Pain in the butt to clean up, det cord leaves no residue. Det cord makes more bang too. |
But you can put shock tube in your mouth and it only makes your jaw go numb for a few seconds, with det cord, you lose your head. |
Why is this useful? |
hes trying to say its redneck proof.. |
Lemme guess... we still have someone who teeth crimps their caps, right? 
|
IIRC, it was pushed out by the Engineer Corps, I believe they wanted to replace time fuse with the shock tube. I remember Navy EOD types liking it but that was for operations in the water. I can't recall a SINGLE Army EOD tech who liked the shit, we prefered time fuse or on rare occasion Det-Cord. We did not like the idea of having to wind back in the dunnage to return to the ASP, fuck that!!! Det-Cord is far more useful, plus for occasions we needed complete control, we had remote firing systems. |
Yeah, they're big on pushing the MDI shit, we still use time fuse for most demos as a backup and the shock tube for the main initiator. Also very useful for breaching though, real light and no worries about electrical shit, just tape it up ready to go, tape det cord in onsite and pop. Also, if you've got a real long string of shocktube you can see the impulse w/ your eyes, just it looks like the entire tube flashes in the same instant. |
|
The advantage to shock tube is the direct command detonation from the firer's position. Less of a problem than having to wait 30 seconds per foot on safety fuse. Yes, when you have to dispose of the "spent explosive" through the ASP, you have problems. But it is cheaper and there is much less hazard of hangfire. |
we always found creative ways of getting rid of the used tube... it's amazing what happens to 1000+ ft of plastic line thats balled up and placed underneath a 40lb shaped charge... |
All I can think is "Darwin: 0" and it makes me sad :( |
|
For attacking IEDS thats all we use time fuze is a straight NOGO because of all the people we would kill, and electric is just a bad Idea because of all the EMR in the air. We made a widget for our cordless drills to reel it back up after we shoot it, alot of times we use 1000,feet rolls you can get a few shot off of one by crimping a non electric cap on to it. The first tale tale sign that your IED tried to kill your robot is when the shock tube flares out in your hands while your robot operator is trying to place the charge it will scare the fuck you. Sometime the reels catch on fire too. |
|
I thought shock tubing was coated on the inside with PETN (at least that's what I recall one bomb guy telling me... it's been a few years)... but this link says they're using HMX/Al now. Did they change the manufacturing, or has it always been this way? |
|
We use a shit ton of shock tube where I work. Time fuse is so unreliable and unpredictable no one uses it anymore in comercial blasting. Its not fair to compare shock tube to Det Cord. Two different things. Most of the shots we set we use both. You wouldn't want to have Det Cord that close to your hand if your trying to initiate a shot. We usually use both on a shot. Commercial is different than Mil though. The mil is usually trying to set off ten or less shot at a time. We are usually trying to set off hundreds. We don't like the initiator that guy was using in the video. The ones we use the most are Electronic Shock Tube Initiators. For back ups we have the ones that use the 209 primers like he used except we built them ourselves. They are a lot more reliable than the one he had. Here are some pics of the Shock Tube Initiators we built.    
|
We used to do Quarry Blasting.(we sold that division.) Now we only do specialty blasting. Its kind of hard to explain because I never really know what I'm up against until I get there. If you had something you wanted blown up in close proximity to something you didn't (like a few feet or inches) you would call our company. We still do some demolition jobs though. Its mostly industrial type stuff. Examples would be underground tanks or stacks in power plants. We even do ice blasting in the winter. Most of our work is done in the boilers in the big power plants. Its a cool job but its dirty. |
Hmm, they are still using PETN in Det cord. When I got out in 98, we were getting Det-Cord with RDX, .mil didn't like how PETN cord stored in Gulf War I due to the high temps. A lot has changed in 10 years since I got out but I personally don't care what the filler is as long as it works well. I can see using shock tube the way you described on IED's, time fuse was never a good choice for anything when you need absolute control over your shot. I never doubt EOD ingenuity in figuring out a way to respool the dunnage.  My earlier post just refers to pre-war CONUS were we would have had to take the spool back or we would have had to draw extra c-4 on our initial trip to pick up bang to make it go away.EOD has had a renaissance since I got out, it was pretty stagnant in the 90's. |
Cool! |