Talon Clips - Not lighting fuses

[abovegroundfun]

What is the best way to light fuse from a talon clip?

Looking for advice, this was my first year with the cobra.

I bought a bunch of talon clips and they only seem to be lighting fuses at about a 60-70% rate. I fray the fuse at the end and make sure the Cobra system fires at 2. The success rate went up, but it's still not that great.

Any better ideas out there that seem to work better? Tie extra fuse that lights better to them perhaps?

I love anything with a port and have the ignitors for them as well, I'm at almost 100% success with that. But, obviously most consumer fireworks dont have those except for daves cakes.

[Robbro097]

Id recommend just start poking your cakes and using mjg if your going to b adding a quicker lighting fuse to existing visco its going to b quicker just to poke (after you do 2 or 3 n get the hang of it) i never bothered with talons because i cant recall a single person talking about good reliability of them. Mjg also makes the the visco clips i hear good things about those.

[stratos294ho]

I started like you with the Talon clips and had the same issues. I then went to the e-matches and had better success at lighting the fuses with those. This year I started poking cakes and and like Rob said that is the way to go. I have a chinese system and the only 2 this year that did not light for me were two that ended up not having good continuity. When I poke them I go in right beside the fuse and I leave the original fuse in there that way if I need to hand light one at then end I still have something to light. The first shoot I did this year I had some of the e-matches that ignited but the fuse to the cake did not and I had them taped touching each other about halfway down the fuse from the cake not end to end. It blackened the fuse but it did not ignite the cake. Poke them and use the MJG initiators or the e-matches and you will have a better success rate.

[esgrillo]

Granted I do not use talons anymore due to the incredible variability in measured Resistance using a meter that has been prevalent in recent batches but when I did, I did not do anything special to the fuse. I did check resistance of the talon before and after installation on the cake. If that figure did not change in an appreciable way, I found that they performed well. Being extremely aware of protecting that wire during install is most important.

I threw out a lot of bad ones during the process and decided to switch 100% to mjg when the time I spent checking and replacing talons exceed the time to poke cakes that do not have ports.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Don't mean to sound like a broken record, but the best way to light a fuse from a talon clip is to not use a talon clip. Unless you enjoy aggravating yourself. I'm with Ed. If it can't be poked and matched, I'm not buying it. Period.

[joed2323]

in all seriousness, if you are serious about your show and want no malfunctions or wanting to eliminate any possibility of items not lighting due to how unreliable talons can be, please move over to i-match.

With talons, if you look at them wrong they fail. Those plastic clips are delicate, I rather use an igniter (imatch) that can handle being banged around

with using imatch, you really only need to worry about wiring things correctly if you are wiring say 3 or more items in series, and even this isn't complicated.

[morrison2951]

Yep, the talon clips are very delicate.

I've still got some left over and use them. If you're careful not to break that little nichrome wire, tape it shut with magic tape and then tape it and the wire itself to the cake.... just hold the remote button a few seconds and they will light the cake fuse.

Probably jinxing it but 100% talon fire rate my past two shows with my '76 Pro Line and Quantum Fire modules respectively. Go figure.

[PyroKing31]

In regards to e-matches/igniters. Any tips for getting a firmer contact on smaller visco on some cakes?

Some of these cakes seem to be running a 1.5-2mm fuse and it doesnt stay secure in the shroud. Do you guys just tape them all as well for insurance?

New guy to electric firing and having a few failures with pull outs

[displayfireworks1]

Remember Visco fuse is built to be resist side ignition. Everyone is moving into the Initiators. I have video on how to poke the cakes. Use those clips for testing or practice

[MtnViewPyro]

In regards to e-matches/igniters. Any tips for getting a firmer contact on smaller visco on some cakes?

Some of these cakes seem to be running a 1.5-2mm fuse and it doesnt stay secure in the shroud. Do you guys just tape them all as well for insurance?

New guy to electric firing and having a few failures with pull outs

If you must use talons and your having this problem, you can always cut a larger safety fuse and tape it to the smaller fuse your having difficulty with. Even better, remove the cake fuse and insert a fuse of your liking both size and burn time.

[PAClark]

I cannot understand why the Talon Igniters have such a bad reputation. I have used them for over 6-7 years and have consistent success and 99.9% fire rate with them. I acturally overuse them and have to do more fusing and still have awesome rates. I wired 264 mortars, and 30 cakes this year with 1 mortar that didn't fire....(each mortar had a Talon and so did each cake) and I misplaced igniters and 3 pulled out when an adjacent mortar fired. I buy them from www.remotefiringsystems.com and use their Sparkfire systems (I have 3) with no issues. Are these different Talon Igniters that I am buying compared to everyone else. I have had this consistent very low failure rate for years. I am very careful when clipping them on to not disturb the filament and I tape them to the cake or mortar to prevent dislodging.

[joewad]

It's possible that maybe it was a bad lot or something like that and the information provided for analysis by respected parties. I started using Talons 3 years ago. The first year I had about a 15% failure rate which after years 2 & 3 use I attribute failure rate to myself. I was attaching the Talon straight to visco fuse without notching visco fuse. Years 2 and 3 I had 100% success, the difference, I cut a 3 inch piece of fast fuse (.5 secs foot) and doubled inch 3 over inch 2 and magic taped it to the underneath side of visco. So there is actually 2 - 1 inch lengths of fast fuse underneath the visco. This leaves about a 1 inch length of fast fuse to attach Talon to. I would also cut the visco at an angle on the tip before affixing fast fuse. Hey,fuse is cheap, failure is not. Soon,I am sure I will progress to that brass awl trick and just start using initiators or e-match. Till then, I will continue with explained method and Talons.

[topshelfpyro]

I used talons for the first time this year. I had about a 15% failure rate coming out of the package with no continuity that I bought from Cobra. Never again, stick to MJG

[bani]

Talon clips are extremely delicate and easy to break the filament. They also require a lot of current which many controllers aren't capable of providing reliably. I stopped using them after second year of having ~20% failures. Better off using the MJG initiators.

[displayfireworks1]

At Abovegroundfun Here is video of how to place an MJG Firewire Initiator into a Consumer Fireworks product. Remember there is some element of risk associated with doing this. Keep that in mind. If you are not comfortable with it , please do not so it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdboprFzU9c
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Also, if you have access to quick match there is another technique you can use.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

I cannot understand why the Talon Igniters have such a bad reputation. I am very careful when clipping them on to not disturb the filament and I tape them to the cake or mortar to prevent dislodging.

Apparently you just have better luck than the rest of us. I don't think you would deny that talons are very sensitive and the nichrome wire can be easily broken. Just that possibility alone makes them not worth using. Especially when some of us wire 10 times the number of cakes. Initiators are easy to use and considerably more reliable.

[abovegroundfun]

This is great! I’ll try poking with some of the leftover cakes. Thanks!

[MontanaMike]

We got our Cobra system in 2015, have done 4 shows with all Talons. This year we used about 85% MJG ignitors and 15% Talons (mostly on smallish fountains and roman candles).

The four years of all Talons, we had almost 100% fire.

This year with the MJGs, we had five cakes and four rows of mortars that did not go off, so there is some learning to be done.

With the mortars, I had tied each row together with yellow quick fuse and connected the MJG with one of those clear plastic clips, but the fuses went outside of the shroud on the initiator. So, that's what we need to watch for next time.... all of the fuses had the telltale "burn" mark on the side. I suppose not inserting the fuse quite as far into the clip would be a good idea. Keep the tip of the fuse out in front of the shroud, rather than alongside it.

With the cakes, all were poked except one. So I'm not sure what went wrong on the cakes. My only clue is, most of the ones that failed were zipper cakes with very small tubes, so it's possible the shroud on the initiator kept the fire from hitting the powder in the tube. That's just a guess. All of the initiators did go off, I know that much...and we had 100% continuity before showtime.

On the one cake we didn't poke, I took out the visco and replaced it with gray fast-fuse. We had two identical cakes, one of which fired and the other did not. As with the mortars, the fuse had that black burn-mark on the side....so I'm sure the same thing happened as with the mortars.

Lessons learned: Pull the shrouds back on the initiators when using with poked cakes, and make damn sure the fuse stays inside of (or in front of) the shroud when clipping the initiator to a fuse.

If anyone else has other ideas on what may have happened with those cakes, I'm all ears.

[PyroGyro]

We got our Cobra system in 2015, have done 4 shows with all Talons. This year we used about 85% MJG ignitors and 15% Talons (mostly on smallish fountains and roman candles).

The four years of all Talons, we had almost 100% fire.

This year with the MJGs, we had five cakes and four rows of mortars that did not go off, so there is some learning to be done.

With the mortars, I had tied each row together with yellow quick fuse and connected the MJG with one of those clear plastic clips, but the fuses went outside of the shroud on the initiator. So, that's what we need to watch for next time.... all of the fuses had the telltale "burn" mark on the side. I suppose not inserting the fuse quite as far into the clip would be a good idea. Keep the tip of the fuse out in front of the shroud, rather than alongside it.

With the cakes, all were poked except one. So I'm not sure what went wrong on the cakes. My only clue is, most of the ones that failed were zipper cakes with very small tubes, so it's possible the shroud on the initiator kept the fire from hitting the powder in the tube. That's just a guess. All of the initiators did go off, I know that much...and we had 100% continuity before showtime.

On the one cake we didn't poke, I took out the visco and replaced it with gray fast-fuse. We had two identical cakes, one of which fired and the other did not. As with the mortars, the fuse had that black burn-mark on the side....so I'm sure the same thing happened as with the mortars.

Lessons learned: Pull the shrouds back on the initiators when using with poked cakes, and make damn sure the fuse stays inside of (or in front of) the shroud when clipping the initiator to a fuse.

If anyone else has other ideas on what may have happened with those cakes, I'm all ears.

Yes, pull back the shrouds when connecting to poke cakes and don't forget to shunt the other end first before inserting into cake.

For the mortars, you mentioned using yellow quick fuse connected to the ignitor via a plastic clip. My understanding of the yellow quick fuse is that it's still some type of visco and not as easily lit as say, gray fast fuse. Basically, even with those ignitor to visco clips, it's not easy to light the visco.

For mortars Try connecting gray quick fuse to the ignitor next time instead, and then connect the gray quick fuse to the yellow visco. You'll likely have a higher success rate. And you might want to try these type of ematch to visco connectors instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyNrEMZT_Fg

[mb_pyro]

If you bought the talons from cobra give them a call. They got a bad batch in this year and some of them went out. I know this first hand. The will do their best to make good on it.
I have been using talons since they came out and have had 2 years were I received bad batches. One of those i caught prior to the shoot this year not so lucky.
I am planning in switching over to either ematch or igniters in the future. I just don't have the faith in getting reliable talons anymore regardless of the source.

[PAClark]

Apparently you just have better luck than the rest of us. I don't think you would deny that talons are very sensitive and the nichrome wire can be easily broken. Just that possibility alone makes them not worth using. Especially when some of us wire 10 times the number of cakes. Initiators are easy to use and considerably more reliable.

Yes, I am very careful with the nichrome wire and it's a little time consuming to take the extra caution. I think I had 40 cakes per my nephew and 264 mortars all with their individual Talon.... I am going to do some more fusing next year and not so many individual igniters. I am going to get E-Match and MJG's this next year and will also use the remaining Talons I have. I think I have 3 boxes left that I have to use. It'll be a good experiment anyway to use the combination of all. Hopefully this next 4th in 2020 is a great show with the jump up to 1.3 and all. Thanks Rick.

[pyroM!KE]

Throw the talons in the trash.. I used initiators for the first time this year and used the technique dave shows poking a hole then sticking the initiator bout a half inch in then taping over it.. I shot 146 5oo g cakes this year and not a 1 failed to ignite!!! Also using them with this technique the cake will fire instantly instead of waiting on the visco to burn. Gives you more piece of mind imo...

[Fox One]

Thanks for that video, Dave. I've always used Talon or Red Dragon igniters before but plan to switch to the MJG initiators for next year's show. I had always been told to never pull back the shroud on the initiator. Without your video I would have likely ended up using that advice next year and potentially had cakes fail to fire, as I can now see how the shroud being in place could really hinder hitting the lift charge, especially in smaller tubes. So I will just use your method and shunt the wires. Or I might even play it super cautious and just poke and prep the cakes ahead of time and not actually plug the initiators into the cake until I'm setting them up in the field.

[MontanaMike]

poke and prep the cakes ahead of time and not actually plug the initiators into the cake until I'm setting them up in the field

That's what we did. So it seems like the big change we need to make for next year is, pull those shrouds back, especially on the small-tube cakes.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

MontanaMike - I don't have any issues pulling the shroud back. Especially on cakes with small tubes. I also have to do it on many of the "pro line" items I get from SO76. The shroud just won't fit in the plastic ports they use.

PAClark - I had 138 500G cakes as well as 134 comets, slices, mines, gerbs and flame pots. 272 effects in all. (275 if you include the 300 mortars) All wired with initiators. I had a 100% fire rate. I also had 36 of the 140 shot roman candles. Those took talons. I took half of them back to the garage after the show because the talons didn't work.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm tickled pink that you've had such great luck with talons. However, I think you're making the right decision moving over to e-match/initiators.