Tag: tracer gun

The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]

[There’s no secret I’ve always loved the old “disc shooters” that could be picked up in a grocery store aisle.  These were called the “Rayline Tracer Gun“, sold from the 1960’s to 1980’s, and then kind of disappeared.  Much more recently, someone started selling replicas on Amazon.  Once I had a 3D printer, this was one of my ideal prints.  It was easy to blow through a pile of the discs and lose them all in an afternoon.  But, the little discs look very printable.

A year after the below post, I’d go on to post about a contest for a design of a disc shooter.  I started building some of the components for the disc shooter and the disc cartridge, but never end up building a reasonably functional shooter.

This is a project I’d still like to come back to and resurrect. 1  I’m confident with enough trial and error, I could design something that would work in a similar fashion.  Anyhow, below are links to the patents for these toys which I’d found as part of my research into building one for myself.]

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. Misnamer [11/28/2010]
  2. The Lost Blog Posts
  3. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  5. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  6. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  7. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  8. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  9. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  10. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  11. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  13. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  14. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  15. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  16. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  17. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  18. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  19. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]
  20. Where is the Othercutter? [Draft 06/08/2015]
  21. Mendel Parts – Printed, Cast, CNC’d, Lasercut or Injection Molded? [Draft 04/12/2010]
  22. MakerBot Operator’s Manual [06/04/20210]
  23. MakerBot on CBS! [07/07/2010]
  24. New Print: Soft-Pawed Albino Stoat of South Wales Cookie Cutter [07/07/2010]
  25. House calls [07/11/2010]
  26. Digital assistant? [08/05/2010]
  27. MakerBot + Junk = Stuff! [08/06/2010]
  28. Design choices in RepRap, Goals of RepRap [08/14/2010]
  29. Upgrades and obsolescence [08/25/2010]
  30. Dear Anonymous [08/25/2010]
  31. The ultimate in customer service [08/26/2010]
  32. Open Source Makes You Smarter [08/27/2010]
  33. Getting my Plastruder MK5 running [09/06/2010]
  34. Weird new kind of spam [09/19/2010]
  35. An open letter to Ms. Word [10/18/2010]
  36. Printing with PLA again! [10/18/2010]
  37. Halloween costume too [10/27/2010]
  38. Dream jobs [10/29/2010]
  39. The nuances of time travel [10/31/2010]
  40. Printed Pink Panther Person [11/22/2010]
  41. Skein them all and let ‘Bot sort them all out [11/24/2010]
  42. The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]
  43. Princess Bride with Lightsabers [12/13/2010]
  44. Dilbert comic [12/13/2010]
  45. Ultimachine PLA review [12/15/2010]
  46. Mendel to the power of 101 [12/21/2010]
  47. Potential improvements for Leonardo Voltron [12/27/20210]
  48. You can keep your filthy money [12/28/2010]
  49. I watched Primer the other night [12/30/2010]
  1. Get in line! [↩]

Ideas for improvements on the Open Source Disc Shooter

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

  • A magazine1 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.

Default Series Title
  1. Hey, Dave, happy??? [↩]

It was called a “Tracer Gun”

Tracer Gun from collect-antiques.net
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, clip removed – from Wikipedia
Tracer Gun, exposed - from Wikipedia
Tracer Gun, exposed – from Wikipedia
  1. They were quite breakable, unfortunately. [↩]
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