Jul 10, 2016 | By Andre

Crocodile Dundee first popularized the saying “that’s not a knife, this is a knife” before the Simpsons parodied the phrase with a spoon half a generation later. A new Instructable based around a fully 3D printed rubber band gatling gun instantly reminds me of the classic phrase.

While its true that 3D printed rubber band guns have been around in some form for a few years now, The Arcus Gatling Gun has me repeating over and over in my head: “That’s not a 3D printed rubber band gun, this is a 3D printed rubber band gun!”

Made by user mdavisgtm, a first-timer when it comes to releasing designs on the site, this full-automatic rubber band gun can launch 48 rounds in a matter of seconds. Additionally, it actually uses the energy from previous shot to spin the barrel into position for the next round. It also features a cool arm mount and cam system.

And for all of you 3D printing purists out there, you will be happy to learn the entire mechanism is designed to be assembled (and disassembled) without screws or glue but instead simply the snapping together of 33 3D printed parts.

This of course means a lot of 3D printing ahead if you do plan on joining the ranks of rubber band gun owner. The breakdown of parts and print settings has some components requiring 100% infill (most at 25%) and the working unit was printed at 0.15mm layer height. So expect many hours (and or days) of printing before you have all your parts prepared.

With that in mind, it is my experience that for projects like this its very rare you would ever need to set the layer resolution to 0.15mm per layer so you can probably get away with a much lower resolution if you’d rather sacrifice a bit of surface finish for print time. Also, the Colorfabb XT filament used is a strange choice. I’ve been less impressed with the material than I am with good ol’ reliable PLA so using whatever you have lying around would likely do the trick.

The demo unit was made using an Ultimaker 2 but really any decently calibrated filament based 3D printer with a 200mm x 200mm build area can produce all the required parts. This does mean that any printer by popular brand Makerbot won’t work unless you somehow have access to a Z18.

Once everything is 3D printed, the Instructables page does have a detailed visual guide to help you along the way. If you do plan on going through with this incredibly cool project, I do recommend testing the fit of a few parts just incase the tolerances on your machine differ from the Ultimaker 2 originally used.

From a practical perspective, the project is impressive from a technical and mechanical perspective. It is uncertain when exactly one might require a 3D printed gatling gun like the Arcus but to a degree, that’s beside the point. Congrats to mdavsgtm for the patience, skill and prep work necessary to create such a behemoth and extra kudos for releasing it for free out to the world to duplicate.

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Application

 

 

Maybe you also like:


   


Ben Dova wrote at 7/11/2016 6:06:24 PM:

Arm a gonna rubber you out....



Leave a comment:

Your Name:

 


Subscribe us to

3ders.org Feeds 3ders.org twitter 3ders.org facebook   

About 3Ders.org

3Ders.org provides the latest news about 3D printing technology and 3D printers. We are now seven years old and have around 1.5 million unique visitors per month.

News Archive