Why one of Nerf’s cheapest guns is a feat of engineering

[MzKittyKath]

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Nerf’s Triad EX-3 is one of their cheaper dart blasters. You can pick one up for about five bucks, but don’t let the low price tag fool you. There’s some very clever engineering packed into its plastic body.

Most of Nerf’s smaller, cheaper blasters have to be loaded one dart at a time. That’s one advantage carrying the EX-3 provides: you can load three darts into it at once (hence the Triad label). Cock the hammer and pull the trigger, and the EX-3 will fire only a single dart. Cock it again, and the next dart fires — and without rotating the barrel or feeding through a clip the way bigger, more expensive Nerf blasters do it.

So, how did Nerf pull it off in the humble EX-3? As Engineer Guyshows in his latest video, they conjured up a slick, patented compressed air delivery system. There’s a supply line that runs behind each of the blaster’s three chambers. At the back of each chamber there’s a spring-loaded valve. Slide a dart into the chamber, and the valve slides across the supply line and allows air to rush into the back of the dart when you pull the trigger.

If a chamber is empty, the valve blocks the flow of air into that chamber and allows it to flow into the next one that’s loaded. Even if you skip a chamber or load a single dart, those tiny spring-loaded valves ensure that the Triad EX-3 “knows†which round should be fired next.

And yes, that same system also allows you to trick the EX-3 into firing a hail of three darts simultaneously. Shove two in just far enough to depress the valves halfway, and enough air can enter each chamber to fire all the darts.

Not very spectacularly, though. It’s more of a fun party trick than a way to turn the tables on your foes in the heat of the battle.

 

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http://www.geek.com/news/engineer-guy-reveals-why-the-nerf-triad-ex-3-dart-blaster-is-so-amazing-1639907/

[Hyun.]

That is an awesome mechanism tbh.

[dissonance]

cool