3D Printing A Long Range Nerf Blaster

The modified Nerf scene used to be about getting the absolute maximum performance out of Hasbro’s off-the-shelf foam dart blasters. The community quickly found the limits of plastic parts made down to a price, and an underground market for heavier springs and CNC-machined upgrades sprung up. Eventually, however, the advent of 3D printing and cheaper home machine tools led to a rise in popularity of bespoke blasters. [Zach] has long advocated for their supremacy, and has made a long-range blaster aimed at newcomers to the hobby. (Video, embedded below.)

The blaster is built around the popular Caliburn spring-powered design, originally created by [Captain Slug]. Modifications by [Zach] involve a longer barrel, relocated side-feeding magazine port, and other modifications designed to suit the long-range sniping role. There’s even a special “rifled” stabiliser on the end designed to reduce the effects of muzzle blast from disturbing the dart as it leaves the barrel.

It’s a design that very much builds on the efforts of the wider Nerf community, and is all the better for it. [Zach] has shared files and links to parts bundles to help get enterprising builders up and running with a minimum of fuss. We’d love to take the long blaster out for a round or three ourselves – it may just be time to fire up the 3D printer!

11 thoughts on “3D Printing A Long Range Nerf Blaster

  1. I remember I read in an article a while back that the nerf guns were designed so that an accidental shot to someone’s eye wouldn’t cause major injury or blindness. The key factor was limiting the energy of the projectile.. I don’t believe that these tuned guns would provide the same safety function

    1. We treat our blasters with the proper amount of respect and wear safety glasses, the community is huge and every major event requires proper eye protection, games with full contact like hvz are usually limited to 130 fps or less while some other game types like ion rush and any of the foam pro tour games you have 250 fps limit. The engage distance is alllllllot longer usually in those

    2. Not even close. Silly as it may seem at first, these are used by teens and adults who treat it more as a sport, and eye protection is mandatory. An average Nerf Elite blaster shoots at 70fps. These modified guns typically shoot in the 150-300 fps range. Wal Mart sells a Dart Zone blaster for $25 that gets you to the 150 fps range, and a much nicer one for $50.

  2. Wow, I didn’t know 3D printed nerf guns were so developed. Awesome work! I can explain a little about that “rifled” barrel attachment improving accuracy. They have a similar thing for competition air rifles, it’s called an air stripper. https://www.airgundepot.com/hatsan-air-stripper.html They’re kind of like a suppressor, but instead of bottling up the gas, they deflect it so that it doesn’t blow against the back of the projectile as much.

  3. There’s a huge market for custom airsoft parts in Japan I saw when I lived there for 3 years, whole businesses like Tanio Koba based around custom rifled barrels and more powerful gas ports. Didn’t know there was such a mod scene for nerf too. Cool.

    I have always wanted a true belt fed nerf dart (not ball) gatling, like a real minigun design, never found one though.

    A big annoyance has always been cleaning up darts- has anyone ever put some kind of safe metallic component molded into dart rubber base that would allow pickup by magnet wand? Or would that be considered too weighty/dangerous?

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