Do you think it would be feasible to thread a screw into the plastic piece to hold it in place on the trigger pull?
(I mean one of the ones with a larger head that Nerf typically uses to hold extension springs in place)

Do you think it would be feasible to thread a screw into the plastic piece to hold it in place on the trigger pull?
(I mean one of the ones with a larger head that Nerf typically uses to hold extension springs in place)

I have a 3k tank, whenever any sort of pressure is used though, the pin actually pulls out of the seal, and nothing useful happens. Are there any fixes for something like this?

Does this thing fire as fast as a stock RF20, or does the belt advancement slow it down?

It is slower than an RF20, but faster than a Vulcan. The belt slows it down, and moving the belt rear seal also slows things down (because the seal has a return spring, that spring is also the reason for the pressure related problems)

It may help to sleeve 2 sections of 1 1/2" bike inner tube over the bladder. I had to do that to mine on my semi-auto DTG. Wow that was tough but worth the PSI boost. I had to lube the tubes with dish soap, ditch the stock clamps and put a base layer of e-tape down before switching to hose clamps (the inner tube was being crushed through the clamp slots without the e-tape). It boosted the pressure from 30ish psi to 45ish psi (if memory serves). It will help with pressure, but not capacity.

Just make sure you don't get a thorn proof inner-tube. They're thicker on the OD of the tube, thinner on the ID.

Good idea, I'll be sure to try that
Capacity isn't really an issue, it's pressure. The RF20 bladder clearly has the capacity for 20+ shots)
I just need to increase the pressure on that amount of air. And I'm sure that this isn't quite how pneumatics work, bit it's a step in the right direction.

Volume is certainly one of the most important. The only bonus a smaller ID gives is that its easier for them to reach higher pressures at the cost of volume. You trade volume for potential psi as you get smaller. It's pneumatics. If you can fully pump your rf20 bladder without being fatigued I'd keep the pump you have.

Any chance we could see a firing vid? I'd love to see it working.

Ahh, that makes sense now

As far as the firing vid, there will be one, eventually right now it only fires a few times before stopping (RF20 bladder can't hold enough pressure for long enough) so I'm working on it, and will get back to you with that

I love it man.
Where and how did you come up with this idea?

Ever tried reloading an RF20? It's called 20 because that's how long it takes

Have you tried this with a lower ID pump? (such as a magstrike pump)? Larger pumps are better for volume, but don't work as well when the area being filled is less.

That makes no sense to me, isn't volume the only important factor when referring to performance of a pump?

It has been more than a year in the making but I have finally finished my belt fed RF-20 blaster. Most of the actual construction process in undocumented (Because frankly it was primarily trial and error). I will, however be going over the general function of the blaster itself, and if anyone is interested, I can draw up some actual plans to build it (and will probably be doing so for a MKII design anyway)

First a (probably incomplete) list of things used:

Shadow hawk shell
RF-20 (almost all of it)
Vulcan (the rotation mech, and associated shell pieces, and some other parts from other areas)
Zip ties (small and medium sized)
Random pieces of plastic/polycarb/whatever
Spare screws
Bell Airstrike 1000 pump, or whatever your pump of choice is (not pictured above)
Some nuts, bolts, and washers
Plastic welder (the epoxy stuff)
Tools, lots of them

First the shell:

The shadow hawk shell is actually made of more rigid plastic than most Nerf brand blasters, it is also assembled in sections (each half is actually six pieces) this is both easier to work with because you don’t have to deal with the whole thing at once, and a pain because a lot of material has to be removed from certain areas, and the thing still has to hold together, lots of screw ports will be omitted.
The only parts of the Vulcan shell needed are the barrel insert, and the area where the chain goes. You don’t want the front wall, but the back one is very important for lining things up (more on that later)
the front part of the Shadow hawk shell gets lots of attention from the Dremel. Its original bore is around .25 inches, and the Vulcan barrel is a lot closer to 1.5 inches, so go crazy, but make sure it is straight. To accommodate your hand pump of choice, just cut the existing pump grip slide out (I left a part of the stop from the original grip on for aesthetic purposes.)
For the middle part of the shell, all you have to do is cut a section out of the shell wide enough to fit the part of the shell from the Vulcan. When epoxying this in place however, it is crucial that it is centered as perfectly as possible (I mechanically fastened it with zip ties and then used the epoxy, just to be sure). I attached pieces from the front of the Vulcan for structural reasons (also because I thought that they looked cool)
The rear section is relatively simple, some holes need to be drilled for air lines, and the space around where the RF-20 piston needs to move needs to be cleared up (you will probably have to go back and clear some more out later, I had to go back in there three or four times due to the piston rubbing on things and wasting energy

Next for the piston and related parts (pretty much everything but the rotation mechanism)

This is also around the point where documentation and specific dimensions is almost nonexistent (not that there has been much of it up to this point) so I apologize for that
The piston is secured to the rearmost part of the Shadow hawk shell (as it turns out it is the same thickness as the gap in the mount on the back of the piston)

when supplied with air (using the stock RF20 trigger valve)

It moves forward until it meets up with and then pushes the part that seals against the Vulcan chain. The front RF20 seal has been super glued to the back of it, and part of the Vulcan plunger tube has been used to prevent the return spring from pulling the whole assembly out (another part of the plunger tube has been used as a guide)



And now for the rotation mech:


First off the stock mech in the Vulcan was actually broken in the one I found at the thrift store and the RF20 is a push-type rotation mechanism whereas the Vulcan is a pull-type. Anyone who has used a maverick will tell you how unreliable it is when the firing chamber advances at the same time as firing, so I had to start completely from scratch. The other important thing here is the location of the part that actually does the pulling, it has to be on the side in the same place as the Vulcan otherwise the rest state of the Vulcan belt won’t be lined up with the barrel and piston (and it won’t fire). Since this is the only part being attached to the Shadow hawk shell, I just made fine adjustments on the angle with zip ties so the belt sat in the correct place.

To get the spacing right between the rotation mech tab on the piston (which needs to be trimmed a bit to allow for full travel) and where the puller arm is just used a bolt, some washers and some nuts. That way it can be finely tuned and adjusted, when you get it right, use some blue or red Loctite on the threads to prevent the nuts from moving.

The other important part of the rotation mech is the chain tensioner (that little spring loaded piece in the big orange part that goes over the Vulcan chain) I just screwed a bolt and washer down through the center piece, a small amount also needs to be trimmed from the sides of the spring retaining circle just so that it fits in the Shadow hawk shell and can travel up and down freely. This part is important because it keeps pressure on the top of the chain so that it only moves when the rotation mech pulls on it (or when you are pulling it through)


I probably missed some stuff (as I have said before documentation wasn’t very good) if you have any questions, ask me. And if you want plans, PM me and I’ll get them to you when they exist.
Also I can’t get a firing video as of right now (or rather, I can, but you would only get a few shots before it stopped) the piston needs a higher pressure than the stock RF20 due to the fact that it is doing more things.

Another thing you might want to consider in your version 2 is the twisting force that you are exerting on the breech (assuming you have an upgraded spring).

I have never heard of Recon boltsleds snapping, but longshot ones do all the time, especially if you only prime them on one side (Just something to think about).

I understand that it wouldn't seal perfectly, however with a tape seal you are left with a small opening (roughly 1mm by 1 mm judging by the picture) as opposed to the much larger opening, and the blaster still works well with the larger one.

This is a bit weird, but the O ring already slides past the vents fine, so what is the point of trying to perfectly seal them off? Wouldn't wrapping the PT in duct tape or similar solve most of the venting issues? (Similar to the "cover the air release hole" on the Nstrike reverse plungers)

Another big thing that might impact attendance by the younger nerfers is the perceived presence of (or actual presence of) alcohol. Most parents would/are probably fine with a one day war, but an extended war/camping trip, with people who are of legal drinking age is probably different.

(Even if alcohol/similar things are banned outright, there will probably still be parents against it)

Has anything like this been done before?

If enough people are attending, and I was free that weekend, Id probably be willing to make the drive from CT (and would most likely be bringing a couple people and some camping gear with me)

I was thinking of doing something exactly like what you just posted, but I was wondering if, while using slamfire, the discs would be in the light long enough to charge up. Has anyone used this who can comment?

I don't know how long it takes to charge up the disks, but I know that the glow darts charge up pretty fast (they are still glowing pretty well while being shot out of a flywheel blaster rather quickly. Nerf probably uses similar chemicals in the darts and disks to achieve the glow, so Id imagine that it would be about the same.

It is my understanding that some deploys were actually shipped from the factory with some sort of defect that doesn't allow them to fire properly. I have had a couple (and a few of my friends have found them too) right out of the box, they just don't work.

Not having done any testing, but slugs probably wouldn't work since the flywheel needs to compress the dart slightly. The metal washers in slugs would prevent that from happening.

The recon is a clip system, it has a breech and stuff

This method will also work with the maverick (assuming the turret is lined up)
The nitefinder
Jolt
Possibly the strong arm
Basically any blaster that you load the dart into the barrel on

I'm slightly confused, how is this any different than giving any other blaster half a prime and just letting go?

(unless I'm not reading something correctly)

Most times yes, but sometimes I also take a pair of needle nose pliers, grab each end of the spring, and twist them in opposite directions to expand the spring, and it works fine.

You could also shave the edges off the post a little bit with an xacto knife.

Not sure if it has been said yet, but it has definitely been implied. Avoid anything that uses batteries, corded is the way to go.

as far as cutting disks these are what I use. I have heard that diamond disks are prone to shattering if you aren't cutting the right materials.

Don't ask questions in older threads, send the original poster a message

A good direct plunger mod is the "nined" recon
It is a recon, so it has to be adapted, but I actually did this with a longstrike, it's fairly simple.

(also, not entirely sure what the title was, but it was made by nine, or something like that. Might be a good place to start looking)

Honestly, I'm planning on Angel breeching my LS so the lock doesn't do anything useful, however, like i said, I know people who have just the stock breech, or a half brass and still took out the lock.

The point of this post is not a "You should do this" it is more of a "If this is annoying you, here is the solution"

If you want to keep the trigger lock (as I do), then doing this mod you will lose the trigger lock ability.

maybe so, however, as far as I can tell, if you leave the lock in the priming issue doesn't occur (granted, not much testing along those lines was done, so that could be entirely wrong)

I recently (finally) bought a Longshot, and after doing some basic mods (mainly just lock removal at this point) I noticed that it is impossible to prime it using the handle on right side you have to use both, or the one left side. I talked to a couple people who also had Longshots, and they said it was a normal thing.

I found a solution:

If you remove the boltsled lock, just cut the tail off of the boltsled. It isn't actually needed anymore

(I assume that this has been done before, but I didnt see it mentioned specifically in any of the Longshot posts)

The raider also has an issue with one of the locks where if you take it apart and reassemble, it will have issues priming more than once. I don't know if the rampage has a similarly annoying lock but on the raider it was the white part that locked the boltsled in place.

(to rephrase, I know that the rampage has the lock, but it dosent look like the one in the raider based on the picture, so it may have been redesigned and is no longer a problem area)

Which method are you using?

Do you just glue the tips? Or do you drill into the foam with the hot glue gun?

Look in the darts forum for more info

Expanding foam is actually very rigid when it cures (as seen on the mythbusters "AB foam car" episode)

Also while it might expand out of some things, nerf plastic is very strong (it's high quality ABS plastic) compared to other types of plastic. The foam may squeeze itself out through some seams, but you can just cut it and trim it at that point.

Something you could try is just making the existing Maverick a direct plunger (it would still be low volume, but it would be marginally more efficient)

All youd have to do is spin it around (and since youre already completely fabricating the shell it shouldn't be too hard
drill a hole in the back of the PT (now the front)
plug up the end of the plunger rod (as close to the o ring as possible)

you would have to make a special catch for it though

Also, like many others have previously said, amazing blaster design

As far as using automotive paints on Nerf blasters, I have had good experiences (and they are much more durable than most normal spray paints, even some of the enamel based paints). I don't have any experience with airbrushes though, I use the pre-canned Duplicolor stuff that you can find at Advance Auto Parts.

Also, just to point out, not all paints are made for plastics, some of them don't bond very well with non-porous surfaces (like plastic)

I usually use duck tape wrapped around the barrel (just like the way E tape is used) I have found it to be better (maybe because there is a bit more surface area contacting)

quertyman is right, there is a leak somewhere (based on your description of the problem)

I have actually rebuilt a couple of these, if you need any help, feel free to PM me

The gun functions fine with two rubber bands, any more and the dart pusher goes flying.

In order to stop the dart pusher from flying into the front and damaging it, couldnt you have the opening at the back of the blaster instead of the front? you would still need to reinforce both sides, but the dart pusher would be hitting a solid part of the original material, instead of something cut and glued together.

I thought the pinpoint sights were part of the "early 2013" release group

You have to upload the image to an image hosting site (photobucket for example) then get the direct link to the image and paste that into the "add image" box when you are writing the post

Under the "forums" tab, if you scroll all they way to the bottom, it is right there look for "death by foam archive"

As far as I understand, the coastal areas were hit pretty bad (I saw a picture of some flooding at the wharf in Boston)
but inland wasn't really anything, we did have school cancelled for two days though.

In all the storm that hit the Hartford area wasn't anywhere near as bad as the completely normal rain storm we had two weeks ago (just to put it in perspective)

Couple things, first off, I like the internal pump, very nice
second, That is a genius lever trigger!

(in all, beautiful blaster)

I see, I bet some cpvc would work better then.

Actually, hamoidar is right, the barrels themselves are too close together for CPVC to fit

I see, I bet some cpvc would work better then.

I was going to look into PETG (but that's less because it might be the best choice, and more because I haven't done a PETG barrel yet)