It’s interesting to peek into other scenes and niches and see how they intersect with things that one may find commonplace, like 3D printing. In this case, [NewToOldGuns] wrote a guest blog post for PyramydAir (a retailer, so be prepared for a lot of product links) about how 3D printing has completely transformed the experience of how he uses one of his favorite airguns, and allowed him to make changes and improvements that would not otherwise have been practical.
Not only are the 3D printed improvements thoughtful and useful, but it’s interesting to see familiar insights into the whole design process. After explaining some 3D printing basics, he points out that rapid iteration is key to effective prototyping, and a 3D printer can allow that to happen in a way not previously possible.
It all started with the small magazine which holds the rifle’s projectiles. It would be really handy to pre-load these for easier reloading, but there were practical problems preventing this. For one thing, there’s nothing to really hold the pellets in place and keep them from just falling out when it’s not loaded into the gun. Also, loading them into the gun without letting anything fall out was awkward at best. The solution was to design a simple holder that would cradle the magazine and cover the front and back to keep everything in place. [NewToOldGuns] also designed it so that it could mate directly to the gun, so the magazine could simply be pushed straight into the receiver while the action was held open.
Once this simple part was working, the floodgates of creativity were opened. Next was a belt attachment to hold multiple reloads, followed by a decision to mount the reloads directly onto the gun instead. An improved lever and sights quickly followed.
I also demonstrated the iterative approach to prototyping when I designed a simple alarm to detect when my 3D printer’s filament had run out. [NewToOldGuns] observes that the real power of 3D printing isn’t being able to make bottle openers or coat hooks on demand. It’s the ability to imagine a solution, then have that solution in hand in record time.
Now, for us at least, fantasy became a reality as [Peterthinks] makes public his 
The device works by manually flicking the spring (rubber band) loaded side switch which then toggles the picking tang up and down whilst simultaneously using another tang to gently prime the opening rotator.
Some solutions come from no more than looking at two dissimilar things while in the right mindset, and realizing they can be mashed together. In this case I had recently segmented a large, hollow, 3D model into smaller 3D-printer-sized pieces and printed them all out, but found myself with a problem. I now had a large number of curved, thin-walled pieces that needed to be connected flush with one another. These were essentially butt joints on all sides — the weakest kind of joint — offering very little surface for gluing. On top of it all, the curved surfaces meant clamping was impractical, and any movement of the pieces while gluing would result in other pieces not lining up.
[Cody]’s Liberator turned out to be a great gun to obtain two or three fewer fingers. Not only was this a single-shot pistol, it was a single barrel pistol; with each round fired requiring a new 3D printed barrel. Tests were carried out, explosions happened, and 
