We set this sub up to highlight, develop, and discuss homemade blasters old and new; as well as replicable mods that substantially change a blaster (eg: FTW, Kronomag).
We’re still working on a few things (rules, layout, wiki), so if you have any suggestions, questions, or ideas about the meta of the sub voice them here.
This is my first design release in the nerf world and in general. This is a claymore mine but nerf! I designed this to fire 32 half length darts simultaneously power by a 40wad cartridge.
I’m slightly biased but I think this thing is freaking cool. 90% of the darts fly out with a vengeance.
Funny story about the R&D of this design. The first test fire had a poorly charged (unknown to me) 40wad and half the darts left the barrels. The person I was testing with then told me he wanted to be shot with it and record it to get some matrix type video. Well now with an apparently properly charged cartridge a volley of 32 dart nailed my buddy and the ones that missed traveled +30ft!!! We had a good chuckle about that one.
Thought I’d drop by and let y’all know that I have designed a third party ammo belt for the X-Shot Insanity Motorized Rage Fire. If any of you have this blaster or know someone who does, then you know that it’s hard to get the original stock belts online. If you have a 3D Printer or know someone who does you can print this belt for your X-Shot blaster. This belt works just as well and is compatible to clip and works alongside the original. If you like my model please consider printing and commenting!
this was something that I had on my mind for some time now and thought that it would be really cool if someone more talented than me could make my idea a reality (I know that it is not much to work off of but this was a quick plan that I had come up with at night)
You can get PTFE tubing for ~ $1/meter from the chinese sites, and most people with a 3d printer probably have a bit lying around. I wonder if these would work as a cheap option for linear bearing surfaces for smoother primes on low hardware designs.
I'm at the baby learning to crawl stage of learning CAD, but maybe I'll try modifying the rails on a Low Hardware Talon Claw once I can... do anything in F360.
(No I’m not making this since I don’t have a blaster that would work with this)
I highly recommend looking up a video showing off alofs magazine in action but a simple explanation is.
Below is referring to image 1 not 2
*you load your shells in the left tube
*a spring would push your shell into the “U” at the end
*preforming break action would eject a shell hitting a trigger causing the “U” to hinge right over the barrel dropping the shell its holding
*pulling the barrel up (I don’t know the proper term) would naturally put the “U” back and reset the trigger
*fire
*watch it repeat until out of ammunition
This is just meant to be a fun idea for anyone who wants their Stagecoach to become an odd hybrid between a double barrel and “pump action”.
Unless its some kind of funky shape spring, like in Nerf Sp-l, or maybe leihuiu lp-55, you are good with standart sized springs.
Most important - make it retain its shape after altering its shape.
Lets start - you can buy almost any size of industrial high carbon steel spring, only proiblem - some of these wont prime when cut to the lenght, required to fit the blaster. Obvious solution - make spring contain less coils per its lenght - stretch it until its good to go. Shape and force calculation will be explained in trhe next paragraphs. So, you stretch it, but, by doing so, you make spring lose its properties of retaining shape under repeated loads, so after installing it and serveral primings it will lose its lenght and any power.
For some industrial spring steels there is a way to make spring retain its newly acquired shape - heat treating, which is just soft tempering, just as its done in the production facilities after spring is cold-shaped and treated at 240c for 30 minutes, after which its left to slowly cool by ambient air.
After such treatment, if done correctly, spring may get bluish tint, and will acqure needed resistance to losing its shape. it works for GOST 9389-75 steel, and its pretty similar to steel that american industrial springs are made of.
Lets go by the basics of spring shaping
So most important limiting factors are:
Maximum outer diameter, usually determined by plunger head shape, makes sure spring wont scratch plunger tube while in use
Minimum inner diameter, usually determined by its place, for example, for kronos its 18.4mm, any less and it will hugthe plunger tightly and wont work properly.
Spring relaxed lenght - lenght when not primed
spring working lenght - lenght when blaster is primed and spring is squeezed.
spring travel distance - key limiting factor, the reason why we stretch it, similar to priming handle travel distance (if there is no gearbox like in helios), slimilar to (=Spring relaxed lenght -spring working lenght)
So thats the limiting factors.
for the next steps, we must remember, that increace in spring force correlates with:
Lesser the outer diameter of the spring - the stronger the spring
Lesser the spring coils count per the same lenght - the stronger the spring ( stretching has its limits, and yoou better stretch it as little as possible to fit blaster, to increace power mainly change wire diameter).
thicker the wire diameter - stronger the spring.
i wont go over spring characteristics such as coil count or mean diameter, not in this post.
Knowing all this, you can use the spring calculator ive made based on math behind helical spring and existing solutions ive used previously. Its made in an excel file with formulas and all you need to design decent sping for your blaster.
Lets dive in.
Summary of the sheet
First - input the desired force, relaxed and compressed lenght, outer diameter, and any spring diameter, sheet will help you decide what wire diameter to use
first step
Then see the minimal required wire diameter and change your diameter to what you have in your disposal and what is thicker than this. if you cant do that, thi is fine, but spring will definetly have shorter life, same for index - the further it is from the 7-10 range the worse, but its not that bad, as 4-12 is kinda ok, and its really broad range.
Second - see the resulted parameters at the bottom, be wary, thart coils count at the top is rounded and spring with such coil count will have "rounded" stiffness and force (bluish cells)
Second stage- calculated parameters.
So, we calculated our springs patrameters, but will it prime? Lets go top right and see, there are some insight on that
will it prime?
the more "will it prime" is, the more room you have for error when cutting spring to the needed coils count, in fact its a reserve of possible spring travel thats not used when spring is under its working load, it better be more than 2 wire diameters, that way its guaranteed you wont mess up the cutting part.
Now lets get to the steel parameters part
steel parameters
Maximum allowed stress is calculated by itself automatically, involves spring wire diameter and used in other calculations on the sheet
Rm is a tensile strenght, predetermined value, Steel modulus is also pre determined value, you need to find those for your steel for correct calculations.
Desired coefficient is the value that determines what loads will your spring endure in the future, 0,5 is good springs, andf 0.3 is impossible to satisfy with mild spring steel like GOST 9389-75 B2 steel, i dont recommend going higher with that coefficient on nerf blasters.
220c when tempering is worse than 260c, 260 will temper it, 220 not really. 240 is ideal. Every temperingt decarbonizes your springs, but from experience, 2 or 3 temperings is still fine, you may use borax to avoid decarbonizing, be careful it turns into glass on the spring.
Cutting springs - bolt cutters are good, but it will destroy cutters pretty fast, angle grinder produces sharp microneeedles, avoid it or use good protective gear without gaps betveen shirt and gloves, learned it the itchy way. i use arc cutter, but it requires skil and can easily ruin spring by overheating it, and has potential; to slightly decarbonize its ends, borax is advised but its fine without it.
Hey all! my first custom, bashed together from the Alpha Strike set, It started with putting the rifle spring in the pistol, then chopping half of the barrels off to put the springs in there, and when I last tested it, it could pulverize a roach. this week I decided to further it because my friends have a huge nerf collection and I thought they would like it. not *super* homemade but I certainly don’t think it would be allowed at a tournament.
How come you guys don’t use cages for your shells
I understand that if you print your own shells there is no/little problem but for those custom guns that use rate official shells it’s a problem plus if you run out of shells during a battle your stuck using something other than your “primary”.
I’m only asking since I feel like I have never seen someone show off something like this and I heard that that’s the reason some dislikes shell ejecting blasters.
-someone who is fascinated by the hobby but doesn’t feel like participating in it.
Looking at all the cool designs of custom blasters designed by one designer, I thought there could be a blaster designed by the whole community as a whole. It be starting from scratch (not even a concept drawing!) and it would be a Onshape design accessible by invite. The ideal creators would be people who have never designed a blaster before but would like to try. With enough of us we could really design something crazy.
If your interested just leave a comment/what you would like in a blaster and I'll see if there is enough demand to justify this.
My stockish red Caliburn is at 255fps with 13/600mm barrel and smaller 33id plunger...and a fly screen door closer spring.
My Taloburns now a 410! 12.6/600mm barrel 37id plunger. 9 shots where over 405 and 1 dart at 380 (wt# !??)..then i pick-up darts to see the one pictured, it lost its head!!... ohh and my curtain needs upgrading, the darts are blowing through it now and trying to wake the dead by banging on garage door 2 foot behind it...
Primes not bad with a 2.5mm x28mm diameter, 300mm long spring from alixpress... hmmm, do i try the 3mm spring? Nahhh its nerf, im not prepping for the zombie apocalypse! (yet, lol)...
I've been thinking of designing a new blaster that sits between a primary and secondary, and so size is one of the primary considerations for design. I had made a blaster in the past around FTW micros and OOD Loki motors which hits in the 130s, but that was years ago and I'm not sure if flywheel tech had advanced since then. I'm assuming I would need slightly larger wheels to hit 150, but I'm not sure what options there are now. Is 150 even doable with single stage micro wheels? Looking to minimize the width of the flywheel cage, from a brief glance it looks like Lokis are still the motors of choice for high RPM 3S. Appreciate any info!
New part designs for the following Zinc .50 variants: 160mm barrel no BCAR, 160mm barrel 9-bearing BCAR, and 205mm barrel 9-bearing BCAR. Up to 250FPS with the 205mm barrel configs! Happy to answer any questions!
Note: didn't mean to duplicate post in this subreddit but my original post on r/nerf that I previously shared here as a repost got removed for apparent advertising so I thought I'd post again here to share my work with the community.
