The Pistol Splat was a very weak blaster built for children, designed to shoot toy-grade paintball-like ammunition. [Matt Yuan] recognised the potential of the single-shot design, though, and repurposed it as a powerful Nerf blaster.
The blaster is a simple spring-plunger design. Upon pulling the trigger, the spring drives the piston forward, shooting the ammunition out the barrel. As stock, the Pistol Splat featured an incredibly strong spring and an unrestricted barrel, giving it plenty of performance capability. With some finagling, it’s capable of shooting a Nerf dart at 100 feet per second in stock form.
[Matt] improved the blaster by removing its dry-fire protection spring, which consists of a second spring to resist the plunger’s motion. Modification also involved fitting a barrel sized to properly seal on the darts. These two mods boosted the dart velocity to 110 feet per second. Adding a spacer to ensure the spring fully drove the piston forward for its full travel further boosted the dart velocity to a mighty 145 feet per second.
It bears noting that serious Nerf blasters like these demand eye protection. Video after the break.
Well, well, well, what do we got here?
No dinamite, no take off rocket assist, no gun powder, no ethanol dragster engine, no antimatter. The Myth Busters are not impressed.
Not even a bigger spring.
Clearly not ready for the zombi apocalipse.
Good to see an actual “person taking something mechanical apart, throwing away bits and adding other bits from the scrapheap and it’s twice as dangerous” hack rather than Yet Another Prototype Electronics Exhibition (YAPEE™).
That said, I think that he’ll regret using the high-mass spacer (socket adapter) in this, but it might also be the conservation of momentum magic sauce that makes it transfer all the energy from the spring to the propelling air mass.
I had one of these when I was 13, did the same thing and my friends were not excited to play nerf with me. A few welts and arguments later, it was banned from our games and became a dart gun that shot blow darts.