11 replies to this topic

[thechase]

Evening guys,

New member here, been perusing the forums for a little while. Decided to embark upon my first Nerf project last week which involved a Rayven with some 180 motors and a Lipo battery - it's great and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for the most part, other than the accuracy. I'm using 'Elite' darts and the accuracy at mid to long range is very poor, I appreciate there's probably no 'magic' answer here but I would appreciate some suggestions of generally accepted methods to get the darts to fly more true. I have read that adding a length of drinking straw to the inside of the dart will help to some degree for example.

Thanks in advance,

Chase.

[Joe Espinoza]

Try cutting the tip of the dart, then filling it with hot glue. Should prevent some fish tailing and make for a straighter trajectory.
Welcome to the hobby!

(:

[thechase]

Try cutting the tip of the dart, then filling it with hot glue. Should prevent some fish tailing and make for a straighter trajectory.
Welcome to the hobby!

(:

Thanks for the welcome! I'll give the glue-gun method a try, thanks.

Any other suggestions?

[ultranewt]

With the proper syringe you could fill the head with silicone, that would be more pleasant than being hit with hot glue. Otherwise if there was another vent hole exactly opposite of the stock one that might help. Most of the inaccuracy comes from their asymmetry and low weight; any way you can remedy that should help.

[Zorns Lemma]

Foam projectiles are weight stabilized. The heavier you can make the tip of your dart the more stable it will fly. In the prime of foam flinging we were plopping 3/8" steel ball bearings on top of 1/2" foam and then covering that with a very aerodynamic dome of hot glue. This was expensive, tedious, and unnecessarily unsafe to your recipients.

The two suggestions given are ways to apply those principles to store bought Nerf streamlines. The hot glue method is more primitive: easier to do, but you'll end up with a projectile that doesn't perform much better while delivering more kinetic energy to the target on impact (they hurt more).

[thechase]

With the proper syringe you could fill the head with silicone, that would be more pleasant than being hit with hot glue. Otherwise if there was another vent hole exactly opposite of the stock one that might help. Most of the inaccuracy comes from their asymmetry and low weight; any way you can remedy that should help.

I will be using these to shoot at people so perhaps this is the better option. Adding mass is one thing (and presumable the front is always the best place to add mass) but is there any other methods that have shown results? I mentioned a length of straw to potentially quell deformation of the dart under rapid acceleration and being compressed by the flywheels? Do barrels that match the diameter of the dart reduce a potential 'off' angle as the dart leaves the barrel?

I appreciate I could well be asking questions that don't have a definitive answer so appologies in advance if this is the case. But if there is already evidence on such things being effective/not effective then it would mean I would save a huge amount of time in testing!

Thanks again.

[Azrael0987]

In a flywheel blaster you dont want anything to impact the dart after it leaves the flywheels. If it bounces around in the barrel after it leaves the wheels it loses kinetic energy. That is why a stryfe has a better design than a rayven; there is very little barrel after the flywheels before it leaves the muzzle.

[Draconis]

With the proper syringe you could fill the head with silicone, that would be more pleasant than being hit with hot glue. Otherwise if there was another vent hole exactly opposite of the stock one that might help. Most of the inaccuracy comes from their asymmetry and low weight; any way you can remedy that should help.

When I forgot my darts for Armageddon, this is the method I used as a last-minute source. It sucked, but was better than stock Elites. Stock length homemade darts still work pretty well in the flywheel blasters.

[Duke Wintermaul]

Buy these.

Their domed tentacles produce some interesting inflight drag effects, which helps center the dart. These are a must for Flywheel blasters, and are cheaper than Hasbro darts and most 'respectable' NiC darts.

A word of caution as to QC, some foam may vary with breech fit and some head glue may degrade. Wear is slower in flywheels, but can be fixed with minimal adhesives and capital.

[thechase]

In a flywheel blaster you dont want anything to impact the dart after it leaves the flywheels. If it bounces around in the barrel after it leaves the wheels it loses kinetic energy. That is why a stryfe has a better design than a rayven; there is very little barrel after the flywheels before it leaves the muzzle.

For ultimate velocity I would agree, introducing any additional friction coefficient will only hinder the velocity. For accuracy though I disagree entirely, we cannot (reasonably) remove all slip on the flywheel surface to the dart nor can we match both flywheel motors to be rotating at exactly the same speed; therefore the angle at which the dart leaves the flywheels is always going to be unpredictable.

Similarly I believe a wider barrel will hinder velocity FURTHER than a barrel with little windage; this is because the wider barrel would allow for greater angle of incident of the dart against the barrel surface - resulting in higher energy loss. This is all but conjecture at the moment - I have ordered some 14mm acrylic today that will be used in my Rayven and by all means I will get back with results. I am fairly certain accuracy will be much improved however and I also believe the lower windage will make energy loss in the barrel near negligible.

And at Duke Wintermaul - those look great! But I'm in the UK and the shipping to get those over here would make me bankrupt in an instant .

[Naturalman7]

But I'm in the UK and the shipping to get those over here would make me bankrupt in an instant .

That eBay lot has free shipping world wide.

[thechase]

That eBay lot has free shipping world wide.

Guess I should look closer at the shipping next time! I put a set on order.