Developing the Umbrella Blaster for Hasbro

Purpose

Drawing inspiration from The Kingsmen Movies, I developed the Umbrella Blaster in an effort to introduce a new blaster mechanism in the shape of an in-line stick. Additionally, I wanted the challenge of adding a breech where you insert darts through a cavity as opposed to front-loading it like most low-cost blasters.

This project also served as a representation of what I had learned from working as a Design Engineer for Hasbro.

The Design

The design began with a couple of hand sketches of a potential mechanism. I then brought it to Solidworks where I fully fleshed out the design and sent it for 3D printing in our rapid prototyping lab. Thereafter, I spent a week optimizing the design to improve the air seal, and an additional two weeks implementing the necessary safety features after meeting with the quality assurance department.

Safety and Quality assurance

The most challenging aspect of this project was most definitely ensuring it met all the safety criteria given by the quality assurance department. This included implementing key mechanisms such as trigger lockouts, ratchets on the pull-back, safety valves, and minimization of pinch points.

Costing

The final step was to determine how much this blaster would cost should it ever go into mass production. Using a cost sheet template, I inputted all the masses of each part, carefully considering material selection and any assembly costs. After getting approval from a cost engineer, I determined that this blaster would be able to retail for as low as $16, which falls in line with other low-cost nerf blasters.

End result

This project concluded with a QA-approved, and cost-proven functional prototype capable of shooting darts at 55-60 feet/second. The prototype was also presented to the marketing department and sent to designers to experiment with decoration and theme.