Fixing the wobble - why 3D printing isn't always the best solution.

We previewed our new Stock Extenders on Wednesday afternoon and got a great reception to them. They're going into combat testing this evening and there will be other posts about them forthcoming. One of the comments that came up (and has come up in several other threads and request emails) is to do something about the stability issue in the Stryfe/Rapidstrike front end barrel attachment space.

On the face of it, it would be very simple to mass produce these. They're a very simple piece of plastic printed to slot over the current muzzle attachment and it sits nicely behind my Longstrike barrel extension and steadies it.

See? It's a nice tight fit, it locks the extension in place. On the face of it, 90 seconds of print time per collar with lots to a tray means I can print thousands of these each day. Ideal, right?

Wrong. It's frankly overkill. I'm using a high powered piece of CNC machinery to do what I could do just as effectively with a craft knife and some plasticard or ABS sheet. It'd be a lot easier to customise that sort of contraption to your personal blaster, to your specific circumstance than it would be to buy a packet of ours off the shelf. Add in the fact that ours aren't exactly durable if you try taking them off once you've put them on.

It's all about selecting the correct tool for the job. Too often in the Nerf modding hobby do people look at 3D printing and think of it as some sort of magic process that will do anything. It really won't. Even with high infill ABS, the composite layer by layer nature of additive manufacturing results in something that's very different (note different, not weaker) to injection moulded plastic.

For example, when we realised that the vertical foregrips we had produced weren't going to work because of plastic fatigue failure, we went away and looked at alternatives. We came back with aluminium plates and retained our original plastic handles to give us the best compromise between weight, cost and future design changes. To get the best quality outcome, you have to think beyond a single method or process and not just accept its limitations.

As for us, we need a barrel extension on our in-house blasters to help us house some instrumentation for characterising dart ballistics. The model for the spacer came from some work we were doing to replicate barrel attachment holders and transplant them to blasters that don't currently have them. Though these were printed as demonstration pieces, it's still a lot easier to get the craft knife and cardboard out when the need arises.

I suppose that's a lesson for all modders: right material and process for the job and keep your tools in good order! :)