When it is working, this thing does what the tiny brick part does, only at a size you can actually hold and fire. At 250% scale the launcher throws a stud a few meters, which is a genuinely respectable result for a printed toy. The 900% version is the showpiece, and watching it fire into a pyramid of the smaller blasters is the kind of test most people only dream of running.
The way it came together is thorough. The original stud shooter was photographed on a motorized turntable inside a lightbox, with the camera mounted on a tripod and driven from a phone. Those shots were aligned into orthographic templates, and the body, trigger lever, and stud were then modeled in 3ds Max 2018. Slicing happened in Simplify3D, and printing ran on a Tevo Flash using black Fillamentum PLA Extrafill. Supports came off with needle-nose pliers, and on the big version the trigger lever was seated into the black chassis with a rubber mallet rather than assembled from several printed parts as first planned.
There are nice touches everywhere. The orange muzzle cap gives it a proper toy look, and the trigger-like switch sits under the main cylinder on the handle. The smaller finished blasters were outfitted as keychains, which seems like a fun way to use the 250% prints, and the printable files were shared for free.
The trade-off is range. The big launcher does not shoot very far, since friction between the PLA parts and the weight of the stud drain its momentum quickly. PLA also wears down and loses clutch force over time compared to molded ABS. On top of that, the files are no longer available because LEGO had them taken down, so anyone wanting to replicate it is out of luck for now.
Project by agepbiz. Watch it on their YouTube channel: