't have the poor Max-D trigger system, so it's reliable.
More info tomorrow.
The Orca strikes me as a well-built blaster. Actually, all of BBT's guns do. Perhaps less than ten screws for a gun that's larger than my CPS 4100; and the CPS 4100 had maybe twenty or thirty screws. The center screw here was embedded deep in the wide body though, and I had to use a tiny flathead jeweler's screwdriver (you know those sets of 6 in the little cases) with a monkey wrench to get it out. The rest were fine though, some were a bit tight, but none were rusted since the gun is new and I've taken relatively good care of it.
The pump cap was easy enough to pry off.
Once all the screws and the pump cap were out, the top half of the shell neatly folded out; the electric wires were just the right length. I don't know what problems Duxburian had with the wires, maybe he wanted to move the two halves much farther apart.
One thing to note is that the electronic pressure gauge really is a pressure gauge; it's not a fill gauge, as is more common, at least with CPS water guns. A little blue tube comes off the central "barrel" tube and leads to a box that has wires also going in; I can only assume this is the pressure gauge. There's nothing that actually measures how much water has been used up or how full the PCs are. So all I can say is that the water gun must not really have too constant pressure after all for the pressure gauge to be able to detect the difference.
You know the four red decorative plastic "cables" that go over the front PC? They actually have notches at each end, and they neatly slide over either half of the water gun case. The pictures should explain in more detail. Pretty neat, and easy to remove.
To get the two red pieces on the other side, I had to remove the PCs from the case a little. There were three screws holding the PCs into the shell - solid design. Most water guns just stick everything in there. But not this one.
Once I lifted the PCs a little to remove the red pieces in the back, it was clear that that's where most of the weight was. The bottom of each PC (I think there are two individual PCs) comprises a massive stainless steel (I hope) circular frame. Large screws every quarter inch or half inch (?) around the perimeter hold the metal base to the rounded, plastic PC cover.
I'm willing to bet that's why BBT can't have more powerful PCs; the HydroPower system creates a lot of force pulling the rubber apart from the metal. If so many screws and a metal base are necessary for medium power, I can see why they don't want to go high power.
Tomorrow I'm going to open the PCs. If I ever see rubber sheeting, I'll be sure to get some, perhaps to modify this water gun. Not too heavy a mod, just a few extra layers of rubber.
I'm also going to see if I can't add a connection for a backpack reservoir. I'll check out the solar shower system Ben got a suggestion about, and I'll probably get one of those, if only for a different project. I'll measure the tubing diameter and add a hose barb with a ball valve to the bottom part of the Orca. Near the base of the pump tube, right in front of the grip, there's a perfect location, in front of all the check valves, to cut a hole and epoxy in a hose barb. I'd run the barb through the bottom of the handguard and out the back, but there are two screws in the way that I would have to omit. One screw is a possibility, but removing two might jeopardize the rigidity of the case.
I can definitely see why power is lacking for the larger nozzles. My recent nozzle theory was that as you increase nozzle size, the flow coefficient and the stream velocity increase until the nozzle becomes significantly larger to places in the internals. At that point, the flow coefficient is no longer limited by the nozzle, and the flow won't increase with larger nozzles; so the stream velocity will decrease. Unlike old-school CPS water guns, the Orca has miniscule internal tubing (perhaps so the ball valve at the front can be easily actuated by the trigger), so larger nozzles have terrible performance.
Speaking of which, I love the trigger system. No weak spring on the trigger itself, just one strong one on the valve. It's a ball valve like those in the Max-D series, so it has high but variable flow; but it doesn't have the poor Max-D trigger system, so it's reliable.
More info tomorrow.