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.
Edited by KaneTheMediocre, 27 December 2018 - 11:04 AM.