Hi, I'm Luke. Today on Out of Darts, we are checking out the ZINC. Let's get going!
I love community nerf blasters! I love seeing what 3D-printed creators and designers do and
what they come up with. This is the zinc blaster from Braden over at 118 Design. You can find them
at *118.design Obviously, link in the description. This is one of the more unique 3D-printed blasters
and springers that I've seen in a while, so I was actually really excited to get to check these out.
Braden has been sending me different prototypes for a little while now and actually incorporated
some feedback I gave. And I'm not sure if I was the only person that gave that feedback, but
I love seeing people that are responsive to critique and feedback on a product. Because a lot
of times, I'll get sent stuff and give feedback, and they don't change anything at all, or just
totally ignore it. Not that I'm the expert, but I have played with a few of these things at this
point. So I'm going to show you this one because this one's actually an earlier prototype we will
talk on that in a bit as well the blaster is surprisingly simple and easily the most
holsterable most compact springer that I have ever seen it has a top rack slide and a simple mag
release here on the side and 3D-printed magazines to go along with it it has some nice features such
as grip tape all around the edges and along the top for the slide and a very unique chambering
system where the airflow gets reversed in the back here so this part that's sticking out is actually
air running through it here I did something really similar in a buzzbee XBZ rocket reshell where
the base XBZ rocket is pretty long with the pump but I broke off the end made a 3D-printed coupler
and epoxied it together and it actually worked so this is a great very unique way to make this
work and I think it's not really been done like this unless I have missed a design
completely in the hobby that I'm unaware of which is certainly possible the blaster has proprietary
custom 3D-printed magazines now these are a smidge smaller in diameter and length than say a worker
angled magazine and while I really would love to see a Worker magazine work inside this blaster I
suspect this was chosen to save both on size and overall dimension so that the grip feels better
and the height of the dart lips on the top here being shorter and more inline I believe allows
this blaster to have a more compact vertical form factor I've never seen a nerf blaster with
this much power that is this small uh we'll talk about the spring and performance in a second but
it's a pretty neat design overall so up top we have a very large plunger tube it is large
enough to fit a 7-8-8 or I believe a K25 spring and it has got a substantial amount of air volume
considering the size of the blaster I mean the blaster is like fifty percent
uh spring uh air volume or um spring piston here now there are a couple things I have noticed
with this the first being that this spring is at absolute maximum compression and this is
generally not a great design choice putting a string to full compression like this not only
puts a lot of strain on all of the components on your blaster but it actually is hard on the
spring itself and the spring may take a set if you're past the solid point so that you're
basically past the point of being able to stress this spring and have it retrain its full length
so I would not be shocked if over time this wore down and didn't have the same performance that
said as long as the blaster isn't blowing up and exploding open that's a pretty inexpensive
spring it's not even a full piece of K25 or 7-8-- I believe this is a 7-8-8 so you could very easily
upgrade or change the spring later it's probably the least expensive component of the blaster when
you really look at it so it's a manageable thing ergonomically the grip itself is quite comfortable
on the prototypes I had complained about a little bit of flashing here kind of a very sharp edge on
the mag release and that's since been smoothed over the grip feels quite good in my adult hands
however the actual finger well where finger guard here where my finger has to fit inside
is a little bit tight I my index finger knuckle actually if I were to push it in all the way
brush is pretty hard on both sides not that you would shove your finger in that far I'm
just giving you a gauge for my hands so when I do pull on this I do find I have
to use the tip of my finger kind of at an angle like this and it's got a fairly strong
trigger pull now the prime on the 7-8-8 spring is totally manageable I believe this other one was
a K25 I'm going to assume it's a K25 but this was the original prototype this prime was pretty bunk
or strong and the trigger pull was so hard on the original one that I could barely get this with one
finger I pretty much have to use two fingers now this spring beast shot closer to 200 fps
while the 7-8-8 will average around 134 we'll put the numbers up on screen here
I do find that trigger pull to be a little bit difficult overall it's enough where
I can't hit as accurately because I am really cranking on that trigger pull I don't know if
this is a byproduct of how the catch is designed or just a requirement because of the spring load
but it does seem like there could be some sort of improvement because I really do have to um pull
fairly hard on that note there's an interesting feature with these mags since they do not have
this ramped feature that you would see on a normal mag well the blaster actually will stop you from
being able to load another one into the chamber indicating that you do need to load it and at
first that was super annoying I was like what the heck is going on here but if you think about it as
a feature it's honestly quite a good solution so I'll pop in a full mag here and cycle a few times
So you can you can kind of see my hand having to squeeze pretty hard
I'm getting some wobble every time I squeeze on there I can stick my knuckle in a little
further and get a little more leverage but you are going to expect a little bit of
of aim wobble from squeezing that trigger I've got pretty average hands I do work with
my hands a lot but it's really just stuff around the warehouse stuff around my house
I'm not like a tradesman or any person that's got really really strong hands I have been that person
when I landscaped and did other things and at that point I probably could have squeezed this like
like nothing but in my current shape and current strength of my hands it's definitely a little
tough the form factor is really what this blaster is all about I could totally see holstering this
for either a competitive game or just for regular games and it'd be a nice sidearm to have due
to its compact form factor the most obvious comparison of course that's going to be made
and has to be made is the Dart Zone Pro Mark II profile wise they are a bit different but they're
also quite similar the DZP is a little bit shorter in the muzzle end but on the back obviously sticks
out a bit further i'd say overall the Dart Zone Pro the grip itself is not as comfortable but
the trigger well and the trigger itself is more comfortable and on this side the actual grip
feels a little bit better but the trigger will is far less comfortable when it comes to that
priming difficulty and and firing and how easy the trigger fires
this feels like a mouse click in comparison to the 118 Design I think this is a really innovative
approach to this style of blaster and I'm going to have some fun playing around with this at the
games I would caution everybody that's using this style blaster if your blaster looks like
a real steel firearm or could be mistaken for one if it was a different color or painted
which this certainly could be very cautious about where you're using these and what's your where
you're carrying them because we don't want anybody to get injured playing with a toy you can find the
files for this at 118.design again I'll put that link in the description because I think I said
it wrong in the beginning of the video anyway you are able to download these yourself it's
an open source project non-commercial of course so unless you're approaching them directly about
licensing you should not be but printing these and selling them they've got hardware kits including
all of the hardware bits that you'll need for this for 75 dollars and that I believe includes
enough of a meg spring to do three magazines so I think that's pretty sweet this is a really fun
blaster I think if you're into 3D printing and like collecting different hobby grade
nerf blasters I shouldn't really even call it nerf blasters at this point but foam blasters
you'll have a lot of fun with this there are some great features aesthetically it looks great
I think seeing the plunger tube and rod there is just fantastic and it handles well other than my
one gripe is that heavier trigger pull. In the end, I'm gonna give this blaster a four out of
five. I think the novelty design and aesthetic alone worked quite a bit, and it's quite a fun
blaster to play with. There are just some nice touches all around; I like the magnets
here that actually keep the slide forward in the end. And it is really a very unique blaster.
We're seeing a lot of kind of repetition in the hobby where there are like six or eight different
blasters that are pretty much all a little mini flywheel blaster with blaster through the grip.
Not that I don't like all of those blasters, like the Lepus that I'm currently building, but at some
point, it's nice to see something truly unique and innovative. Over at 118 Design, they're calling
this "the sidearm you've been waiting for," and honestly, if it wasn't for this guy, I would agree
wholeheartedly. It's still a really great blaster, and it's still competitive, but it's hard to
weigh the two together. And again, this is a production run blaster. This is 3D-printed;
they serve very different purposes in very different markets. I think they'll do really
well with this. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments: What 3D-printed community blaster
should I review next? Let me know down below. Until next time, I'm out of darts.