How 3D Printing Is Changing the Nerf Hobby

Nerf is a household name, especially when it comes to its “blasters” that fire soft foam darts or balls. Just like paintball, Nerf has many serious fans, and also like paintball, they enjoy modding and tinkering with their plastic projectile slingers. With the arrival of 3D printers, the scope of what’s possible in the Nerf world has opened up significantly.

Scratch-Built Custom Blaster

While Nerf fans had to be happy with merely modding their Nerf blasters to make them better or more interesting, with a CAD application, a 3D printer, and a few springs and other small metal components, you can design your own entirely custom gun. Of course, if you’re not the type to conceive and scratch-build your own blaster, you can still enjoy the fruits of other people who come up with the most incredible ideas.

Take the Flintlock Nerf Blaster. It’s a beautifully-complex gun that looks and acts like a flintlock. So you and a friend can pretend to settle your differences through a duel, or maybe you’re looking for the final piece of your pirate costume. You can see just how ingenious the design is in this assembly instruction video. With such a huge parts list, it’s not for the faint of heart, and certainly too complex for a company like Nerf to manufacture at scale, but that’s the beauty of having your own little desktop factory! That said, you can get the commercial Hanke Flintlock Style Manual Action Foam Dart Blaster, which by all accounts is quite good.

Amazing Mods

Complete custom blasters are the highest-form of Nerf 3D printing art, but you’ll find that what most people want, and what most creators offer, are mods for existing popular Nerf blasters. Most blasters from Nerf (and their clones) are pretty decent already, but with a few tweaks here and there they can be transformed. Modding is of course a hallowed Nerf tradition, but 3D printing takes it to an entirely new level.

For example. there’s the awesome Nerf Retaliator SMG kit, which takes a standard Retaliator and mods it to look like an SMG.

The mods are endless, and range from purely cosmetic mods to accessories like sights that work with the tactical rails already found on Nerf blasters.

3D-printed Ammo

It’s not just entire blasters or mods that get the 3D-printed treatment. You can even print ammo for a Nerf blaster. Now, it’s here that we might get into some sketchy territory, because Nerf darts are designed to be safe for play. 3D-printed ammo can, in theory, be made to be potentially dangerous. So I’m not recommending you actually print any of these for play against other players.

However, because 3D printers can print in a variety of materials, and have precise control of the internal density and structure of a dart, it’s possible to make some interesting things that fly better or hit harder. Of course, you’re better off using these on 3D-printed shooting targets.

Performance Upgrades

It’s always been possible to make Nerf blasters to shoot harder or further by modifying them with more spring tension, or by altering the firing mechanism. With 3D printers, you can do so much more. Entirely redesigned firing mechanisms, extended barrels, or better loading mechanisms can all improve how well a blaster functions.

Just like with 3D-printed ammo, you have to be mindful of your own safety and the safety of others, but there’s no denying the appeal of buying a blaster and then turning it into something much more performant and unique, suited to your needs.

Print Your Nerf Dreams

Nerf fans have always had a DIY streak in them, and I’ve always seen modified Nerf guns since was a kid, but with how affordable 3D printers have become, or how easy it is to have a local print shop make things for you, it seems that the only limit on what can be done in the world of foam weapons technology is your imagination.