Project Predator, part four – Cosmetics

People are always asking me “why the hell do you have a 3D printer? What do you use it for?” Well, mostly stuff like this, designing and printing cosmetic attachments to make Nerf blasters look as science fiction as possible.

Some of the pieces were pulled off Thingiverse unmodified, while others took a fair bit of remixing. I do my remix work primarily in Tinkercad, which is a very easy-to-use modeling program. Certainly not a competitor with Fusion360 or the equivalent CAD packages, but for minor edits to .STL files it’s very easy to use.

The files for various pieces are as follows:

The extended battery door is here – this is my remix of a slightly less extended door already available.
The flashlight foregrip is here – I did make a minor edit to remove the text from it, but that hardly counts as a remix.
The butt cap, sights, forward support piece, and side rails come from this amazing project. It’s worth noting that my printer doesn’t have enough print area to print the top rail all in one piece, so I split it in half with a tab to join the pieces and welded them together with a cheap 3D printer pen.
And then finally, the electronics case. This got hacked together from a bunch of different Thingiverse projects and a dozen or so iterations. It mounts directly to the Stryfe on the left side and holds all the electronics. Wires for power and trigger/mag switches route into the case through a slot on the right side, right next to the blaster.

A comparison between a stock Stryfe (orange) and Project Predator. Look at all the gizmos!

Right side. Note the tac rail with sights, the foregrip with flashlight installed, and the extended battery cover.

Left side. Important part here is the electronics case, of course.

Forward view.

Extended battery cover for up to 1500mAh LiPo batteries.

Foregrip with flashlight. Flashlight is turned on and off by pressing the front of the light, which pushes the clicky button at the rear into the blaster body.