The variable combat suit(varia suit)
- Thread starter TechSteve
- Start date
samjc3
#1 Female Member
So how exactly do you plan on making this thing bulletproof? Bulletproof, especially if we are talking about rifle rounds, is a seriously tall order. Assuming you had a good material to work with, making it bulletproof would be a very heavy and movement restricting order.
Most gas masks, especially ones like that, are downright awful for combat. They massively restrict your field of view, and your breathing. You want something with a full face visor, and, if possible 2 filters. And really, while I suppose that adding EL kinda makes it look cool, I have no doubt it massively impedes vision at night, not to mention makes you visible.
Wrist mounted rockets are a dumb idea. Anything substantial would blow serious back-blast onto the firer, plus, rockets, especially the homemade explosive variety, have a tendency to blow up instead of fly. Would not feel good on the wrist.
The stun baton looks cool, but it doesn't strike me as being particularly powerful, just judging on how far the energy arcs.
Also, for the flamethrower, butane is not really the greatest fuel idea, since those little cans are annoyingly spendy, and when I was using em for my early flamethrower build, I could empty one in 20 seconds or so. (not to mention press fitting the tubing is a pretty lame connection, and its not fun at all when the tube freezes and pops off.
And if you truly are capable of building a projector so small (last I checked the technology simply doesn't exist) I cant wait to see it.
Most gas masks, especially ones like that, are downright awful for combat. They massively restrict your field of view, and your breathing. You want something with a full face visor, and, if possible 2 filters. And really, while I suppose that adding EL kinda makes it look cool, I have no doubt it massively impedes vision at night, not to mention makes you visible.
Wrist mounted rockets are a dumb idea. Anything substantial would blow serious back-blast onto the firer, plus, rockets, especially the homemade explosive variety, have a tendency to blow up instead of fly. Would not feel good on the wrist.
The stun baton looks cool, but it doesn't strike me as being particularly powerful, just judging on how far the energy arcs.
Also, for the flamethrower, butane is not really the greatest fuel idea, since those little cans are annoyingly spendy, and when I was using em for my early flamethrower build, I could empty one in 20 seconds or so. (not to mention press fitting the tubing is a pretty lame connection, and its not fun at all when the tube freezes and pops off.
And if you truly are capable of building a projector so small (last I checked the technology simply doesn't exist) I cant wait to see it.
TechSteve
Member
Bulletproof using kevlar, and a substance of my own making, this substance is very light and breathable and yet can stop a bullet from an m16, i know ive tested it.(not on myself) HOWEVER somthing that i have (accidently) tested on myself was my stun baton And i assure you it is the most powerful electrical discharge i have ever been hit with, it causes instant paralysis as well as loss of muscle control in your bladder(yes if it had been longer than a second) it was made from a heavily modified tazer. and as for the gasmask, the field of veiw on this particular gasmask is very good and as a matter of fact this one is used by the british special forces so it is in fact made for combat( it will be far better once the hud is done), and the breathing problem can be easily corrected with an air conditioner.Ok, moving on the wrist mounted rocket will never work i admit that, however i have decided to replace that with a wrist mounted laser, and as for the flamethrower that is only my third model thats nothing. You can get about a minute of flame out of it if you engineer it properly, and the refill canisters really do not cost that much, in oklahoma where i am, they cost around $1.98 for a big one. that is also something i am working on my next flamethrower will be called the flameheart, and it will have a 7-10 foot flame around 1-2/2 feet wide(yes, really THAT big) and it will have auto ignition which means that as soon as you can open your hand you can have a 7 ft flame coming out of it, as well as automatic fuel delivery and a digital potentiometer to top off the awesome! 
superben51
Well-Known Member
so.... you are getting ready for a zombie apocalypse?
Hermaphroditus
Well-Known Member
And I figure you have an N64 in a Tic-Tac container, too, right?
TechSteve said:
Could you share at least what kind of display you are using? Like I mentioned before, this is my field of expertise, I know pretty much everything about it, and I might have to call bullsh1t on this.
The only two companies with light engines small enough are Microvision (With their new tri-diode laser prototype) and Lumus (Their DK-32 prototype). The former is still being tested, and the latter is only available as a $32,000 development kit. If you somehow manage to beat them, that means you are somehow ahead of two companies that receive tens of millions in military funding with teams of some of the best optical engineers in the world.TechSteve said:
Looks like an SF10, maybe an FM12? The field of view is somewhere around 90 degrees, and while that is good for a gas mask, it is still terrible for combat. You have no peripheral vision at all! You are going to want something like the 3M 7800S:
Really, you mask is terrible for actual fighting. British special forces might use it, but only as a last resort. They don't send out soldiers wearing them if they can help it.
I build diode and gas lasers as a hobby, and I gotta tell you, your laser is not going to do much for combat. The highest you can go with a diode based visible laser is about 2 watts of 445nm, unless you go with a gas laser. Gas based laser tubes are extremely fragile, though, to the point where a lot of sellers will ship them only via private courier. All it takes to stop a laser is tinted glasses, so you would not even be able to blind.
There are people who have dedicated their lives to make gas flamethrowers, large groups of these people show up at Burning Man every year to show them off. The devices they have made to throw flames the size you describe are several feet long, definitely not going to fit in a glove! There is just no way you will get that kind of range out of gas without a pressurizer stage, a pulsejet accelerator, or using a higher pressurized gas. I would look into compressed natural gas, that can be purchased at 3000 PSI, and you can fill paintball canisters with it. That stuff will make a fantastic flamethrower.
If you are not full of flax, then congratulations, you have officially leapfrogged decades of military research in ballistic armor. Did you know that the US military spends over $1 BILLION every single year on body armor, with hundreds of millions more spent by other countries and police forces? Or that the US military awards hundreds of millions of dollars in armor research and development?
Look, I understand that people have breakthroughs that allow great performance and low cost. That is how I got my job working for the Army, because I thought outside the box and designed some very high field of view head mounted displays that were also cost effect, $30,000+ less than the competition.
It is hard to believe, however, that you have simultaneously revolutionized microdisplays, ballistic armor, electrical non-lethal weaponry, and gas based flamethrowers. We are smart people here, we can handle the nitty gritty details of how you managed to do it.
Twilight Wolf
Frequent Poster
bud said:Evading the word censor. That's a warning young manPalmerTech said:
OH Dang PALMER, YOU IN IT NOW.
TechSteve
Member
Ever heard "Tony stark made this in a cave" well i make it all in an apartment,This is a worklog, and as a worklog i would very much like to say, see it all when its done and eat your words, and as for the lazer it is not meant to do any harm it will flash at a very high frequency causing disorientation and temporary blindness, and as a side note, this is not all stuff i have just thought of and randomly posted on here i have actually made most of it, and tested methods of making the rest, its really no big deal and its not hard at all, if the army cannot hire better engineers for their head mounted displays that's not my problem. i am just here as a guest to show what i can do. you all saying how much you would like to see it, well the thing is it will be some time before all of this gets done because as of late it is all just laying around. I am rebuilding my transmission in my car and thats going to cost me loads of money so it may be months before all of this gets done. also i have lots of other projects, like building an xbox 360 laptop AND a ps3 laptop simultaneously. BUT i suppose i can give you a picture of me wearing a one eye prototype of my first generation head mounted display that i built YEARS ago.
i had it hooked up to a beagle board with a linux distro on it and a all in one wrist mounted trackpad and mouse. the next version looks more like a "scouter" than this one and will be mounted inside the eye piece of the fm12 gasmasks, it will have cameras around it allowing you to have full 360 degree vision and through infrared technology, be able to see at night.
laingsoft
Formerly SteamDNT
Dude.
That's half of an eyepiece from a pair of vuzix glasses. I have one of those lying around my workbench somewhere.
Sadly, they only work with Component and Digital RGB, so unless you managed to write an encoder board, you didn't connect it to a beagleboard.
Those are so low quality anyway, the most you can really do is connect a camera to each half and play around with parallax by moving the camera's farther away from each other. Otherwise they are so small and useless for anything else.
That's half of an eyepiece from a pair of vuzix glasses. I have one of those lying around my workbench somewhere.
Sadly, they only work with Component and Digital RGB, so unless you managed to write an encoder board, you didn't connect it to a beagleboard.
Those are so low quality anyway, the most you can really do is connect a camera to each half and play around with parallax by moving the camera's farther away from each other. Otherwise they are so small and useless for anything else.
vskid3
Well-Known Member
Tony Stark is a fictional character. By that logic, I might be able to fly, because Superman can.
Either put up or shut up. We've all seen way too many people promising the world but only having a wheelbarrow full of bullflax. Show some proof and we'll probably worship you, but until then, we're going to be skeptical.
Either put up or shut up. We've all seen way too many people promising the world but only having a wheelbarrow full of bullflax. Show some proof and we'll probably worship you, but until then, we're going to be skeptical.
samjc3
#1 Female Member
My thoughts exactly. I would love to do some ballistics testing on your bulletproof material. Send me some and I'll shoot it with everything I have (and have access to, so basically .22lr through .50 bmg, including some fun things like .221 fireball, 5.7FN, .454 casull, .70 cal(bp) and .375 H&H).vskid3 said:
TechSteve
Member
HAHAHAHAHA that is NOT from a vusix or whatever the Heck your talking about, i will put up i just need more time to prefect things thats all, i came to this forum for support and insight not trolls and critisism and putdowns. If that's how its going to be, then i will just move this topic to another forum. Just because i severley lack the funds to actually finish building everything, doesn't mean you all have to put me down and say im full of it. That is immature and really, uncalled for. 
"if the army cannot hire better engineers for their head mounted displays that's not my problem" ok, i apologize for that remark that was also uncalled for.
"if the army cannot hire better engineers for their head mounted displays that's not my problem" ok, i apologize for that remark that was also uncalled for.
TechSteve said:
We are not putting you down because you lack funds to build things. It is partly because you are (indirectly) insulting me by insinuating that the Army needs to hire better HMD engineers, and largely because you are claiming to have made some absolutely revolutionary technology with no evidence.
This is indeed a worklog, and if you have cool idea that you think you can make happen, great, we would love to help and give feedback. You are claiming to have not only made a lightweight and breathable substance capable of stopping an M16 round, you claim that you have tested that capability! If you have already made it, and already tested it, why can't you tell us any details or post pics/video? Like I said, even bulletproof vests have a hard time stopping an M16 round fired dead on, so a lightweight alternative would be far ahead of even the most cutting edge military technology. We have a right to be suspicious.
On top of that, microdisplays are simply not something you can make in your apartment. You need multimillion dollar facilities and gear to make them, and making a projector that is a half inch long is just not going to happen. Taking apart a HMD and mounting the guts to glasses is a lot different than designing your own from scratch, which is what you act like you are doing.
I am not trolling here, I am just pointing out the facts. This is my profession, and I know what is possible. If you are really making this supposed "Solid core optics projector" that is less than a half inch long, I can practically guarantee you a six figure job that will fix your money problems in the blink of an eye.
Give us even a basic description of this lightweight armor you have created and tested, and maybe we will indeed have to eat our words. A basic plan for this revolutionary projector would help, as well. No need to be perfect, a rough brief will do fine.
TechSteve
Member
Ok, the armour was made accidently, and its thin, so i never said it could stop a bullet from dead on i just said it could stop it, the real work will be done by the kevlar my"add on" just adds a little oompf and i cant post videos or pictures because i dont have it anymore, it was built into a vest which i no longer own, and the solid core projector comes from several little things taken apart and reverse engineered, and as for the first one shown in the picture was hooked up via vga not the best resolution :/ but good enough to walk around and play zelda on.However the second one is full vga resolution and the third one (which is going to cost me a lot to build) will have full 720p resolution. not the easiest thing to do when its so small but nothing is impossible. all i need is for you people to bear with me and wait. and palmer if i had WAY more money i would be able to make an amazing hmd with the new oled transparent displays. i would love to get my hands on one of those, because they are such high resolution for their size. EDIT i have explained everything to palmer via pm. ( all of the smaller less important details)
Just gonna quote from your PM so I can put the info out there for anyone hoping to do this themselves.
Not quite. You have the basic concept down, but it is only simple to think about, not to actually make.
First off, using an LED is not simple at all. An LED is not a collimated light source, so you need a focused collimator for projection. Second, transmissive microdisplays have very low light transmittance, somewhere around 4%. As in, you are losing a whopping 96% of the light from the LED! This works fine for direct viewing, but it is just not up to par for projection. That is why most commercial LED based projectors all have to use reflective LCOS or DLP light engines with one panel for each color, they are much more light efficient! Even then, an LED with enough power to put out even a few lumens is going to need a heatsink, which is why you don't see any teeny tiny DLP based projectors. I have a few Texas Instruments DLP development kits in my lab, they are THE smallest projector modules available for sale, and the LEDs still need a heatsink. Hence, why they are several inches long.
Finally, it does matter what you use as a lens. Obviously, if this projector is a half inch long, then it needs to have a lens with an extremely short focal length, far shorter than you can get out of "glasses or heck even water". Probably going to need some kind of aspheric acromat doublet, and while those are certainly available, making one with high enough magnification for a 640x480 Kopin display (They are only 0.44") is not nearly as simple as you think it is. You cannot fit a heatsinked LED, collimator, display, and projection lens into half an inch, and even if you could, the output would be so dim that nothing would be visible except in pitch black.
No. If you use the OLED panel without any focusing optics, you won't see anything but a fuzzy blur. If you use optics to focus on the panels, then everything in the real world is going to be a fuzzy and distorted blur! Do you have some plan for getting past this? If so, please share, because multiple focal plane HMD optics would be a revolutionary advance. You could use half silvered glass, but in that case, there would be no point in using a transparent OLED, because you can use any kind of display you want.
Did the bullet go all the way through the vest, only to be stopped by your substance? If not, then how would you measure if your substance did anything? FYI, even reasonable strong fiberglass can stop a hammer blow. Same with most plastics.
TL;DR, you have good ideas in your head, and seem to have an above average understanding of how these things work, but you are nowhere near actually being able to accomplish them. You lack knowledge of even basic optical concepts, so it is just not plausible that you are going to build a miracle HUD, with or without money (You don't seem to know how to use those transparent OLED panels, even if you could afford them). We are willing to give advice, but not if you are acting like you know some secret that we don't.
Not quite. You have the basic concept down, but it is only simple to think about, not to actually make.
First off, using an LED is not simple at all. An LED is not a collimated light source, so you need a focused collimator for projection. Second, transmissive microdisplays have very low light transmittance, somewhere around 4%. As in, you are losing a whopping 96% of the light from the LED! This works fine for direct viewing, but it is just not up to par for projection. That is why most commercial LED based projectors all have to use reflective LCOS or DLP light engines with one panel for each color, they are much more light efficient! Even then, an LED with enough power to put out even a few lumens is going to need a heatsink, which is why you don't see any teeny tiny DLP based projectors. I have a few Texas Instruments DLP development kits in my lab, they are THE smallest projector modules available for sale, and the LEDs still need a heatsink. Hence, why they are several inches long.
Finally, it does matter what you use as a lens. Obviously, if this projector is a half inch long, then it needs to have a lens with an extremely short focal length, far shorter than you can get out of "glasses or heck even water". Probably going to need some kind of aspheric acromat doublet, and while those are certainly available, making one with high enough magnification for a 640x480 Kopin display (They are only 0.44") is not nearly as simple as you think it is. You cannot fit a heatsinked LED, collimator, display, and projection lens into half an inch, and even if you could, the output would be so dim that nothing would be visible except in pitch black.
No. If you use the OLED panel without any focusing optics, you won't see anything but a fuzzy blur. If you use optics to focus on the panels, then everything in the real world is going to be a fuzzy and distorted blur! Do you have some plan for getting past this? If so, please share, because multiple focal plane HMD optics would be a revolutionary advance. You could use half silvered glass, but in that case, there would be no point in using a transparent OLED, because you can use any kind of display you want.
Did the bullet go all the way through the vest, only to be stopped by your substance? If not, then how would you measure if your substance did anything? FYI, even reasonable strong fiberglass can stop a hammer blow. Same with most plastics.
TL;DR, you have good ideas in your head, and seem to have an above average understanding of how these things work, but you are nowhere near actually being able to accomplish them. You lack knowledge of even basic optical concepts, so it is just not plausible that you are going to build a miracle HUD, with or without money (You don't seem to know how to use those transparent OLED panels, even if you could afford them). We are willing to give advice, but not if you are acting like you know some secret that we don't.
samjc3
#1 Female Member
Basic US Army issue Interceptor body armor, with no plates, has a v50 of 1536fps. (That means that for a bullet to have 50% chance of penetration, it must be traveling at least 1536fps). What that means, is that the armor would have a good chance of stopping a .223 (m16 cartridge) at 350+ yards, and a good chance of stopping a 7.62x39 at roughly 300 yards. The basic vest will also stop almost any handgun at point blank, with the exceptions being .44 mag FMJ, .357 sig AP, 5.7fn AP, .454 casull, .500 smith, .460 smith and .50 AE. (Note AP pistol rounds are illegal under the 'cop killer' bullet ban)
Now, if you add the trauma plates(Level III-A SAPI), which the basic vest has a carrier for, it is rated to stop 3 bullets fired from twenty feet, in calibers up to 7.62 NATO. Some soldiers have had their vest take more hits than that without penetration. Level IV trauma plates will stop even more than that, though since most info about them is classified its hard to say what exactly that entails.
Then, we come to the big daddy of them all, Dragon Skin body armor. This is the best body armor out there by a long shot. Its also not used by our troops because of some really pathetic bureaucratic *Can'tSayThisOnTV*ery, but that's a story for a different day. In any case, this stuff is built like scales. Discs of their proprietary ceramic plates are placed in a flexible carrier. This means the armor is far more breathable and flexible than normal plate type armor. Additionally, since a bullet will generally only strike a single scale, the rest are left intact to stop other bullets. Ballistics wise, this stuff is crazy. In testing, its stopped more than 40 7.62x39 rounds, and even successfully deflected a direct blast from an m67 frag grenade (Simulated 'jump on the grenade to save your squad' deal. Technically, the guy woulda survived). This stuff has even been documented stopping 3 direct hits from 7.62x39 API (armor piercing incendiary, which will generally go right through even plate armor.) in real combat. The guy said he didnt feel a thing, and it did not break his ribs. And there's a classified level IV dragon skin, which I can only imagine, is utterly insane.
So, with all that said, the only way I can see your materiel being impressive is if you put it behind a 1980's era PASGT (or soviet clone) vest with no plates, in which case your plate is probably around a level II trauma plate, which is impressive. (But still quite a ways behind the times, and rather pointless, as such) And thats assuming it was shot with a NATO FMJ load. If it was shot with any sort of soft point, wadcutter, hollow point or frangible round, then your plate coulda been a piece of plywood and still stopped what little energy a bullet like that would have after travelling through a basic vest. And if it was shot with AP or API rounds, then its more like a level III trauma plate. But I serious doubt you shot it with that, since AP ammo is practically illegal, and really expensive too.)
An additional assumption I am making here is that the shot in question was taken at an effectively point blank range, out of a legal barrel length gun. (16" barrel, NATO FMJ 55, ~3200fps) At that ballistic level, the bullet has lost almost 50% of its energy at 350 yards. In which case, if the shot was taken from ~200 yards, the plate would only need to be a basic level I trauma equivalent.
In any case, your material is very doubtfully groundbreaking.
Additionally, I'm quite curious how you intend on getting a 7x2x2' flame with a butane refill canister. I've done a fair bit of research and experimentation on this subject (Im the resident pyro expert here) and in my experience, one of those cans simply does not deliver enough flow for that amount of fire. It is possible with 16oz propane canisters (Ive done it), but they arent quite wrist mountable. And even at that size, they only burn for about ~1:00, assuming a somewhat regulated flow. If you just do a fully open dump, it'll empty in about 28 seconds, as I recall.
Hackerbilly
Well-Known Member
Okay, don't count this as spam or anything but I this forum right here proves that I can learn more on here than at school.
Also, the gas mask thingy looks pretty cool and I like the taser bat with the chain and everything that's pretty cool.(sorry if this sounds noobish I'm pretty tired.) Also, for the magnifer since palmer was talking about the different things and why you couldn't use them, but would a laser lens work like off of diskdrive because I've taken apart my fair share of projectors and the lens on the projectors I've taken apart are kinda roundish like half of a sphere. And laser lens are about the same. So, couldn't he use a diskdrive laser lens for the magnifer?(please feel free to tell me why he could or couln't use them.)
Also, the gas mask thingy looks pretty cool and I like the taser bat with the chain and everything that's pretty cool.(sorry if this sounds noobish I'm pretty tired.) Also, for the magnifer since palmer was talking about the different things and why you couldn't use them, but would a laser lens work like off of diskdrive because I've taken apart my fair share of projectors and the lens on the projectors I've taken apart are kinda roundish like half of a sphere. And laser lens are about the same. So, couldn't he use a diskdrive laser lens for the magnifer?(please feel free to tell me why he could or couln't use them.)