I was surfing for laser tag and laser guns a while ago and came across something called blackbeard that converts a rifle into a laser practice gun. I thought this was clever as the module replaces the bolt and otherwise uses the normal trigger and optics of the rifle. Well I love my airsoft but understandably its not safe to practice with them around the house even after the kids go to bed. So I got a bug in me to convert my favorite KWA GBBR Tavor SAR 21 into a lazer gun, especially for winter months when propane guns don't work well.
Not my video but this one shows great detail about how it works, enough to reverse engineer and improve upon it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdmjrckxhhc
First I took pictures I could find online of people who disassembled the blackbeard to see how it worked. its simple and cute. It uses a high gear ratio motor to turn a rocker that when the rocker gets hit by the hammer it triggers the circuit to do a partial to full revolution pushing the hammer back down. At the same time it fires a laser down the barrel.
Then I took my KWA apart, extracted the BCG took measurements and went through a few iterations of 3d printing to get something that looks like this. Sounds easy enough and the trouble really existed in a few parts. 1 the motor. After a lot of searching and buying the wrong motor a couple times i finally found the Endbots.com 20mm lightning 12v gear motor. This has the appropriate torque to push down the hammer. Next finding a nice tiny sufficiently powerful microcontroller, i settled on the Teensy because it was low power enough, small enough, and fast enough. I did have to make an amplifier circuit as its output lines are very limited. I also had to install some low pass filtration between the laser module, motor and microcontroller as they seemed to like to interfere with each other. The laser was just a 5(20mw) laser pointer. Two lithium batteries rounded it out. and...It had problems turning over. It turned out you better be careful in what orientation you print the rocker to minimize friction. I also used a small butane torch to fire polish the sides of the 3d print to reduce friction. And don't forget, liquid electrical tape is one of your best all-purpose adhesives, insulators, fillers, vibration dampeners, and structural goo's. Helicoils are also your friends if there isn't room for nuts.
I believe this is version 3. Now the beauty of using a nice little microcontroller to make your own is you can program ammo count, malfunctions and other behaviors into it. I set the code to a random round count <=30 and after the counter reaches zero it pauses for 2 seconds to indicate you need to do the motions of a reload or malfunction clearing. The tavor can be bought, if your lucky from redwolf airsoft.
And remember, always treat an airsoft rifle like it can put an eye out, Never point it at anyone who is not actively participating and properly geared up with face protection and always be aware that ricochets happen and thus even with a laser bolt you too should have eye protection in case you were wrong.
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