There was something exceptionally satisfying about those playground games of cops and robbers when we were young, but they were missing something in that a pretend gun made with your fingers lacks a certain Je ne sais quoi. Our youthful blood-lust demanded something a bit more real, and though the likes of NERF and other toys could supply it their lost projectiles came at a price not all parents could sustain. We’d have given anything for [Brick Experiment Channel]’s rapid-firing Lego playing card gun! (Video, embedded below.)
The principle is simple enough, one of the larger Lego road wheels is spun up to a respectable speed through a gear train from a pair of motors, it’s positioned over a channel through which playing cards are fed, and it picks each one up and accelerates it to a claimed 20 miles per hour. The card is fired off into the distance, ready to take down your Lego figure or plastic drinking cup enemies with maximum prejudice.
It’s clear some significant thought has gone into the firing platform design, with the cards sliding along smooth rails and the wheel sitting in a gap between the rails so that the natural springiness of the card can engage with it. The cards also emerge with a spin, due to the wheel being offset. The mechanism is completed with a third motor which acts as a feeder pushing individual cards from the deck into the main firing platform. This achieves an astonishing six cards per second, as can be seen in the video below the break.
We can see that this is a huge amount of fun, and we hope should any youngsters get their hands on it that there are not lurid tales of kids with playing card injuries. It’s not the first novelty projectile gun we’ve brought you, there have been numerous rubber band guns but our favourite is the automatic paper plane folder and launcher.
Je ne c’est quoi?
I don’t know what
It’s hard to explain
I can’t really say.
C’est la vie…
Awesome!
The build is great.. lots of fun.. but the editing and music really make this exponentially better than the sum of the parts alone. Really well done.
Nice!. The wheel could have much more grip on the cards if there was a second wheel below the card, instead of relying in the stiffness of the card. a more consistent grip could also help with the accuracy.
Hit me, hit me, hit me…
I once read about a Lego “machine gun” that used AOL CDs (remember those?) as ammo.
What about the tampon gun from a few years ago? https://hackaday.com/2017/01/17/this-tampon-gun-wont-cramp-your-style/
Ok, dumb question:
Why two motors to fire the cards?
I don’t get it. You show it working with one motor then at 45 seconds in, you add a second one.
Sure you up the gearing even more. But why the second motor?
Load reduction across the first motor.
Is there a parts list by chamce?