Ryan "McNumbers" Kreterfield (Ryan201821 @ Nerfhaven) was a master craftsman, inventor, and a giant of the community who built hundreds of high quality and high powered blasters. He doesn't have a big footprint in the preferred media of today, but he was a pioneer of homemade blasters and 3d printed homemade blasters, and active on forums helping others match his achievements. This past March of 2022, we lost Ryan suddenly and unexpectedly to acute pancreatitis.
   I apologize for not making an announcement more promptly.   I felt I needed to say something, to explain to all the people who came into this hobby in recent years who Ryan is and why he matters. And it took some time before I could begin to do that.  I haven't finished, but i have a piece I was ready to share. Ryan and I designed and built a lot of cool blasters together, but I don't want to start this off by bragging. Besides, the stories about our friendship are still much harder to tell, so I wanted to start with a few of the things he achieved before we started working together.
    As a teenager Ryan was probably the first person on planet earth to sell homemade nerf blasters, starting with over 70 Plusbows.  His name was synonymous with quality in this regard, achieved with equal parts dedication and craft. There were Plusbows, and there were McNumbers Plusbows.  A Plusbow was powerful, but it might leak, break, hurt to use, or all of the above.  Potentially wonderful, but a gamble, like a hot dog. A McNumbers plusbow takes the gamble away, and adds a polish that you didn't even realize you needed.  Like a Vienna Beef hot dog (not sponsored).
 The seal would be perfect.  The barrel would align perfectly with the frame of the blaster.  The prime would be smooth, and all the edges broken. Somehow all the small things added up to more than what should be possible, and potshot with another blaster would become an easy hit with his plusbow.
    Along the way, he also developed and refined a popular airtek3000 mod, which provided similar power to the plusbow, but with a 6 shot revolver drum. In the pre-hopper world, this was a big deal, even though revolver was manually indexed. Many "airgun" enthusiasts also preferred the mechanics of pumping up an air tank instead of compressing a spring. He made and sold dozens of them to fans that eagerly paid even more for them the plusbows. I recall watching him make one once.  It took him less than a half an hour.   Unlike the plusbow, it was not a process requiring a huge amount of precision craftmanship.   Just a few simple steps that Ryan did perfectly and efficiently, to combine an unusably awful $15 retail nerf blaster with maybe another $10 in plastic sheet, tube, and miscellany.
    Ryan wasn't scamming anyone, he just invented a shockingly short path between less than $30 in materials and a blaster that easily sold for $130. And although the "3k" wouldn't have quite the same enduring appeal as the plusbow, at the time it WAS arguably the best blaster on the market.  Ryan could have kept doing just those things for many more years and remained king of the nerf homemades community.   The discovery of hoppers around 2009-2010 made the 3k obselescent, but it also dramatically multiplied the effectiveness of his plusbows. They went from being the best blaster for long range and the best blaster overall, to being the best blaster in every respect that mattered.
 Ryan didn't keep doing just those things.  Or even those things at all.   Because Ryan now knew that the best possible nerf blaster for the new era would be pump action, hopper fed blaster.  The firing posture of a plusbow, and all pull-action blasters, is different from the priming posture.   You have to either take your hand off the front grip or your other hand off the handle so you have a free hand to pull the handle in back. A pump action blaster lets you fire repeatedly without ever switching the positions of your hands, easily doubling the effective rate of fire compared to the pull-handle layout.
 Ryan's Pumpbow, a one-off experimental design to make the Plusbow into a pump action blaster, set the community on fire.   It wasn't the first pump action homemade by far, but the promise of Mcnumbers plusbow range and quality mixed with pump action ergonomics was clear, as were most of the blaster's parts.   The blaster was copied by others many times, but Ryan never made another, due to significant ergonomic problems. 
  The blaster was not comfortable to use, in particular to prime.  The front grip was very short, and the outer surface was flat, slick, polyethylene plastic sheet, and it couldn't deal with a vertical grip well due to torque issues. The fast moving pull handle remained a potential hazard to users as it was with the plusbow, and additionally there were metal bars moving back and forth near the users face.  Ryan could have ignored the problems and sold dozens of pumpbows to a mostly positive reception. Ryan could have screwed on a few extra plastic plates to cover up the moving parts near the users face, and added a higher friction foregrip. That would have been enough to earn universal praise for the new blaster.  So he abandoned the project entirely and built the Rainbowpump instead.
    Before the dawn of consumer level 3d printing, a big part of crafting blasters was just finding parts and materials that fit together. Hardware store parts were generally the cheapest and best choice. When your needs weren't covered by plumbing supplies,  McMaster had a dazzling selection of rods, tubes sheets, bars, screws, bearings, and basically every fabrication material and mechanical hardware bit that exists. The prices were usually high, but more often than not they had exactly what you need.
 This blaster is peak McMaster. Basically every flaw or problem that this blaster could have had was solved with a clear tube of the right size from McMaster-Carr.  The parts list is an internet of things, showing everything you need to order to build one of your own, and the relative cost to build them in bulk vs individually. 
   The Rainbowpump features a big, clear tube pump grip, sliding over the clear plunger tube.   The Rainbowpump features a plunger head composed of a clear tube inside a clear tube, with a skirt seal sandwiched by two more clear tubes. The plunger head slides inside a clear plunger tube, attached to a plunger rod that is also inside a pair of short clear polycarbonate tubes (arguably discs). The plunger rod has a priming pin in the back, that rotationally locates itself on slots cut into a clear tube. The blaster is primed by pushing on a clear tube that slides over the clear plunger tube and clear slotted tube, but inside another clear tube, in order to push on the priming pin.  
The result is a strikingly beautiful blaster with the sleekest profile and the smoothest operation conceivable. Like an impossible mechanical puzzle, made out of clear plastic tubes, that shoots nerf darts.  Ryan never stopped getting requests for Plusbows.  But he never made them again. It wasn't about building blasters for money, it was about making the best blasters in the world--and for the time being, those were Rainbowpumps. Ryan built and sold at least 20 Rainbowpumps, finding admirers and new blaster owners at "local" events and online.
   The Rainbowpump never achieved the same level of fame and popularity as the plusbow, but casuals who showed up to events as guests without any experience with homemade nerf blasters often borrowed them and intuitively used them well.  While they needed a little instruction, they didn't need to be told "dont lean your face in to aim or this thing will remove a chunk of it when you fire". I always derived a special satisfaction in seeing casuals exceeding or defeating the more dedicated players that brought them. This happened regularly when Ryan and his blasters were in attendance.  
The Rainbowpump inspired countless other pump action homemades, many using the same new rainbow catch, which is a story unto itself, and many also using the name "Rainbowpump", in a technically correct but confusing way. Many incomplete and inferior copies of Ryan's Rainbowpump, were produced, and despite their relative flaws they were still popular and competitive. And of course, the best blaster in the world couldn't stay that way forever.  Ryan would make sure of that. But that's another story.  I hope to tell it soon. 

The nerf Kronos is just a great deal.  It's not exceptionally good, but it's both much cheaper and much smaller than all the other rival blasters.  Dart zone rival blasters are OK, but not really superior to the nerf rival blasters (unlike their dart blasters, which are markedly better than Nerf's).  The titanium and powerball use a little hopper, which works most of the time but fails to feed just often enough to be frustrating.  You can just use a rival magazine which should feed perfectly, but of course that's one more thing to buy and distribute.   Still probably works out cheaper than an artemis, which is the closest nerf equivalent (pump action), but the artemis holds more ammo and the magazines are a non-removable part of the blaster, which simplifies things.

If you're trying to supply for a big group I would also avoid battery powered blasters like the plague.  Blasters eat batteries pretty fast, and it will create a logistical nightmare even if you have enough spare charged batteries.  Not to mention the added cost.

And yes, the adventure force / dart zone rival balls are the best option.  They are something like twelve cents each, which is very close in price to the 3rd party online knockoffs, but the quality is just as good as genuine Nerf rival balls.  Exclusively at walmart unfortunately.

I would assume the dart head rubber would need to be iron impregnated in order to get enough iron to pick up the dart without making any part of the tip rigid.

It's not too tough a technical problem, but string tends to trip people so it's a bit of a safety hazard, and imagine trying to untangle a bin full of darts connected by string.  

Yeah, standard wheels should be doing 35k RPM; big wheels have been more like 25k RPM but either way thats way faster than a pull cord will get quickly.

I think you and I mean different things when we say "big".

So I don't do flywheels, but I know a few things about electronics and feel I need to explain some things.

The capacitor you need to do this probably costs more than the bigger battery, without giving you any increase in capacity that you would get with a battery.  This is kind of a weird edge case where it's probably not absurdly expensive, but still more expensive than just using a bigger battery. 

Neither solution means you'll have a fast spinup time, it just means it will be as fast as it can be for those motors and wheels.

The pullcord solution might be viable with larger-than-normal flywheels or a geared system, but making it work will again cost more money than a big battery.

Is there a 3D printed version of worker's mag well that can go along with this?

Not from me (yet) but thingiverse has a couple, both of which can also do katanas apparently?
https://www.thingive...m/thing:3442760

adsf

https://www.thingive...m/thing:3245243

I have so far only tested my mags in the magwell that worker sell as an adapter, but my intent is to make blasters with dedicated talon magwells which will of course be compatible with these.



 

I overlooked this at first, because pistols are dumb, but the catch here is something special.  It basically achieves the objective of the purple catch / integrated catch handle, but using pivoting parts instead of sliding parts, which is much better for smooth operation.  Also, I need to learn the art of plunger tubes that aren't 1.25" PVC, because hoppers are dead, so I'll be looking at your system for that as well.

I made a simplified, support-material-free and vertically printed variation of the Thanhlon.  Exterior profile is cloned from the Thanhlon, interior details are mostly removed.  The same drum spring replacement is used, although I altered the anchor to better fit the newer U-bended springs that seem to have replaced the V-bended springs, although either can be made to work in both thanhlon and EZ talon. 

175 mm tall and goes to 11, I haven't made extensions yet and haven't had great results with them in the past. 
As it stands I can print the whole assembly of 2 parts in under 2 hours with a printer that isn't fast.

EZ Talon (mine) is here https://www.thingive...m/thing:3730115
 

Thanhlon (Than's) is here https://www.thingive...m/thing:3460408

 

I would upload the files here as well, but the upload system won't accept .step files or solidworks files.  In this case they're not great, owing to the complicated origins of the model, but still needed for basic manipulation like extending or reducing the magazine capacity, which many users may need to be able to print this or go to larger numbers.

It's a working mag, but it's not a well tested design at this point.  It's not expected to be as tough as a real talon, and probably not as tough as a thanhlon due to printing orientation.  All mine have been printed in ABS so far.  It's fairly difficult to stop the follower by squeezing the magazine, but it is possible if you squeeze hard and in the middle.  Still they should be fine with normal use, even used as a handle or duct-taped together in a jungle mag.

edit:  These use the drum replacement spring from foamblastshop.com, just like Than's magazines.

...and I'll actually have a larger 3D printer coming, so it's feasible for me to make this.

The later versions would be fine for a small printer.  The actual magazine part is tall, but there's no bottom on it so you can arbitrarily stop the print wherever and just have that much less capacity.  At 120mm you could still fit at least 6 darts in it without doing an extension.

Actually that applies to all of them except the stupid drum thing.

Lately I've been doing a lot of work to replace hoppers with a magazine system for short darts.  I started with katana magazines, but I didn't want my blasters to rely on a 3rd party to supply something so critical, especially when the price and quality isn't great.

I somehow wound up abandoning detachable magazines, in favor of integrated magazines with convenient top (and later side) loading. 
The first two blasters are top loaded, and have some horrible and crude means of affixing helical springs in inconvenient places without making things larger.  They are both on thingiverse and youtube:

I put the first one on an XBZ:

https://www.thingive...m/thing:3275173

And the 2nd on a HAMP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiqY-gEGKSc

https://www.thingive...m/thing:3275208

The 3rd one was, like so many things I build, a fascinating high-capacity piece of shit, and it never got put on a blaster.  I still did a video, and published the thing.
The main takeaway from this was a switch to using a single door that stops the dart at the same place at any contact point, and using magnets instead of springs for the return.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W89g2N9Bj58
https://www.thingive...m/thing:3275634

The 4th one was sort of a sad, familiar ABS story.  But it took a more sensible approach to the dart door mechanism from the third attempt, with a proven, straight-track design, and added easy mounting options instead of hot glue. There was also the theory that the hinge rod for the dart door could optionally double as the priming stroke connector for a pump action blaster, which I abandoned.  It worked quite well despite it's deformities but I never put it on a blaster.  I also omitted the endstops on dart door travel, which is bad, but I wanted to more accessibly test the mechanism, and figured I'd kludge something on later.  At this point I started calling them Kanetanas and decided the project was worth publishing on thingiverse. 

https://www.thingive...m/thing:3275664

The 5th one switched up the design to isolate the receiver print from the magazine print, in hopes of avoiding sad ABS stories.  I also eliminated the mounting holes and bulk of the previous version, with the bolt pattern on between the magazine and receiver being usable for plate mounting. It never got put on a blaster, but I did assemble and test it.  While it worked, I over-shortened the dart door, which made the magnet less effective towards the outside of it's intended travel.  This was more of a problem due to the continued lack of endstops.
https://www.thingive...m/thing:3291331

The 6th one finally added endstops, although not in a robust fashion.  The dart door length was increased, and a finger clearance cutout was added, similar in purpose to the one in Kanetana 0.2.  The ergonomics of and function of this one were nearly perfect, and so I kludged together a short stroke pump-action crossbow from a abandoned/failed project parts, and actually took the trouble to link the breech to the priming stroke.  No video yet, but IMO it's pretty sweet.    The thing is available, and should work well so long as nothing breaks.
https://www.thingive...m/thing:3305153

The 7th one has been printed only, and not fully assembled or tested.  It separates the receiver into an upper and lower, and in doing so makes the entire assembly much more robust.  If you're going to print one, I still recommend this one over the others even though it's untested.
https://www.thingive...m/thing:3307637

There has been hole size drama throughout this, but I've always been able to kludge around it. Some due to incorrectly predicting printer behavior, some due to plain old stupid.  So maybe check out the sizes with the step files before printing one for yourself.

The magnets used were 3mm x 12mm neodymium discs.  I got them at Ace.  Basically you have a 13mm hole to work with.
The follower spring was a foamblastshop.com drum replacement spring.  Specifically the rejects sold at discount recently, they all worked fine for me.  Presumably the non-rejects are also fine.

Goals for future versions are primarily variations with different mounting options, possibly including adaptations for specific blasters.

So yeah.  That's a thing.  If you're into that sort of thing.

A recent variation on the BullPAC 3, combining my recent interest in Katana magwells ( https://www.thingive...m/thing:2838089 ) with my much older BullPAC 3 design ( https://www.thingive...om/thing:672304 ).

A bunch of mods for making the Dart Zone Powerball blast darts instead of rival balls.  They basically all shoot 150 fps (ish) without any spring replacement or any other performance mods.

N-strike magazines:

Katana Magazines:

Megas (muzzle load, tight fit, barrel is 3/4" CPVC, it basically sucks but hey megas)

Micro/50 cal (Muzzle load, loose fit / vacuum loading, .625" x .527" barrel material hidden by 3/4" PVC shroud for barrel plant protection).

I would probably limit it to around 3 easy to memorize classes. That's all I can remember when I am playing TF2 XP but really, if you have a whole bunch of limitations and things on people abilities and guns, it's hard to keep it straight. Think of Amtgard classes. Everyone ha different weapon abilities and spells and levels and all this shit and it's hard to memorize.

My theory was that "light" "medium" and "heavy", being only a budget and a spawn time, would require minimal reading (weapons would be tagged, unique personal weapons would be easily figured out relative to tagged blasters).  I am definitely trying not to be amtguard in that sense.  

 

tons of stuff

So my expected environment is outside with mobstacles and a few trees, and we'll almost entirely be using my blasters.  I'm not expecting anyone to show up with more than a stock nerf blaster.  I think most of your changes are adaptive to the indoor environment you're anticipating.  I like your classes, and I like the idea of having all the classes, but I'm also very tempted to just make it light/medium/heavy for simplicity.  I definitely don't want to go down the route of having people yell things at other people as part of their abilities.  I get what you're going for by dividing blasters by type rather than effectiveness to define classes and it's cool (as well as makes classes more interesting), but I like the idea that any class can choose what sort of amament they use (ie range vs rof vs capacity vs mobility vs whatever else) even if they can't choose the best of that particular sort of thing.  For example, a light can use a pullback springer for a long-ranged focus, but not a pump action springer, or an airgun, or even a pullback springer with a large magazine.  A light also has many close-range/high ROF options like the STAN gun or a flywheel blaster, but can't use a pump-action springer with a hopper blowgun attachment.  And it can use a small sword and small shield  with 2 points leftover for a pistol, or large sword but no shield for 4 points leftover for a blaster, etc.
.

 

 

Even more stuff

So I consider multiple hitpoints to be kind of toxic.  Makes cheating more ambiguous when you see it.  You do you with your system, but just understand that I personally don't like it and wouldn't put it in mine.  

It was always the intent to represent classes of blasters, not individual blasters.  Obviously it's not 100% all-encompasing, but it's a start until someone shows up with something that doesn't fit into the classes.  A lot of the interesting stock blasters just need to be assigned their own values on the spot, which is why I summarized them as "human powered nerf blasters".  I'm not expecting them to be useless by any means, but without TONS of cover range is a pretty big deal, which is why all the homemade springers are so much more points than the nerf blasters.

There will always be features and aspects of nerf blasters that aren't reflected in the system, for mine some of them are a deliberate choice for simplicity.  I chose not to distinguish between all the types of "singled" blasters- muzzle loaders, breech loaders, speedloaders are all treated the same as long as there's no magazine. This was not made clear.

I'm expecting/assuming the homemade springers and bows to all be roughly the same power, shooting about 200 fps with 1 gram darts.  I can get away with this more because I'm providing them, but even if I weren't actual range doesn't change much with more velocity than that, and people generally just don't build homemades with much less velocity than that.

 I also chose not to distinguish between the various blaster layouts (eg bullpup, double-rainbow, other different bullpup) or the type of catch.  And of course there are many other ergonomic factors that make some blasters easier to use than others.  This was not made clear.
 

I also chose not to distinguish between a pullback blaster, bolt-action blaster, bad lever action, or any priming action which requires removing one or both of your hands from the ideal firing position .  I didn't make this clear either.

Pump action was meant to include things like (good) lever action, push-action, or any other priming action where your hands never leave the firing position when priming.  This is an educational process in things that I didn't make clear.

Semi-auto was not likely to show up aside from battery powered nerf blasters, which (at least stock) don't have amazing performance and are categorized as 8 points. 

Any homemade weirder than that is extremely unlikely to appear in any community.  

Modded blasters are not really part of my system yet.  I don't really have any, and if I'm lucky it's a question I won't have to deal with.  I just feel hopeless doing anything but a case-by-case analysis for modded blasters.

Blowguns are a HUGE omission in my system so far, with only STAN guns/hopper blowguns represented.  However, I'm not going to allow blowguns without an amazing mouthpiece or at least something flexible for the mouthpiece, and that kind of kills the simple pipe blowguns that dominate with old-school (not ancient-school) darts, and still work well with 50 cal darts.  However, there are a variety of magazine fed blowgun styles that don't present such a safety concern, and I would guess they would be in the 4-6 point range (I don't get sweet range with 50 cal blowguns) plus whatever magazine capacity adder.



 

This would be more like a plan ahead type thing. Plan your loadout(s) and bring the required blasters to the war. No need to memorize the whole thing. It's like in some tabletop games (mostly x-wing and other miniature/war games)

 

The number after the classes is how many points they can spend, right?

 

A light can use a Pullback springer w/ hopper (such as a +bow with hopper?) and nothing else, or a pullback RSCB+Pistol...so pretty standard NIC war loadout but with instant respawn? Or they could go the other direction and have a stock ammo rapidstrike plus singled AAbow. Seems like kind of a lot.

 

A medium could use a pullback singleshot and, say, a rapidstrike using stock ammo, and a pistol. Again seems like a lot of gear for "medium" maybe.

Realistically, no one will need to plan ahead because no one is going to bring their own blasters. I don't have an active nerf community in my area, so all I need to do is label the blasters that I bring.  The odd player that does bring something will be able to reasonably categorize it with this system.  Most likely attendees are from local LARP communities, which generally have much more complicated rules than this.

The first two examples are correct, but the Rapidstrike would count as a battery powered nerf blaster +8, single Aabow +4 for a total of 12.  The stock ammo only modifier (-2) does not apply to stock Nerf blasters (something I did not make clear) otherwise a basic nerf pistol would be +0.  So no pistol, but a single shot pullback and a rapidstrike WOULD fit in the "medium" class if neither held more than 10 darts, and if you think about it from a functional perspective, that's not more effective firepower than just blowing the whole medium point budget on a  pump-action springer with an XL magazine.  Although I might raise that threshhold to 20 so that mag-fed blasters can use a single 18 rnd mag without a magazine capacity penalty.


 

This is a cool system, but in practicality you would need a very dedicated group of people to memorize the rules enough to play effectively. This is pretty hard because the size of nerf wars are pretty inconsistent and have a lot of kids. As a camp counselor I know that even adults bicker and argue about rules and will do a lot to try and stay in, this is even worse with kids. You could implement a system of rps if there's a disagreement, but then people would just be wasting time. In a perfect nerf world this would be an awesome game type, and a lot of people are gonna be good sports about it, but it's a little too complex for a majority of people to memorize quickly espececially if there are kids.

I agree with what you're saying here.  I would never show up to an NIC war, and part-way through say "hey lets do this" like it was just another round.  This would be a semi-dedicated event, and NONE of the rules I've listed so far need to be memorized to play, you just need to refer to them when choosing loadout beforehand (which hosts can help with as needed). 

I'm working on a class system to make nerf wars fair and fun with a variety of unequal blasters and equipment. Team fortress classic and firearms half-life mod were my primary inspiration for this system. Stuff has point values, classes have point value budgets and special abilities.  None of this is in any way war tested at time of writing.  Anyways, I value your input even when I ignore it, and welcome you to hate on my system, suggest improvements to the system, make your own remix of the system, tell me what I've missed etc.  

Some stuff I know is fucked:
Sword and shield sizes are undefined.

Bandaging is not explained.

Really, none of the basic rules most of us take for granted are not explained.
Knight and Tank classes are just prefab equipment choices that couldn't be legal otherwise.  Sort of the same deal with the Grenadier and 

This is what I have so far:
Classes:

Stuff:

I really like this one design.

But some people say that the soda bottles are dangerous(soda bottles are not designed to hold air pressure),

if the explosion will be injured,I was trying to think how to make more secure..

 

I think that you should just make sure the pressure does not get very large.  Soda bottles usually burst from pressure at 6+ atmospheres, which is dangerous, but if a soda bottle were to burst with only 2 atmospheres (Very unlikely), then it would be less dangerous because it would have less energy, and release that energy more slowly. Maybe make a spear to stab soda bottles from a distance, and see how much pressure it takes for it for a burst to be dangerous, and regulate at less than that pressure.

What's the theory behind looperifica? Looks like it's unsealed, is it a turret of some kind?


Even with a carasol of some kind?

Did you see my posts last page and this where I figured out a +/-100 dart (maybe more with a better blower/shorter darts) coil mag?

Looperifica is in fact unsealed, and will initially be used with a flywheel cage.  I do think that I could combine it with the plusblow 6 feed mechanism for things that need to seal, but that's more difficult than what I want to do right now.

I've been down the coil magazine road before with flexible PVC, polyethylene tubing, etc, and just a check-valve mouthpiece to blow in the back.  Worked great if I limited myself to a few turns, but several turns not so much.  It's definitely at least a 3X practical expansion over a straight tube, but it's not the unlimited magazine size I'd dreamed it would be.  Good luck with the blower thing.

Carousels are shitty to load.  Unless I can make mine better than the firearms versions, I'm not interested, and I don't think I can.do that.  

OK.  So if you want stock darts to be accurate at 200 fps, you need to use the fat headed sort, like taggers, whistlers, the big suction cups.  The head fits in ~5/8" ID barrels rather than the 50 cal for streamlines.

If you want 50 cal china darts to be accurate at 200 fps, you need to use cut-down Men-gun darts or a similar design (not sure men-gun still exists, waffle heads do still exist tho).  Artifact darts are good to ~150 fps, which is much better than any Nerf-made 50 cal dart, but at 200 you will not likely be satisfied.  They are also heavier than most other darts at 1.2g each.  IF you are willing to scale back power a bit artifact darts are clearly the best choice, but most people either use hoppers and/or shoot harder than 150 fps which is why not everyone is using artifacts.

If you want to do homemade darts I have instructions for a few types https://sites.google...mlessarms/darts that do well at 200 fps, but making darts is awful and I don't recommend it.  I sell silicone dome darts but they are as expensive as Nerf brand stock darts (0.25 ea), and the length ranges from 34.5mm to 36mm (Artifact darts are all almost exactly 36mm).
 

Out of curiosity what did you use as a follower for the spiral? Or, did you not even get that far?

I used my finger to test it, and determined that the binding was catastrophic, and then moved on to other things.  

Some nifty looking things I've been working on.  Spiral drum looks awesome, but is confirmed garbage.  There is some other stuff for a linear mag that may or may not go anywhere.  The super looper thingymabob is my latest theory of dart holding.  Unfortunately, even printed with a single perimeter it took over 3 hours and 280g of plastic.  Both the loopdedoo and the spiral drum thing printed great with minimalistic and sensible pathing--The spiral in the drum is just 2 perimeters thick (2mm) and sliced with no pointless stops and starts on the spiral.  I was similarly fortunate with the loopdedoodledandy which is basically an inner and an outer perimeter.

I do have some molds left that I'd sell for $15+shipping.  OJParkour is done with dartsmithing and he has a bunch as well.  If you want to get one made that is like mine, I used a 1/2" or 3/8" HDPE sheet, and ball-endmilled 7/16" diameter spherical holes to a depth of .200" (slightly less than a full hemisphere.  Others have taken the opposite approach).  Mine were in an 8x8 grid (64 spots) on 6" square sheets. 

Don't make slugs.  Try artifact darts or cut down waffle-darts (Men-gun used to be the thing, but now there are other different things).  Making silicone domes is cool and all, and if you're good you can do better than China, but for my time/money I'd rather just buy some artifact darts or whatever waffles the cool kids are using these days.  Wye hoppers won't work quite right in most cases, but there are a lot of tricks and tweaks to improve that if you must use a hopper.

The tripleshot (if I am thinking of the same blaster) CAN in fact hopper with no modification besides removing the superturret and fitting it with a wye.  At least slugs and sillydomes.  BBBs will work with a minimized DMK hopper, but not a regular wye.  Old school bow and arrow and similar have the volume to hopper, but in some cases may need a little help with the spring power.  I'm pretty sure the Arrowstorm(s) can hopper, but not sure I actually tested.

Why not use the magnet as a catch spring? Mag in the handle, mag on the catch to pull towards the handle mag. A rainbow would probably be best for this.

Should work fine.  Also remember that 2 magnets can push as well, so your catchspring can also push up from the handle if you're into that (I am).

Probably not better than using a regular spring in either case, but maybe you'll discover something interesting along the way.

Dart choice can help a lot with feeding. Koosh are well known to be very grippy. Slugs are extremely easy to move around, and I can imagine a giant drum system on a Caliburn, for example. Mengun are somewhere between the 2, and are slippery enough to feed in hoppers, so I think they could be made to work. I think the darts would need more support than I originally envisioned. I'm gonna keep brainstorming on this idea.

Mengun darts are not slippery enough to feed in standard hoppers.  Wyes need to be modified to feed them reliably without a varmint hunting blaster, and even with a varmint hunting blaster I'm not sure.  It's been a while since I used a koosh dart, but I recall cut down kooshes being slightly more hopper friendly than men-gun darts as well, although that may have more to do with shape than texture.

To further complicate matters, I have men-guns with at least a couple different types of rubber/elastomer in the tip, so it could be that some varieties of men-gun darts feed better than others.

Oddly enough, Slug & I have been having a PM conversation about this very subject.

 

 

Did either of you look at doing a carousel instead of a single pusher? Like this:

 

 

Seems like you could put more spring force into something like that without messing up the darts, since they're only actually being pressed a few darts deep by something solid.

I'd thought about it, but I didn't realize firearms drums needed/used them.  I thought they just had it easier due to bullets being relatively incompressible.   This is helpful and simpler than what I was imagining, which involved folding followers.

What about a homemade drum magazine?
Is that a possibility?

I was just working on that recently.  I didn't get to the point of a fully assembled drum, but from the spiral frame I found that in addition to friction stacking as the number of darts increasing and the base friction force per dart being larger owing to the curve, the darts start to dramatically bind up more once you get close to a full turn of the spiral.  This may be why the Nerf raider drum is only one layer deep.  I always thought it was a waste to do a drum mag with only one layer to the spiral, but it may be that is all that is really possible with nerf darts.  I'm not 100% sure that the phenomenon is related to the total angle rather than the total linearized length of the magazine, but it sure seemed like some voodoo started once I got close to 360 degrees.  So, it might NOT be possible (at least, for multiple layers) without a system of intermediate pushers/followers, which is tricky for a variety of reasons.

Sure I could just do a 1-layer drum, but it wouldn't really be a more compact magazine for the capacity than a straight mag would be. 

https://sites.google...-actually-a-bow

http://nerfhaven.com...043#entry340043

You pull the string, not the back handle.  The back handle is there so that you can hold the string and rest your arm by wrapping your thumb around the T.  It also provides 2 distant points of contact which makes holding the bow+piston steady much easier.


I've been making these since 2010, although the first ones were a lot chunkier.  Like Slug suggests, it's better to put the piston behind the bow arms for balance reasons, although it makes plumbing a trick.  I've always wanted to do one with more legit bow arms, but the cost was prohibitive (compared with 3/4" CPVC pipe) and I'd have to refigure the mounting.  That said, if you want it in front, it seems like you are on the right track design-wise.

Some modern stream machines have tubes that are actually sized like 1" thinwall PVC and fits 1" couplers.  It was also clear, but had a smoother finish so I'm not sure if that's the same thing.

Since your plunger direction is backwards, there is an extra-simple type of catch you can use that's super simple.  It doesn't really have a name that I know, but I used it in the http://nerfhaven.com...5-the-bullpump/ .  Below is the best picture of the trigger mech from one of those.

  Rubber-band catch spring is not recommended, but will work.  The catch interface can be basically whatever, and the load holds the catch caught once in place.  Basically if the trigger has a point above and in front of the pivot screw, that point will catch your whatever, and pulling the trigger will bring that point down and out of the way.  I don't have templates. When I made that, I just drew something that looked right and cut it out.  I don't think you need to do a great job for it to work.

I'll try this soon since I can modify the prints I have to try this. The first catch I had in the blaster worked, but didn't have enough leverage. This would allow me to add as much leverage as I want (within reason within the allowable space/travel).

 

I modeled that into the design earlier today, but two ramped pieces sliding against each other makes for a crappy trigger feel. I have an ESLT catch thrown into the model at the moment, but in order to get the leverage needed to have the same moment angles and leverage as that design I'll have to use a cable to connect the trigger to the sear. It would make for a very very nice trigger feel at the expense of a little complexity.

 

The complications I'm running into all relate to having to do this with the catch way behind where the trigger needs to be.

I've actually been hoping you would MACHINE a purple catch, and have much nicer sliding than what a 3d printed purple catch will usually do, and the full strength of whatever you cut it out of.  It doesn't make the most sense here in the sense that the point of the purple catch was to put everything into the handle for compactness, which isn't possible anyways because you have a relocated trigger.
 

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...

The PACs and Rainbowpumps that used string stops had a basically empty stock and a plain ended plunger rod with plenty of room for a hole.  This would be much more difficult here with spring and spring management voodoo and catch interface all happening right where you need copious room for the bunched up spring.  So that would be very difficult here.


HOWEVER I have been ramming 3d printed plunger heads into 3d printed bushings (secured with screw(s) ) for a long time now, with a mere o-ring for padding (1.125" x 1.375").  I don't think I've ever experienced either breaking.  Could you add a bushing with an ID fitting the ramrod, screw it in with flatheads for clearance, and otherwise keep the magwell assembly the same?  Or would that make something impossible that I'm missing.

I've been down the pulley train before in my early bullpup quest, and it was generally a source of impediment and failure for a variety of reasons.  I opted for 1/4" (polyester?) string because I didn't want to lose energy bending  a steel cable around the pulley.  I was able to get away with slack because it was all contained in the pipe, but overall everything with the string made working on the blaster more difficult, and various accommodations somewhat defeated my goals of a shorter blaster.   I also experienced problems with elongation, but it did seem to stabilize eventually.

So I was planning to do a gear and pinion racks setup instead.  3d printed to save money, but 3d printed FAT to maybe not break and make it even more comically large.

One more thing. When I was about halfway done building the first crappy prototype that barely held together for a few days, I emailed the guys that print and sell ESLTs and PullSCRTs. They said they'd print any design if you were willing to pay for it. The price they gave me wasn't sexy and they said my model wasn't printable. That's fine, no hard feelings. I had laughs and tears working on this. Thank you guys for not stealing my concept and making it better and printable.

That was me.  I am happy and surprised to see how much success you had with this--you seemed like you were quite far over your head.  I'm glad I was wrong.

I'm pretty sure we never said we'd print any design, as we don't have the sort of printer that does that  (SLS printers can do most anything, we have FDM printers because we are poor).  And looking at your parts, I'm pretty sure we couldn't have printed them without a redesign even if we did have 3d model files for them.

I'd mostly forgotten about this, and I am sort of working on something a bit similar (Not ultiple-more, but using a pulley or a gear like the 2nd style you showed) but right now I'm re-inventing magazines to that end.  I'm glad you posted this before I put out anything as I wouldn't want to steal your thunder.  Making something like this with the help of a 3d printer would be impressive, but out of machined PVC pipes and fittings like this shows incredible skill, craftmanship and careful planning.

One question about functionality--You seem to be the only person on earth other than me that makes nerf breeches that push darts past the air source into the barrel.  In the blasters I've made like that, I've been able to repeat the loading/priming motion to put multiple darts in the barrel and fire shotgun style.  Does anything prevent you from doing that with your blaster?

I've done a couple videos documenting the silly things I do with blowguns.

New Hotness:

Old and busted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITYm4DJPNnc

For VERY high volume / low pressure (10-15 psi) you can use any 1.25" PVC pipe sized blaster piston that includes a check valve mechanism as a pump.  With a wee bit of creativity you can make a good compromise using 1" pipe (I used a mcmaster skirt seal when I did it), which will get you close to 20 psi (Unmeasured, but fired at full power from a stock big blast which has an OPRV close to 20 PSI i think).  I bet if you made a pump in 3/4" pipe you could get to the 30-40 range with a little bit less pumping than a typical bike pump, but I've only used 1.25" and 1" pipes before.

This vid is of an odd thing that uses a 1.25" PVC pipe for a pump, but it is a bit of an extreme case.

Sometimes you get just the right sch80 x 1/2" and 17/32" just slides in perfect...

The easiest hoppering darts with a conventional wye hopper are sillydomes with cornstarch, followed VERY closely by slugs, followed  (not closely at all) by sillydomes without cornstarch.

 However, since sillydomes are difficult to make and costly to buy (0.25ish. comparable to stock darts), you will probably be better served by China darts, most likely Artifact darts or cut down Men Gun darts.  Neither one hoppers easily, but both are soft enough to shoot people with and are inexpensive, so it's probably worth the fuss to MAKE them hop.   See Captain Slug's or Zorn's enhanced hoppers.  Sometimes just putting a little more effort into beveling the dart entryway will make the difference for a particular blaster.

The SCSs may or may not be great and the solution to all problems nerf.  I'm skeptical that they hop easily mostly because the guy who tells me they do puts like 14 springs in his blasters, and a sufficiently powerful blaster will hop anything.