I'll be there. If anyone wants a spare bed to crash on within 10 minutes of the venue tomorrow night, get in touch!

More food for thought - it'd be really cool to start seeing people re-grip their blasters with drill handles. That way you wouldn't need fancy battery connectors and you could hot swap batteries just as quickly as you can change a mag.

Hey, long time no see! Welcome back friend! This is awesome work!

I'd encourage you to reconsider that priming mechanism - it looks like you'd be putting a lot of torque into the delrin rails as you prime? 

I'd recommend looking at how people have been priming Tornado Bows! 

In terms of aesthetics, probably this thing:

*snip*

Are you able to pump that thing while only holding the pump handle and pistol grip, or would that rip the tank away from the Nitefinder remnants? I think it looks great, it's a totally utilitarian blaster and I can see beauty in that! 

So as of late, I've been plagued with the issue of all of the hex nuts coming loose. I have a few ideas about making the experience of dealing with this easier. I'm thinking that you could use any of the following techniques - 

1) Fully embed one hex nut per threaded rod. See: http://solidutopia.c...-captive-parts/

2) Use a captured hex nut recession for one of the threaded rod's fasteners 

3) Threaded insert for one of the rod's fasteners??? I'd just be worried about the 3D printed part stripping and the insert eventually having nothing to bite into.

There's more reading on all this available at: https://www.fictiv.c...d-printed-parts

The hard part about any of this is that you need a way to keep the threaded rod from rotating during assembly. It's not the easiest thing to do, I'm considering adding a set screw or two where possible to help lock the rod in place. 

By securing one nut per rod, you gain the bonus of not needing two wrenches. If you can keep the threaded rod from rotating when you tighten the blaster up, you'd be able to disassemble & reassemble everything with just a Leatherman - to me that's a big added value.

What do you all think?

OP, please refrain from using neon green text, it's very hard to read.

im just thinking how much the 1995 crossbow goes for now a days but how much was it when it first came out

 
I'm sorry but can you please use the shift key and capitalize some letters? I'm having a hard time imagining you are anything other than a 12 year old with the way you've been communicating on here.

How many people are actually going? If me and a few friends are going to drive for four hours we gotta make sure it's worth! 

Great use of cross-dowel nots! I'm super happy to see more people using them effectively.

Question- How well do you expect that plunger head to hold up? I have a printed one in my Xbow and I'm not too confident about it enduring a war. 

I will probably be there. If anyone between Hartford CT and North Brunswick NJ would like to carpool with me, I can pick you up along the way. Just shoot me a PM. 

I'm using a drop-leg pouch like this, which works pretty well.  I can fit three 12-ball clips in it, and they stick out enough that I can reload them when not actively being shot at.
https://www.amazon.c...words=leg pouch

I just ordered it, thanks for the link! You should have set it up as a referral link... I'll report back with how this works for regular N-Strike Mags. 

I'd probably show up if the event was from 10am - 5pm to justify driving all the way, and if there was more to play than just super stock. 

That's just my two cents, but there's probably many people that feel just like I do. 

So it looks like it'll be scattered thunderstorms and rain the whole time.

It'd be irresponsible to not reschedule the war. 

The front end of [k26] +Bow length variant just shattered after ten shots. Just wanted to give fellow builders a heads-up. I do not have a plan for this issue. Hypothetically the front could be entirely printed in TPU (flexible filament)... that might absorb some of the shock. Could be interesting!  

Has anyone else finished theirs yet? I'm nearly done with mine, but the stock keeps breaking. As a community, we should try to brainstorm a way to reinforce the stock with a non-3D printed solution because I don't want anyone else to have the same problem when they go to build this thing. 

Maybe this design could borrow the string stop concept that Ryan#######'s rainbow pumps use? It's a crude solution but it'd be an easy fix, the hard part would just be figuring out how to attach it the most intelligently...

Oh no! That's not good! I wonder what would happen to the model I've made for myself- 

The whole thing is printed at 100% infill PLA. Funny enough, I broke the same parts off the mag well when I was assembling it, so I inserted 6-32 rod through the parts to pin it together. 
Do you foresee the internal metal bits changing?

So I have some design suggestions based on my own scans that I have made with Drac's Xbow and a NextEngine 3D Laser Scanner. 

So this first thing might just be me, or my unwillingness to spend a few hours filing the print- BUT- there is a good amount of overhang where the grip meets the stock, The design is really clever, but I think a millimeter or two need to be shaved off the thickness of the arc. 

You can see in my render that the middle finger ridge in the handle is pretty flat. It's just another flat landing area for your finger from what I've noticed. 

If you ask me, the recession for this ridge goes in too deep. If it was flatter it wouldn't be a point that digs into your finger. You can see what I'm talking about in the image below: 

Lastly, the extrusion coming off the base of the handle, is a little sharp. The real Xbow has more of a fillet, and the surfaces also blend together.

This is what I mean by that: 

If you want to see some of the scan data I'm basing myself off of, you can find it here-
https://drive.google...d1pvWEliTi1LekU

EDIT: Oh, and for those of you who don't check Nerf Modders Welcome- here's a photo of the finished print! 

Ninja Edit #2: People have been asking me to provide the STL files, so here you go: 
https://drive.google...ajNDSkVyNmJrd1E

Neat. What material are you planning to cut it out from? I think the design of the handle needs to be tweaked, the finger ridge at the top of it is a little to small- I have NextEngine 3D scans I can provide for reference if you want to take another look at it Slug.

Mine's coming along pretty quickly, I'm ordering all the materials I need to get it firing right now! 

Amazing work! Now I don't know if I want to laser cut this, or print it... not a bad problem to have. I'm assuming you'll be posting the 3D models of this latest iteration soon? Time to go warm up the Lulzbot...

Hey Slug, 
Any chance you can upload the .dxf files for the flat profiles of parts? The word doc isn't gonna cut it for me-  I'm going to try to laser cut one of these out of HDPE sheet. 

Very cool Slug, thank you for the honorable mention. Very happy to see someone revisit my design, yours looks amazing as always! I'm very eager to build one of these myself before APOC.

If you want to bore them to death with a powerpoint and quiz, yeah go for it. Instead why don't you just let them learn for themselves? Maybe one of them will be motivated to totally overhaul the vulcan into being the blaster they dreamt it to be if you don't hammer into their heads that it sucks.... 

See you there + 1. I might need someone to spot my GF a blaster, we'll see how my Marshmellow Blaster mod goes!

This weekend opened back up, so I am definitely coming now. Looks like good turnout.

I've cleared my schedule, let's do this.