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Hey everyone,
I wanted to introduce you guys to the FDL-1. Some of you may have seen a prototype version in a Drac video a few months back and anyone who was at DartCon during NvZ this year probably saw it in person. It's a fully 3D printed Mega blaster controlled via an Arduino like microcontroller running brushless motors. I've also open sourced it so people can print their own if they're up to the challenge. I have a website setup with a webshop. It's http://www.fdl1.com. If this perks your interest, check it out, there are more pics and info there. There are also links to the Thingiverse page and Facebook page.
Just to be clear, I am not here to market the FDL-1. If you want to buy something, cool, but I mostly want to show this to Nerfhaven. I entered the Nerf community from the maker world. I had no idea the stuff you guys were making. My first war was a Nerf culture shock. There was 3D printing all over the place, blasters mashed together, painted, hydro dipped, the works. I was impressed to say the least. The point being, I had never had anyone tell me you couldn't or shouldn't print an entire blaster or use brushless motors or make the thing robotic so I just did it. I spent over a year revising the entire design over and over based on my experiences of using it in the office then on the field. In the maker world, bigger is almost always better so I went with Megas. I also hadn't seen a flywheel mega blaster released by Nerf at the time so I took that on as a challenge. Anyway, I posted about this on reddit a few months back and got slammed with criticism. I just came on here looking for a NIC blaster design for NomNE and saw someone talking about 3D printing a full blaster. Some of the first comments were you shouldn't and that you can't print flywheels. It pains me every time I see those responses. In the maker world we ask ourselves what if? I feel like the NIC does a lot of asking why. I never asked myself why would I print an entire blaster, I just asked myself what if I did and did it. What if I took the motors off my drone and stuck them on there? What if I want to operate the thing remotely? Use a microcontroller. What if a revolver is clunky? Load it from the back with a button to advance it and throw in an IR sensor so it doesn't dry fire empty chambers. All what ifs. The NIC is full of brilliant minds and makers at heart. I'd hate to see a cool design not created or a mod not done because someone asked you why you would do it or told you it was impossible. Just try it.
Anyway, here's a pic. Let me know what you guys think. My next design will be mag fed before that comes up. Nerf, make, print on
