Reverse Engineering: Nerf Gun
For this reverse engineering project, we were asked to choose a partner and select an object that we could dissemble and recreate using Inventor. My partner was Joe Galmarini and we chose a Nerf gun. First, we had to dissemble the project and sketch out the entire gun. Then, we had to sketch each individual part of the gun in our notebooks and create all the parts in Inventor. After all the parts were created, we made an assembly in Inventor and created technical drawings, presentation files, and assembly videos.
Research
The Nerf gun that we chose was a N-Strike Elite Strongarm, created by Nerf, which is a toy company owned by Parker Brothers and Hasbro. The nerf material that makes up the nerf bullets for the gun, is made out of non-expanding recreational foam-a solid spongy cellular material. CO2 reacts with a polyester resin to create the material. Nerf uses this material because it's soft, safe, and easy to make. However, the nerf gun itself is made by injection moulding. First, a steel mold is created and then, ABS plastic is fed through a heated barrel and melted. After it's melted, the plastic is injected into the steel mold and as it hardens, it form the different parts of the nerf gun. To the left, is a steel mold that nerf uses for some of its plastic, toy army goggles. The gun has a chamber that holds six bullets and it comes with eight nerf darts. Also, the top of the gun has a slit for a possible lazor sight beam that is sold seperately.
Sketches
The first step in the engineering process was sketching out and designing the gun and all its components. As we started building the parts in Inventor, we needed to make improvements to the sketches and we simplified some things and added to others. And, due to one of our constraints, time, we were not able to finish designing all of our parts.
Inventor
Once all our sketches were complete, we designed everything in Inventor. We created each part, assemblies, technical drawings, and assembly videos.
Reflection
Unfortunately, we only had a limited amount of time for this project. If we had more time, there are a few improvements I would like to make. I wish we could've had time to fully complete all of our parts in Inventor. I also would have created stronger springs for the gun, so it could have shot the bullets farther. Because of time, we also had to simplify some of the parts and it would've been better if we had time to design all the different aspects of each part that we had to cut out.
