blaster

12 Articles

Thermoelectric Blaster Flings Ice Projectiles

November 11, 2024 by 37 Comments

Nerf blasters are fun and all, but flinging foam can get old. Picking it up again, even moreso. This blaster from [Concept Crafted Creations] gets around that annoying problem by shooting ice instead. 

The concept was to build a better water gun with longer range—and what better way to do that than by shooting ice instead? The blaster relies on a PVC air tank for propulsion—one of the most controversial design choices you can make if you read the comments around here. It’s charged by a small air compressor, and dumping the air is handled by a solenoid valve. So far, so simple.

What makes this blaster special is where it gets its ammunition from. The blaster uses a custom CNC-machined block from PCBway to act as a freeze chamber. Water enters an aluminum block, and is cooled by thermoelectric elements. Once the projectile has frozen inside the chamber, it’s stuck in place, so the chamber is then heated by a small heating element. This melts the projectile just enough to allow it to be fired.

It’s a complicated but ingenious way of building an ice blaster. It does pack some real punch, too. It shoots the ice projectiles hard enough to shatter wine glasses. That’s enough to tell us you don’t want to be aiming this thing at your pals in a friendly match of Capture the Flag. Stick to paintballs, perhaps. Video after the break. Continue reading “Thermoelectric Blaster Flings Ice Projectiles” →

Building A Hydrogen-Powered Foam Dart Cannon

November 1, 2024 by 18 Comments

Nerf blasters are fun and all, but they’re limited by the fact they have to be safe for children to play with. [Flasutie] faced no such restrictions when building his giant 40 mm foam dart launcher, and it’s all the better for it.

This thing is sizeable—maybe two to four times bigger than your typical Nerf blaster. But that’s no surprise, given the size of the foam ammunition it fires. [Flasutie] shows us the construction process on how the 3D-printed blaster is assembled, covering everything from the barrel and body assembly to the chunky magazine. Loading each round into the chamber is a manual process, vaguely akin to a bolt-action mechanism, but simplified.

It’s the method of firing that really caught our eye, though. Each round has a cartridge and a foam projectile. Inside the cartridge is a quantity of flammable HHO gas generated, presumably, from water via electrolysis. The blaster itself provides power to a spark gap in the cartridge that ignites the gas, propelling the projectile through the barrel and out of the blaster.

We’ve seen plenty of Nerf blasters and similar builds around these parts, including some with a truly impressive rate of fire. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Building A Hydrogen-Powered Foam Dart Cannon” →

Bonkers Nerf Blaster Sprays Balls Everywhere

March 14, 2024 by 3 Comments

Nerf blasters are fun toys, to be sure. However, they’re limited by factors like price and safety and what Hasbro thinks parents will put up with. Few caregivers would ever countenance a build like this one from [ItllProbablyWork].

It’s a blaster designed to fire 48 darts in a second or so, or a truly ludicrous 288 Nerf balls. Like so many rapid fire blaster designs, it’s based on a pair of rotating wheels which fling darts out at rapid speed. The trick to the rapid fire ability is the delivery of ammunition. In this case, the blaster has a rotating drum of 12 barrels, which can each be loaded with 4 darts or 24 balls. As the drum rotates into position, a trigger mechanism unlatches a spring which forces the contents of the barrel out through the wheels and on to the target.

It’s mostly pretty good with darts, but with balls, it tends to send them flying everywhere, including jamming a bunch into the blaster’s internals. It is very funny to watch, though.

We’ve seen some other great blaster builds recently, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Bonkers Nerf Blaster Sprays Balls Everywhere” →

Modding A Nerf Blaster The Old Fashioned Way

September 3, 2023 by 3 Comments

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.

Continue reading “Modding A Nerf Blaster The Old Fashioned Way” →

Adding A Laser Blaster To Classic Atari 2600 Games With Machine Vision

June 3, 2021 by 5 Comments

Remember the pistol controller for the original Atari 2600? No? Perhaps that’s because it never existed. But now that we’re living in the future, adding a pistol to the classic games of the 2600 is actually possible.

Possible, but not exactly easy. [Nick Bild]’s approach to the problem is based on machine vision, using an NVIDIA Xavier NX to run an Atari 2600 emulator. The game is projected on a wall, while a camera watches the game field. A toy pistol with a laser pointer attached to it blasts away at targets, while OpenCV is used to find the spots that have been hit by the laser. A Python program matches up the coordinates of the laser blasts with coordinates within the game, and then fires off a sequence of keyboard commands to fire the blasters in the game. Basically, the game plays itself based on where it sees the laser shots. You can check out the system in the video below.

[Nick Bild] had a busy weekend of hacking. This was the third project write-up he sent us, after his big-screen Arduboy build and his C64 smartwatch.

Continue reading “Adding A Laser Blaster To Classic Atari 2600 Games With Machine Vision” →

3D Printing A Long Range Nerf Blaster

April 15, 2021 by 11 Comments

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!

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A Stunning Ray Gun Built From Junk

December 12, 2019 by 11 Comments

If ever there was a quintessential weapon of science fiction, it would have to be the ray gun. [lonesoulsurfer] built this one-of-a-kind stunner from his impressive collection of junk. It’s centered around a vintage Bakelite soldering gun, a vacuum tube, and a portable stove burner, all of which contribute to the fantastic mid-century look.

Inside is a slightly modified version of a ray gun sound effects circuit from MAKE: that squeezes square waves from a lo-fi synth builder’s favorite IC, the 40106 hex inverting Schmitt trigger. [lonesoulsurfer] was able to reuse the soldering gun’s trigger to start the pew-pew-pew, and he can adjust the death ray’s output with potentiometers. The gun is powered by an old cell phone battery and a combo Li-ion charger/step-up module from the world’s largest virtual auction house. Blast past the break to watch the build video.

If one little green LED isn’t enough for you, maybe you’d prefer this light painting gun.

Continue reading “A Stunning Ray Gun Built From Junk” →