A Disc Shooter For When Rubber Bands Or Nerf Darts Aren’t Enough

There are times in everybody’s life when they feel the need to shoot at things in a harmless manner. For those moments there are rubber bands and Nerf darts, but even then they feel like mere toys. If that is the point at which you find yourself, then maybe [Austin]’s home-made electric disc shooter can help.

Operation of the shooter is simple enough. A stack of 3D-printed plastic discs is loaded into a tubular magazine, from which individual disks are nudged by a motor-driven cam controlled by the trigger. Once the disc leaves the magazine it reaches a vacuum cleaner belt driven by a much more powerful motor, that accelerates the disc to ejection velocity.

The video below the break shows the gun’s construction, as well as a sequence involving the destruction of plenty of balloons, soda cans, and food items. The 3D-printed ammunition seems to us to be the weak link as in our experience it is inevitable that there is a high ammunition loss rate with these type of weapons, but maybe [Austin] has a line on some cheap filament. Either way, his disc gun looks like the kind of toy that could provide an entertaining diversion for many readers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgaQ2l9lc0E

If disc shooters are too tame for you, there is always the Great Coil Gun War.

27 thoughts on “A Disc Shooter For When Rubber Bands Or Nerf Darts Aren’t Enough

    1. There are lots of ways to get discs that are more durable, safer to use, cheaper and/or faster to make.

      You could sharpen a pipe into a punch and stamp disks out of stiff foam, or you could use a hot-wire machine, laser cutter, or CNC bladed cutter to slice disks. You could just slice rings out of a pool noodle and stuff plastic inside for weight, or perhaps you just scour eBay and thrift stores for ring-shooter ammunition.

  1. Don’t forget, Nerf has made more than one type of disc shooter ober the years. Their last version were quite good and spun then disks for accuracyy and distance, plus one could use that to hit opponents around corners with carefully placed off trhe wall shots. They wouldn’t break balloons, but an electronic, full auto with 40 round drum mag was available.

    1. Yep I had one in the early-mid 70s. The plastic discs were PE or PP and you just loaded them into the top of the spring loaded magazine. When you pulled the trigger the mechanism just swiped the top disc and sent it spinning out of a slot in the barrel. Loads of fun and pretty safe I seem to remember.

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