Nerf has made plenty of fully-automatic blasters over the years, but their toys typically lack punch, precision, and fire rate. [3DprintedLife] set about building a blaster to rectify that last shortcoming, aiming for design that could fire 100 darts per second.
The design uses half length darts which tend to fly a little nicer from high-powered blasters. It fires them using belts driven by powerful motors, similar to wheel blasters. The darts themselves are loaded into a drum magazine which has sliders to push the darts into the wheels as the drum rotates by.
It all sounds straightforward enough, but getting it all working in harmony is a challenge—particularly at a fire rate of 100 darts per second. The build video explains the trials and tribulations involved in getting near that fire rate, with darts getting shredded and magazines throwing out parts along the way. A good helping of iterative design helps get everything playing nice, with the darts neatly leaving the magazine and flying downrange at great speed. The slow-motion videos of darts flying out of the blaster in rapid succession are a special treat.
Files are available via Onshape for those looking to dive deeper into the design. We’ve seen some other neat Nerf blasters before, too. Video after the break.
Ol’ Painless, by NERF.
It would be funny if he against a horde of chip munks and the Nerf gun loaded full with peanuts :-D
The Vulcan cannon of an A-10 warthog fires at 3,900 rounds per minute.
This nerf gun aims (ha!) to fire at 6,000 rounds per minute.
Ambitious.
I thought the exact same thing with the exact same analogy when I saw the article. Googling “Metal Storm” is also interesting (one million rounds per minute). Although we’re admittedly talking apples versus oranges.
I thought the presenter did a great job of describing the goal and the interval steps to get there.
Considering the GAU-8 has to manage a 395 gram projectile along with it’s propellant and casing, which also has to be reliably ejected, He’s got several orders of magnitude less problems to overcome. I think he can do it.
By the way, It’s the GAU-8 Avenger. The M61 Vulcan is what you’d find on Fighters and multi role aircraft, starting with the F-105, and continuing today in the F-22.
The ‘hog’s gun isn’t a Vulcan. The actual Vulcan fires 20mm, typically at a rate of…about 6000 rounds per minute, oddly enough.
“You’ll shoot your eye out…”
From a challenge-to-solution perspective, this project is impressive. Good luck! Shooting the Nerf bullets is lots of fun. Picking them up and reloading them is not.
That’s the next phase: modifying a handheld vacuum cleaner to pick up the darts and align them in a box.
Better: a diy vacuum which collects the darts back into an magazine.
Next challenge: make a tool that can fill a magazine just as fast.
Better: A modified veggie slicer which cuts darts from a roll of sponge.
And for helloween i want this as the hellboy revolver with humongous pool noodle cutouts as Darts or Bullets. Take the Soda Can size Nerf Darts, Zombie :-D
That is epic.