"Simon", the souped-up Titan
Posted: 15/10/2024
A few months back I spotted a Titan CS-50 for sale on a local auction site for NZ$40. Seeing as these went for NZ$200 when they were in circulation, this was too good of an offer to pass up. However, because the Titan uses four C size batteries, it only has 6V to power its four motors, leading to quite an anaemic performance for a blaster of its size. The solution, of course, was to rip everything out except the conveyer belt feeding assembly and replace it with better motors that ran on far more powerful batteries.
My first plan attempted to maximise what a 7.2V NiMH battery could handle. For this, I bought a pair of 180 sized Wolverine motors for the flywheel motors and a 130 size Neo-Badger for the conveyer motor (I kept the stock motor for the revolving barrel detail). The flywheels are the ever-reliable Kuryaka Daybreaks; the cage I got from Thingiverse by another modder who had attempted the same mod (I would later decrease the crush). Shell modification to fit the Wolverines was minimal because the Titan is massive. However, I had significant trouble with the screws because of this; they're quite far set into the blaster shell and none of my screwdrivers fit... and I ended up with some horrifically stripped screws.
Sooner or later I managed to get the thing open, although not without the loss of those two screws and bosses to a Dremel. Look at all that crappy wiring.
I replaced this all with 18AWG wire and swapped the motors, and put in new microswitches. It was rather a challenge to fit the switches, I used a lot of superglue. It did not help that one of the switches I bought were defective and I had to swap them out entirely.
Now complete, I hooked it up to a 7.2V NiMH battery and gave it a spin.
Simon with a 7.2V NiMH battery and a 50 round drum
As you should see, it's running quite decently at 6 darts a second (a very manageable rate of fire) and the darts are travelling at an acceptable velocity. But, I ran into a problem quickly: the whole blaster slowly dribbled away in power until it was nonfunctional after about 75 shots. This was not particularly to do with the capacity of the battery - it took a couple minutes to seemingly regain full power - but instead seemed to be to do with the fact that the NiMH battery could not provide the current consistently for more than two magazines of fire.
So, I took the plunge and bought a 3S LiPO battery and charger from a local airsoft shop the next day. (Ran into an old friend there, too.) However, I was not too familiar with how LiPO batteries work beyond the fact that they are much more efficient - and volatile - than a NiMH battery. I picked a 950mAh battery, which I now know would not have enough of a current output to supply all four of my motors. (This did not turn out to be a big issue, but I thought it was worth mentioning.)
So I took it home, plugged it in, and... oh my, was it powerful. I was about to film it fire, only for catastrophic failure and the smell of magic smoke to follow...
Not exactly what you want to see
Oh my...
There were a total of four darts lodged in the flywheel cage and barrel. No wonder it smoked up. I immediately disconnected the battery (to stop that shrill LiPO battery alarm as much as to stop the magic smoke from contaminating the kitchen table... yikes!) and quarantined the blasters outdoors. The next day, I opened the blaster up in the garage donning a face mask and stuck the stinky Wolverine motors in a box.
The next week, I ordered some 180 Hellcats from BlasterTech (four, just in case I do the same thing again) and printed out a new cage, this time at a slightly wider crush to increase reliability; I also made sure to sand the area of the cage where the dart fed in order to make the area smoother for darts to come in. A couple weeks later, the rewire was done, a larger 2200mAh battery was ordered to provide the necessary current, and everything was put back together.
Simon with a 12.4V 3S LiPO battery and a 35 round drum
Simon with a 12.4V 3S LiPO battery and an 18 round magazine
Look at that! I'd say that's about 9 darts a second. Unfortunately, feeding issues with the 50 round drum mean it is too slow for this Titan to reliably use; I think a stronger magazine spring is necessary for it to work. Overall, incredibly happy with this mod.
Special thanks to mr_deelee for documenting their Titan mod and flywheel cage remix.
P.S. It's called Simon for a very stupid and rather obscure reason, I'm not changing it. But, TF2 was a factor.