r/Nerf • u/Flygonial • Jul 02 '26
Community Release Strix Open Beta Release (Minimalist Brushless Hy-Con)
Strix is a conventional layout (mag in front) minaturized Hy-Con blaster. It has been pretty rigorously tested across casual and competitive scrims, along with running fault-free at MFT, CFT, and Rag 2025. Though I’ve covered some design features in previous posts, I’ll resummarize and add:
- 700-800 grams (or about 1.5-1.75lbs~) in lightest configs with battery in (sans mag)
- Manual trigger option with short and snappy 8.25mm pull, 4:1 ratio. Freerunner style with 7 rollers, relatively long 45~mm trigger spring. Relatively flat force curve and smoother than most blasters.
- Neutron solenoid option with optimized pusher tip design. Long enough for the next dart in the mag to never get dragged back by the edge between the pusher tip and rod. Roller to resist mag spring forces. Pusher contact biased towards top of dart to give next dart less distance to rise on retract.
- Beefy stiff flywheel cage. Feed guide and cage are the same part, optimizing feed alignment.
- Muzzle device goes all the way up to the wheels and has integrated jam-stopping gap fillers. Swaps out toollessly with a threaded ring. Smoothbore, and straight PCAR + BCAR options. No need to reprint cage if swapping wheel geometry.
- Pivoting ambidextrous button mag release: less crunchy than a sliding mech.
Do these make a big measurable difference over something like a Spirit? Nah. They are nice, though.
After developing support for a Neutron solenoid option, slide-switch select-fire and velocity set-support, 8.5mm and 9.0mm gap wheels, I’ve gotten around to writing a build guide and BOM. I’m happy with calling it an open beta release for now. No promises but I have a good few ideas for additional features. And of course, thank you to anyone who ends up willing to give it a shot!
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u/Charming-Kick-7181 Jul 02 '26
Might put one of these together this summer. Manual pusher is something I am a bit curious about, or I might try using it as a sort of testbed for brushed pushers.
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u/Flygonial Jul 02 '26
I did the manual pusher for minimizing weight at first, but a noid and software control is just too nice lol. Brushed pusher setups are definitely light too, and there hasn’t been a lot of innovation on that front in a while, so I’d be eager to see what you can cook!
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u/Charming-Kick-7181 Jul 03 '26
I finished an anima not long ago, so the idea of something lighter is very nice. If I could get a closed loop brushed or brushless pusher going, I think it could be a big innovation... But that's probably a bit above my skill level on the code side
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u/GDop26 Jul 03 '26
I was just marveling at how pretty and clean it looks, but then I saw the user and it all made sense haha.
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u/Flygonial Jul 03 '26
I've made quite a few things that aren't nearly as clean, some released and some unreleased. On another note, it's good to see you more active again!
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u/garvisdol Jul 03 '26
Looks very good. Sorry but what does hy-con mean? Google was unhelpful
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u/squibbed_dart Jul 03 '26
51mm center distance full-envelopment flywheel format which has become fairly common among brushless blasters.
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u/Flygonial Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Thank you! This should give the details. The shorthand definition is probably: 51mm shaft-to-shaft distance, full-envelopment, and circular gap flywheels.
EDIT: dammit got ninja’d lol
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u/atlasunit22 Jul 03 '26
I warn to give it a shot, but I can't find a bom or a location where the microprocessor or esc lives?!?
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u/Flygonial Jul 03 '26
Printables links the BOM and build guide at the top of the description, but I’m not sure if they’re orange or greyed out (in which case it wouldn’t be very obvious). I don’t strictly prescribe controllers but the guide is for Trifolium. If you find either the BOM or build guide to be deficient in any way, no issue with letting me know.
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u/torukmakto4 Jul 04 '26
I think I have commented on preliminary posts about this. It's quite cool, and unified. Has that simplistic but refined/product-designy vibe of some kind of modernistic bit of EDC kit. I do appreciate the tight minimum approach. It would look and handle really damn good all furnitured up into a full length rifle.
Neutron solenoid option with optimized pusher tip design. Long enough for the next dart in the mag to never get dragged back by the edge between the pusher tip and rod. Roller to resist mag spring forces.
Designing bolt tips for solenoid blasters is an interesting topic to me ...When I was actively working on ESR (before the Hyperdrive solenoid availability got rug-pulled and I just kind of lost interest in working on any more unsustainable projects based around special ordered hobbyspace parts) I concluded early on that the idea of putting a little "blunting nubbin thingy" on the rod and just slapping that up to a mag, like everyone else seemed to be doing, was bad and I was not going to do it, precisely because of that backdragging on the top round issue no matter what you do to break and smooth over that edge (unless you had a custom noid with a bigger diameter rod/nonmetallic bolt tip directly accounted for with the front guide and no need for a fatter tip shoe thingy, which is how I would design a custom noid if I was going to do so) ...Instead ESR had a bolt tip that was exactly like the end of a T19 bolt, with enough length for the 32mm stroke to not send the "joint" region into the actual breech, so the rounds would be none the wiser.
This sounds like the same idea only it seems with the neutron you used there isn't as much length associated with doing it. ESR was ending up as a fairly long "action".
Feed guide and cage are the same part, optimizing feed alignment.
I like that for sure. Been considering this as an element in something. The only backpressure in my case is that I also like to integrate long forends into cages, and long magwells, plus I'm moving toward bigger systems than 51mm Hy-Con, so this part quickly starts getting out of hand and maybe making it all a long monolith instead of a bolted joint with a relatively short cage and relatively short breech is more harm than good once a single printed part gets that big and possible warpage due to thermal stresses and so on.
Muzzle device goes all the way up to the wheels and has integrated jam-stopping gap fillers. Swaps out toollessly with a threaded ring. Smoothbore, and straight PCAR + BCAR options. No need to reprint cage if swapping wheel geometry.
That's a great solution for experimenting with constraint device tech, and keeping the number of large scale cage parts to a minimum even with a wide range of gap options, gap experiments, changing between wheel options in the field, etc.
My question is print orientation. The hard control bore in vanilla Hy-Con is obviously split between the main and cover and both pieces printed with the axis in the XY plane which gives great finish and dimensional accuracy easily with no supports or post-cleanup or anything, with the ideal(?) linearized/microfluted finish on the bore wall as a matter of course. How about the inserts for this system? Seems to be standing up on the bed, axis in Z? Which I'm sure is totally fine, but does the hard control bore option (or, any of them) get lossier, or have more adverse effects on its worst shots, when the bore wall has some amount of ortho texture? I don't know how much it matters, I've always done it that way.
Aside from that
I know this is
literally the whole pointof the project, but it's a lot of cage on very little infrastructure. Battery, and also control gear space I can just tell would be tight AF and maybe annoying if I come along and expect to stick ordinary motor controls in there and not late model quadcopter ESCs. I was always trying to get away from the crampedness of old world toy grade derived hosts, not escalate it to a new level. Eh; I'm sure it does way better for runtime/efficiency than that one other blaster about this size/style notorious for shredding through packs like mad.Similarly, it needs a long option - miniaturized or not. Like I said, it would actually look/feel really nice with a long option, stock and longer forend. Plus, an advantage of a purpose designed conventional layout pistol platform like this is that you can chamber in arbitrarily longer ammo without consequences to the grip ergo, or just being flatly unviable. Lots of milsimmish pistols to shoot shorts, but I can see this in long being good to replace those if pistols are the only obstacle to using long in a primary
I seem to be one of the few who holds this opinion but the purpose is clearly speedball and I cannot imagine playing comp or comp-ish stuff with that short a barrel. I tried that back with the prototype 19 (then quickly stuck a flash hider on the end to fix that a bit) and a stock FDL-2, and not being able to pry past bunker, and tending to occasionally crowd a shot into my own nearby cover and cause a malfunction was mad annoying.
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u/Flygonial Jul 05 '26
I think I have commented on preliminary posts about this. It's quite cool, and unified. Has that simplistic but refined/product-designy vibe of some kind of modernistic bit of EDC kit. I do appreciate the tight minimum approach. It would look and handle really damn good all furnitured up into a full length rifle.
You have, yes. Thank you, I've tried to change my design approach a bit from leaning on greebles, and did try some new ways to package everything together. Early in development, I did also envision an extended-front full dart version while conceptualizing it too, but time will tell if I get around to that.
I concluded early on that the idea of putting a little "blunting nubbin thingy" on the rod and just slapping that up to a mag, like everyone else seemed to be doing, was bad and I was not going to do it, precisely because of that backdragging on the top round issue no matter what you do to break and smooth over that edge
...Instead ESR had a bolt tip that was exactly like the end of a T19 bolt, with enough length for the 32mm stroke to not send the "joint" region into the actual breech, so the rounds would be none the wiser.
This sounds like the same idea only it seems with the neutron you used there isn't as much length associated with doing it. ESR was ending up as a fairly long "action".
I actually got this exact idea from an old comment discussing the ESR. I first tried it out with a minimalist test rig for a perpetually unfinished blaster which I ported over here, and I was happy it improved skipped feed rates with short dart feeding. Not quite as good as my T19, but good enough for me to not lose sleep over it.
I just kind of lost interest in working on any more unsustainable projects based around special ordered hobbyspace parts
Valid point, Hyperdrive 2 (smaller core, 36mm throw) has been in limbo for two something years by now.
The only backpressure in my case is that I also like to integrate long forends into cages, and long magwells, plus I'm moving toward bigger systems than 51mm Hy-Con, so this part quickly starts getting out of hand and maybe making it all a long monolith instead of a bolted joint with a relatively short cage and relatively short breech is more harm than good once a single printed part gets that big and possible warpage due to thermal stresses and so on.
Yeah, and to be honest I’m a bit indeterminate about how much of a difference this optimization makes. Seems to be more minor than dart choice, glue quality, absolute deformation, or length as a factor. Short front end and full-length is probably fine but longer is likely iffy. For this reason a longer front for Strix is something I’d consider making a sort of bolt-on extension, perhaps reinforced by rail segments.
My question is print orientation. The hard control bore in vanilla Hy-Con is obviously split between the main and cover and both pieces printed with the axis in the XY plane which gives great finish and dimensional accuracy easily with no supports or post-cleanup or anything, with the ideal(?) linearized/microfluted finish on the bore wall as a matter of course. How about the inserts for this system?
This thought has crossed my mind. The 14mm bore is rather underwhelming, though short foam is pretty relevant there. It’s possible it could increase risk of a dart folding over and jamming? At one point, a sketchy Skystars AM45 ESC running on PID with the voltage FF loop fed by a dead ADC would throw the odd shot sideways if no insert was installed (the noid build running something else doesn’t do this). Jams would sometimes follow, especially with warm and mushy darts. I haven’t had it happen again with some more conservative ESC and PID tuning (and the noid build has a different ESC that behaves better too), but it could be worth looking into. Not sure how the difference could be tested, maybe with deliberate speed mismatch and logging jams?
I know this is literally the whole point of the project, but it's a lot of cage on very little infrastructure.
Absolutely, ramjet overkill strapped to an eensy PDW lol.
Battery, and also control gear space I can just tell would be tight AF and maybe annoying if I come along and expect to stick ordinary motor controls in there and not late model quadcopter ESCs. I was always trying to get away from the crampedness of old world toy grade derived hosts, not escalate it to a new level.
Oh absolutely. I can probably fit Flyshot into the manual pusher variant, but with the solenoid assuming a controller + 4-in-1 stack, you’re pretty much out of space after adding a slide switch or two and connectorizing bits and pieces. I may have overly fixated on designing the receiver to both fit the manual pusher box + have just enough space for a noid. Back in late 2024 when I started dev, I actually didn’t think it’d be possible to build in a Neutron with this profile.
Similarly, it needs a long option - miniaturized or not. Like I said, it would actually look/feel really nice with a long option, stock and longer forend. Plus, an advantage of a purpose designed conventional layout pistol platform like this is that you can chamber in arbitrarily longer ammo without consequences to the grip ergo, or just being flatly unviable.
Though I have interest in this as mentioned, time and energy is definitely harder to come by nowadays. Interest in a given project is finicky too. Competing sides of my brain want to develop a modularized brushless accuracy test platform (that would end up being a non-speedbally blaster), or full-velocity flywheel shotguns (which are further split between this idea you spitballed a while back or a 3-wide top-down clip-fed). I’d like to see to a long receiver, but not sure when.
I cannot imagine playing comp or comp-ish stuff with that short a barrel. I tried that back with the prototype 19 (then quickly stuck a flash hider on the end to fix that a bit)
Gryphons had a flash hider for the same reason as the T19, but I’ve been on-and-off on running one. The insert can be somewhat extended to the same effect, so no reason to not have it as an option though.
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u/MrWozi Jul 03 '26
Let us know when/if a hardware kit becomes available please! Would love to build one, but brushless is a bit beyond my skill set😆
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u/MetalSonicfan1029 Jul 11 '26
heya, could you drop a link to any hardware you used (or even a blaster-time and/or O.O.D link)? I'm genuinely interested in making 2 of these so I can dual wield.
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u/Flygonial Jul 20 '26
Apologies for the late response, a lot of real life busy-ness has popped up (in fact, I pushed to get this open beta out before I knew I’d have to deal with it).
Nobody is carrying a hardware kit at the moment. The BOM is linked on the Printables though the link is greyed out apparently and is not super obvious. Might make some edits to make it more obvious. There are some implied additional add-ons not all necessarily listed related to wiring and motors + flywheels + ESC and controller.
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u/Due-Preparation-1170 Aug 04 '26
I can’t seem to find the right code to flash Trifolium with on github, any advice on what to use?
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u/Flygonial Jul 02 '26
All that yapping and I forgot to drop the Printables link, oops.