Projects - 3D Printed Nerf Blasters (2)

Following on from the first part, I now have all the parts required to build my blaster. Most of the parts are 3d printed from the following link https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3981538 and are free to download and print yourself. The metal parts you can either source yourself or go to CaptainSlug's Etsy page and purchase a bundle from there.

A selection of the 3d printed parts are in the image below. I printed with 25% infill and no supports for anything of the pieces (which is how they were designed), and they've all come out great. I've not had to reprint anything, I just had to do a bit of post-processing to tidy up some loose threads and rougher holes for the screws.

I'm not going to go into a full breakdown of the build, just a summary and anything I learnt from building my new blaster.

The image to the right is the first stage after combining the above parts with the metal parts I ordered. The metal parts bundle came with all screws/fasteners as well as plenty of extras for upgrades/add-ons which I get to later.

After combining all the pieces together it came out amazingly well. I went for green and orange for a great bright coloured blaster. It is HIGHLY advised to not use regular gun colours (e.g. black and dark greys) as people may think it is real from a distance.

The magazine is just a standard sized elite dart one I ordered online and clicks in really nicely and holds in place even with shaking the blaster around. The image above is with all the default parts to get the blaster firing.

My final step for now was installing some of the add-ons that I printed as well. At the top centre is an additional rail attachment which is a great position for a scope. The rails are designed as a standard picatinny rail which means a lot of rail attachments fit perfectly well as long as your printer tolerances are good enough.

I also installed the rail behind the hand grip for added support for both the blaster and holding in position. As discussed earlier all of these parts are optional and there are a few varieties to choose from. I had run out of orange so I went with more green, which helps highlight all the orange parts more.

In the next part to this will be a SCAR barrel to help improve accuracy at distance.