tracer gun | MakerBlock

Here are some of the ideas I’ve been kicking around:

A magazine 1 that you clip in the front of the shooter. When you clip it in it should depress a spring, or more likely, tension a rubber band. When you press the button clipping the magazine in, it could actually eject the empty magazine. That would be sweet.
Lower profile. In looking at insides of the Tracer Guns, it looks like the only reason for the bulky barrels over a long thin slot is so the toy looks more like an actual gun. I’d rather have an optimal design that uses minimal plastic than something that looks like a gun.
A variety of discs for maximum aerodynamics. In the designs uploaded to Thingiverse I included 18 variations on a disc. Perhaps some will fly or spin better than others.
Rubber band powered mechanism. Rubber bands are easier to find, cut to size, and replace than metal springs. It could also lead to a more compact design.

I’m sure other ideas will come to me. I just wanted to jot them all down before I forget them.

Now that I have my chess set complete, it would be pretty cool to have a working OSDS prototype before Botacon.

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Hey, Dave, happy??? [↩]

Tracer Gun from collect-antiques.net

Despite my best efforts I could not locate an image on the interwebs for the kind of disc shooter I remember playing with as a kid. Finally after much googling, I found a picture and the actual name of the type of toy. Apparently they were known as “Tracer Guns” and were produced circa the 1960’s through 1990’s. (Image of a Tracer Gun at right from collect-antiques.net). Whenever I searched for these online I only found references to larger disc guns that shot larger foam discs from cylinder mounted on top.

A variation I had not seen as a kid, but desperately wanted, was disc shooter that had a removable and re-loadable clip. In the pictures to the right you’ll see a grove about halfway down the barrel, just above a protuberance. That protuberance would house about 20-25 discs depending upon the gun you had. In order to load/reload the gun you would have to slip each disc under the firing pin one at a time.

Once I discovered the name of this type of toy, Wikipedia filled in the rest. They had some pictures of a tracer gun which had been taken apart to expose the insides. The best part is the gun depicted has a clip loading mechanism!

Having taken apart the non-clip version as a kid, I recall it having a similar metal spring as a source of power. 1 I believe the rubber band on the trigger is merely to keep it in place. The protuberance on the non-clip version and the clip on the clip version of the toys both contain springs for advancing the next disc into place.

To be clear, I am not looking to duplicate, copy, or replicate this toy. I don’t want that toy. Rather, I would love to print a toy of my own, or a collaborative, design that will shoot harmless plastic discs.

Tracer Gun, clip removed – from Wikipedia

Tracer Gun, exposed – from Wikipedia

They were quite breakable, unfortunately. [↩]

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And I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords

Tag Archives: tracer gun

Ideas for improvements on the Open Source Disc Shooter

It was called a “Tracer Gun”