“Hey Silly, can you give me tips on how to design blasters?”
I am often asked questions along the lines of:
Hey Silly, can you give me tips on how to design blasters? How do you design stuff? What techniques should I use? What is your workflow like?
Well, here is a webpage with all that info on it!
I will be updating this from time to time, with more information and tips.
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Learning CAD
Very often, people ask me “how do I learn CAD/3d modeling?”. The answer I give is “I don’t really know, there’s better places to learn CAD than me telling you what I know.”
I am good at blaster design specifically, not good at explaining how to begin using Fusion 360 or Solidworks.
There’s plenty of tutorials on YouTube for pretty much every CAD program, and the people who make the program also probably have educational resources for learning how to use it.
They will be much better at explaining their own products than I would be!
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Referencing Source Files
If you’re just getting started, I recommend you look at other people’s designs in CAD before you make a blaster yourself. You will need a STEP or F3D file to do that easily.
If you’re using a CAD program without the ability to import and export STEP, you should really switch to a program that can. Working in a program with only STL-like export and import is really not good for you in the long term.
If a designer allows others to build off of their work, don’t be afraid to make use of available material. If you don’t want to design a grip, go use a grip from an existing blaster!
Here’s some useful resources for blaster source files:
I share STEP and F3D files for pretty much all of my blasters on their respective Printables or GitHub pages.
Captain Slug shares all of his STEP source files here: https://captainslug.com/nerf/files/STEP/
Orion Blasters (Dan) shares the STEP for his blasters either on his website (https://orionblasters.com/) or on his Discord (which is linked to on his website)
If you want inspiration, go to the r/Nerf subreddit and sort by Community Release flair (https://www.reddit.com/r/Nerf/?f=flair_name%3A%22Community%20Release%22). That will show all released blasters and mods posted on the subreddit. You can then message individuals for more info and about possibly getting the files yourself.
A lot of designers are usually happy to help if you just message them. HOWEVER, make sure you can’t find the file yourself before you message someone! The one thing that drives me crazy the most is people asking for you to give them something on a silver platter when its already public and easily findable. DO YOUR RESEARCH before taking up other people’s time!!
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Design Workflow
This is my recommended workflow for blaster design:
Design the mechanism. It doesn't need to be finalized, just good enough to work.
Design a ROUGH TESTBED shell around the mechanism, to keep everything in place. This is ONLY to see if the mechanism itself works.
(this step is shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtcTChv5F5E)Print it and test (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1QMHJ7zKs).
Improve the mechanism, cycle through steps 1 and 2 until it works well.
Dress up the shell. You know, make it look good. Add a grip and a stock. Orange muzzle piece. Front grip. All the stuff.
(this step is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R51Mks6aqek)Print a prototype of that, then improve.
Have other people print your stuff (usually one person you know first, then later open it to a beta).
Polish the design.
Release the design publicly.
Update/upkeep.
That’s how you should do blaster design. Now, with that being said, here is my personal process that I use when I’m in “the flow” of design mindset and want to get a project done while its fresh on my mind:
Design the mechanism.
Dress it all up.
Do a ton of polish.
First test print.
Improve, second test print.
Improve, beta test.
Improve, second beta.
Improve, release publicly.
Improve, update/upkeep.
This process works for me, because I’m comfortable with my skills and I know how to do a lot of blaster related projects by intuition. You should do the actually correct workflow, not the one I use.
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Blaster Design Tutorials
Useful design tutorials by me (Sillybutts): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLArRDSZLippqrxG27YkQu07JMQcyedqLX&si=TDrc2rRTrLJ5OAX4
Blaster cross section mechanical animations (Sillybutts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPXnnEVpPY4
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Hardware Choices
Try to use existing hardware that hobby shops (such as OutOfDarts or SilverFoxIndustries) already sell. It will help quite a bit with sourcing stuff for everyone.
Its better for you and for shops, because you can license out production more easily if a shop already has all the bits your blaster needs on hand.
Its better for the customer, because they might already have the components they need on hand, and they can buy them easily from hobby shops if they don’t already have stuff on hand.
And its better for people building off your work in the future, because design aspects can be cross-compatible with other designs (for example, its pretty easy to mash together parts of the Charamile Designs Skewer and the Captain Slug Talon Claw, because they both use the same 10-32 size threaded rod and nuts).
If you do need to use something not already used by other blaster designers, make sure it’s a component that can be easily sourced over a longer period of time. You don’t want to build around a niche thing that is then discontinued, leaving everyone high and dry.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Nerf/comments/z6kmbj/comment/iy22mqd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nerf/comments/12no4x2/comment/jghctra/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nerf/comments/12no4x2/comment/jghcu6t/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nerf/comments/1554xid/comment/jsvug10/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nerf/comments/1068c04/comment/j3h6dh8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
