It Takes an Hour to Load This Dart-Blasting Minigun, however 9 Seconds to Empty It

Hasbro tends to design its dart-firing Nerf blasters to appear like toys, or classic sci-fi props, with efficiency geared in the direction of maintaining children secure. Grown up dart blaster fans, by comparability, attempt to create completely terrifying, over-powered, foam-flinging weapons. The latter strategy, because of YouTuber GatlingTommy, has now yielded a fully functional replica of the military’s M134 Minigun, made well-known in movies like the original Predator.

For these not accustomed to the military’s version of the gun, it’s identified for having an extremely excessive price of fireside, capturing out as much as 6,000 rounds each minute by utilizing six rotating barrels. You by no means wish to end up on the unsuitable finish of 1, and the identical goes for the MOAB, or Mom of All Blasters, which features kind of the very same approach, however with foam darts blasting out of the barrels.

It took GatlingTommy (you possibly can find their YouTube channel here, and their Instagram account here) two years to design, 3D print, and assemble the MOAB, and the primary purposeful prototype was just lately examined by the workforce behind the YouTube channel WalcomS7, who cowl dart blaster information. Primarily based on the ear-to-ear grins on the faces of everybody who provides it a strive, it’s clear the MOAB is a powerful piece of engineering.

Powered by a chargeable battery, the MOAB makes use of a spring-based firing mechanism. With its electrical motor cranked to three,000RPM, it has a firing price of round 58 darts each second. Darts are fed to the blaster from a 500-shot backpack utilizing a 3D-printed chain feed mechanism, and as every dart is fired, the chain and every dart’s casing is disassembled and ejected. Holding down the hearth button (which is hidden beneath a security cowl) will empty the backpack in about 9 seconds, nevertheless it takes one particular person round an hour to reassemble the chain and reload all 500 darts.

To make the MOAB extra helpful in a dart blaster battle (you don’t wish to run out of ammo 9 seconds in), the firing price might be adjusted utilizing a small LCD display, so as an alternative of working till it’s empty, it may be programmed to fireside a brief burst of darts each time the hearth button is pressed.

It’s each a fully absurd and an amazingly spectacular feat of homebrew engineering, and when you can’t purchase one but, and even obtain the mandatory recordsdata to 3D print your personal, GatlingTommy is exploring methods to get this into the fingers of probably the most devoted (and well-funded) dart blaster followers, both as a fully-functional accomplished construct, or as a DIY 3D-printable equipment that features the varied digital elements that may’t come from a 3D printer.