Introduction
Our project is a twist on the traditional foam dart gun in the form of shooting rings. The idea came from the game ring toss and how it could be better catered to children. The shooter works by loading a foam ring onto the white tube. Then the orange handle on the back is pulled back in order to load the spring mechanism. Finally one can pull the orange trigger within the handle in order to fire the ring.
Components
As seen from the pictures, a bit of the design is derived from the popular Nerf gun brand, an example of which can be seen below
Originally we planned to only harvest the powerful spring and trigger mechanism from the gun. However, it proved to be stronger than expected and thus we settled on using a few more components from the manufactured product in order to ensure safety and a more reliable operation. These included a portion of the shell in order to better house internal components and the trigger mechanism.
After this, a segment of PVC piping was cut to length in order to have a place for the rings to launch off. However, this raised the difficulty of firing the rings as the spring mechanism was located within the PVC. Thus out next step was to notch and cut the PVC in order to create a housing for an extension that could be used to impact the rings. Finally, the extension was laser cut and attached to the trigger mechanism of the gun. Along with this several targets were also laser cut. Finally, we used foam from a pool noodle in order to create the rings. This would ensure safety.
Unfortunately, we again underestimated the power of the spring. When shooting the rings, two pieces within the gun would impact eventually causing one of them to break. A solution involving foam dampening within the springs was considered, but ultimately was unable to come to fruition due to the now broken pieces.
Overall, however, the shooter proved to be a great foray into learning about the kinds of engineering that go into seemingly simple toys. If given more time, we would have resolved our safety issues by dampening the spring and having slightly heavier rings in order to shoot them further.