Where are you located that you'll have to deal with customs?

He's in the US

US shipments seem to be going thru US customs just fine. The Tornado is manufactured in Canada so hooray for NAFTA. No duties!

Just curious, what's your approximate Canadian/US sales % if you don't mind?

Right now there's a lot of Canadian grenade sales. Maybe 1/3 of them in total which isn't too surprising since a lot of Torontonians got to blast them during the user testing period and my assembly staff have been bringing them to games to snake the early grenade advantage.

Canadian airsofters have always been good to me. I launched my propane adaptor here starting with in game sales which moved a lot of adaptors. Players at TTAC3 have been throwing prototype grenades for months now. I usually leave a prototype or two of upcoming products for his player base to test and give feedback on. Over a year ago I brought a very early proof of concept grenade to TTAC3 we called the "tentaclenade".

I'm expecting that Canadian airsofters will pick up on the grenade a little quicker than the rest of the world. We play a particularly expensive brand of airsoft due to our higher cost of importation which bumps the average player age due to a need for a higher disposable income.

Even HK is becoming inundated with very low cost Chinasoft. I was surprised at that prevalence of very low cost airsoft stuff in HK. It seems to point to a younger average player.

My total customer base is pretty US centric though. I've built a decent name here on ASC which gives my company a good reputation with Canadian players. My profile in the US isn't as developed. The web based discussion of airsoft in the US is significantly more fragmented than here in Canada. There isn't a national forum which really pulls together the whole country and I'm a bit of a nobody in the US. I have to work a lot harder marketing in the rest of the world because I have to compete for attention against a lot of retailers and an abundance of new products.

I'm a small fish in a small pond here in Canada. I get to have a big enough profile that I can get enough attention with a new product that is decently interesting and there are a lot of players here who really like stuff that functions well. The older player base makes game play testing easier because I receive feedback from ppl who have passed Gr. 9. The higher income user testing base provides meaningful pricing feedback on my higher end product interests. China has cornered the market on low cost airsoft. I wouldn't be able to compete with their negligible costs of labor and willingness to take a very low profit margin. My only chance is to leverage careful engineering and put out innovative stuff that fills a good niche in a way that is sophisticated enough to confuse and stymie an Asian copyshop.

All that makes Canada a surprisingly not bad place for me to develop products.

Thanks! Nice information.

Ahh, the tentaclenade. It's amazing to see how far that idea developed in such a short period of time. Hats off to you good sir. :)

Because you are an inventing GOD. Please never stop the ingenuity.

Ive already noticed that the tornado is up on redwolf for pre-orders. If they review it, im sure there will be a massive surge in sales.

Now that the lack-of-reliable-airsoft-grenade gap has been filled, time to move outdoors and develop a reliable and useful mortar.

Oh man.. Hope to grab some soon. Verrrryyy soooooon. Muahaahahaah.

Did you ever overcome the bullshit 21st Century Airsoft used to spew to US police training community about how using propane in GBBs is bad?

Go easy. I'm not a very public figure outside of the Canadian airsoft community. It's a pretty easy assumption that there aren't any big Canadian airsoft manufacturers because at first blush, Canada is a bit of a dumb place to situate an airsoft company. The game is rather restricted which puts a real damper on market growth. Heck, there aren't even many North American manufacturers altogether.

Just wondering, is anyone else having slight issues with thier grenades?

yeah, mine has weird delays, averageing 10 secs

You need to wait a while after filling it I believe, and you have to wait a bit or warm it up after detonations to use it again. Or the timing will be off cause it's cold.

Maybe Carl can confirm this.

I'm having weird delays as well using propane, even after letting it warm up. After about 15 secs, I went and picked it up, THEN it went off. Nice.

That is a lubrication issue... you need to oil the grenade as in the instructions.
if you are having a long delay.. lub it up good and shuttle it open and closed a few times..

hey carl...have you done any testing for potential over lubing? not that i've done it but i'm just curious if say triple the dose of lube for newer units might help with the early on timer consistancy issues that people seem to be mentioning.

I haven't had any serious problems with overlubing. It just gets a little gross after awhile. It seems that there is a bit of a break in period with this product. I'm trying to figure a way to deal with this. I'm hoping I can improve my manufacturing process to handle this issue.

EDIT: Figured it out. Thanks.

Mmm, figures. Oh well, more of an excuse to keep hucking these suckers. :D

How long does it take to get these grenades shipped?

Mine arrived about a week after he shipped.

Mine where shipped on may 26 and i still waiting for them to come its been 9 working day from when they where shipped out :confused: I did get a notice saying that they've been shipped out May 26 but i did not get a tracking number for the package now Im starting to wonder if they have been shipped

Edit: got notice today that it was shipped.

I've been having long delays of around 5-6 seconds but then I put the lube into the propane adapter like you would for a normal GBB and it worked perfectly. Exactly 3 seconds. It may have also been because I added a small oring inside the fill valve to eliminate the spray that happens when I try filling with the metal airsoft innovations propane adapter that i bought from a local store.

The leak is intentional:

http://www.airsoftcanada.com/showthr...&highlight=ksc

Scroll down to reply #11.

Were you putting lube in the grenade before? Probably not.

stopping the leak altogether would prevent consistent filling too. Lubrication is a critical requirement with my grenades. It's too bad, but if you want consistent operation you've got to keep the grenades lubed.

Please do not make assumptions like that. Yes I have lubed it every two times I used the grenade as prescribed by airsoft innovations. I also added two drops when I first received the grenade. I decided to try lubing like a normal GBB in addition to the normal lubing to see if it helped and it turns out that it did.

Now that I see the reasoning behind the leak I'll take out that oring as soon as possible. Good thing I only filled it once like that.

Well I'm still working on my troubleshooting guide. We've learned a lot about our product and we've got to put it together into a cohesive guide.

For one, we've observed a break in period. It seems that the first 10 or so deployments are less consistent than the later ones. Delays appear to settle down to nice consistent periods which kind of confuses us because the cause seems to be pretty subtle. We're working on a best break in procedure.

When the schrapnel settles we plan on publishing all our findings to web. I hope to maintain a good repository of info on this grenade to help users maximize it's performance. Making design revisions is a lot more difficult with this product. I went through 4 versions of propane adpators in my first 3 years. This product is rather anchored in an injection mould. As much as I want to throw a massive redesign, I have to amortize my mould first. At least this first build is quite good. With the right usage scheme this grenade is a consistent powerful performer so I hope to help users learn to use their grenades well.

me and my buddy thought of this question... we use the same propane for our guns and nades... the tank has oil in it already... is it ok??? p.s. i do oil it almost every time i throw

Um. How did you oil your tank?

It's an excellent design. To be honest I have no complaints and don't see any need for a new design. It works perfectly the way it is as far as I can tell. A short break in period is fine.

I just make sure I lube mine often and it works perfect.

put 2 drops in befor i screw the adaptor on...so theres oil in the tank..

Thats enough oil for a couple of mag fills.. nothing more... that would not put oil in the tank.

Aye, my grenade's starting to settle down now. But I do find that one drop of oil in the tank like normal GBB lubing helps the grenade noticeably. I think a few more deployments should get it fully down to spec.

tornado grenade problems!!
 

when i fill my tornado grenade from airsoft innovations with propane it leaks out. it all leaks out as soon as i fill it. why will my grenade not hold propane?

Did you follow the directions correctly? :D

Reset the valve, put the pin in, and put the timer plug in and then fill?

wow is that true green gas and propane are the same?

OMFG go read the data before you post dumb questions. Please do us all a favour and read before asking any further questions.

Come now, it was a perfectly legitimate (albeit easy to answer) question. No need to tear into the guy like that. The internet is a hostile enough place as it is.

Now Sniper, seeing as how this is AI's Tornado thread, I'm assuming you discovered the fact from the AI website. Why don't you go read the articles there and decide for yourself? Madmax/Carl lays down a pretty thorough, convincing, and scientific report.
In case I was mistaken, here's the article anyways, for reference:
http://www.airsoft-innovations.com/lab1.html

Where does the leak come from? Fill valve, relief valve, or at the big opening under the valve cover?

All I have to say is that I've tried your grenades twice and I love them, but I need to get some money before I buy one or two. :P

Or I could use my Visa...

thank you.

Dooooooo iiiittt.....

WingZER0 - Encouraging bad spending habbits since 2002

The users manual clearly indicates how to apply lube to the grenades. Apply two drops right inside the valve body as indicated in the manual. The occasional lubrication of a propane tank opening in the way one would lube GBBs does not provide sufficient lubrication unless you put two drops in your propellant every other filling cycle.