Imgur album link:
https://imgur.com/a/OpPg4
Well, I was going to wait until I had a firing demo, but it's been a couple months and I never got around to it so I might as well show you guys the pictures I've got.
Now, as a disclaimer, I will say that not EVERYTHING in this is exclusively my original idea. A lot of it is derivative, but I put a ton of work into this thing too.
So, here we go. The fusion pistol has always been my favorite weapon in the game. It's just... really cool! pew pew pew!
Anyway. I'll try to keep this short, but I could tell stories about the construction all day, so if you want to know more, ask.
This all started at a Nerf war when I realised, while talking to a guy, that the FDL2 (link: http://www.projectfdl.com/fdl-2) looked a bit like the fusion pistol, with the chunkiness (at least in the back) and the handguard thing. Several hours of CAD work later, I've got some 3D printable files, despite the fact that at this point, I think they'll never be used. Turns out, I was wrong. 130-some dollars of electronics, one 3D printer, and over 50 hours of prints (on ahem, seven different printers) later, I've got all my parts. I then spend about a month trying to mush them all together and get the software and hardware all play nice together. And boom! I've got this thing.
But you guys seem like the type that care more about what it does than how it's made. Well, it shoots Nerf darts, and it does it very well. Muzzle velocity at max flywheel speed is something like 170 feet per second (= 52 metre/second = 116 miles/hour), and fires at a maximum rate of 13 shots per second from each barrel, totaling at 26 darts per second. I say maximum, since both can be controlled via the control panel on the left. Also accessable from that panel is the burst fire. It's capable of firing in bursts of two (one from each barrel), four, six, and fullauto. In terms of combat effectiveness, even normal FDL2's are considered almost god-tier, and this doubles the usual firerate.
Okay, so since you're still reading, I'll assume you still want to know more about this thing, so I'll give it a bit of a closer look.
https://imgur.com/a/OpPg4
Lets start with the first picture. You can see the similarities to the actual Fusion Pistol. The general shape and the handguard are most prominent. You'll also notice that, other than that, it looks very very different. This is partly due to me printing a lot of these parts with whatever color filament happened to be on hand at the time. Except for those caution stripes, those were painted on. The big nameplate on the side is pretty self-explanatory. Moving on to picture 2, this one shows the control panel. The knob on the very left controls burst, the one in the middle the flywheel speed, the one on the right the firerate. The orange things sticking out of the bottom of the middle are the magazines. The ones in there hold 12 darts each, though I'd generally be using 18-dart mags in an actual war.
Pictures 3, 4, and 5 give a nice closeup of the barrels. Now's a good time for a crash course on what nerfers call flywheels. See those roughly cylinder shaped green things? they're called flywheels. They spin in opposite directions really fast (24,000 RPM), so when a dart gets pushed between them, it gets flung out the barrel at (hopefully) high speed. Most of the blaster's power goes into bringing these wheels up to speed in less than a fifth of a second in time for the pusher to push two darts through them. Picture 6 shows the blaster in my hand. The red display is a voltmeter, showing that my 3s LiPo battery (housed in the grip) needs a charge. Behind the voltmeter is a small microcontroller that basically tells all the motors and things what to do and when to do it. That's what makes the burst-fire possible. This view is what I'd see when wielding the blaster, and despite it looking quite different, it really does feel like I'm holding a fusion pistol, but in real life. The four holes are screw holes to mount a stock, but I don't want to do that, as it'd take away from the fusion pistol feel.
That's not nearly all I could say about this blaster, but this post is getting long, so I'll stop. If you're intrigued by the fact that someone older than 14 is playing with toy guns, try visiting /r/nerf for awhile.
Anyway, I hope you guys liked it, it just kinda hopped out of nowhere and gobbled up three months of my life, but I don't regret it.
-Nevets01
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