Orange Mod Works

Although I believe that these mod kits are a very cool idea, I think the execution could be better. I mean, these kits are made to take the work out of modding, and despite the pro of having only a screwdriver as a necessary tool, they take the creativity factor out. In addition, I think that they could have chose more traditional materials (ABS or PVC) as with custom milled aluminum is just way too expensive. $17 for something you can easily replicate the same ranges for by just going out and buying a suitable replacement spring for 3-4 dollars is not worth it in my opinion. That said, I think that did a great job on advertising and allowing for nerf youtubers to test.

For what it's worth, it's not just extra range we're aiming for, but increased durability as well. But hey, to each his own.

I still don't understand this concept. Why use aluminum? It's easily twice as dense as ABS plastic, thus requiring a stronger spring just to achieve the same crappy ranges. At some point, the stronger spring and heavier plunger are going to cause shell failure. If you are making custom internal kits for an otherwise shitty blaster, why keep the reverse plunger design? Whomever is building these kits certainly has the funding or machining skills to have these made, but they obviously do not have the engineering skills to come up with an ACTUAL improvement to the design. This isn't a mod, it's simply a material exchange.

Ahem... I'm a bit late on this response, but I think I'll have to take issue with a couple of your comments.

We're not stupid, and we certainly looked into ABS plastic parts. While I'm not at liberty to discuss our reasons, understand that we didn't just arbitrarily choose to make metal parts. (And for the record, it's stainless steel for the first batches, and a zinc alloy for the molded parts coming in a couple of weeks.)

As far as our ranges are concerned, I don't think our ranges can be considered crappy at all, especially given the utter lack of effort required to install the parts. Even if you don't know what you're doing, you can go from a flat range of 30 feet or so to nearly double that or better in 15 minutes. For those who are unskilled or don't have the patience to create their own mods, doubling your performance for less than the price of a stock Recon doesn't sound like a bad deal to me. I could name about 500+ people (so far) who agree.

Will these kits cause shell failure? Hard to say, but given that we've been flogging our Recons like dead horses for several months, firing thousands upon thousands of shots with no problems with the shell, suffice it to say we're not too worried about it.

We kept the reverse plunger design because we've been trying to make products that are simple to install and provide instant improvement. Most of our customers simply don't have the skill or the patience to try and install some of the more complex ideas we have. It's simply not a smart business practice to try and mass produce a product for a niche market within a niche market, specifically those within the Nerf-modding crowd that are capable of completely revamping and redesigning the internal workings of a blaster. While you are correct that the first kit is a material exchange, the second kit has improved the plunger tube to create a better seal and increase the amount of air it draws in before firing. It's also worth mentioning that creating a cost-effective machining process for the second kit's parts was something no one had done before and required an excessive amount of time to create and perfect.

I can think of a couple of people here who would be quite insulted by your assumption that they lack the engineering skills to create what you consider "real" mods, but I'll let our future work answer for them.