Printing Airgun Targets

printed target in blue

Summary: First print of original design. Low quality print setting needs work!

If you read my other blog, you will see that I love shooting airguns. One of my favorite targets are Daisy Shatterblast disks. They are biodegradable plastic disks that explode into pieces when you shoot them; much more fun than punching paper. Last weekend as I was shooting, I managed to hit one of the stakes that holds the disks and broke it. No big deal, I can always print a new one I thought. Then it occurred to me, Shatterblast targets are biodegradable. PLA is biodegradable. Why not print my own disks in PLA? I tend to shy away from shooting the Shatteblast disks because I have to mail order them and once you add shipping, they get a little pricey. Especially considering that you can only shoot them once. So my supply is limited. If I can print my own, I can get more disks any time I want.

I took some measurements from one of the disks and went to work in 123D Design. The design is simple, just a bunch of extruded circles. It only took a few minutes to draft the design. Once the model was complete I saved the .stl file on my computer and loaded it into Cura. I don't need these things to look nice considering I am just going to break them, so I printed at the low quality setting. It took about 17 minutes. I also tried printing without glue for the first time. The print stuck just fine and I think I would have had a hard time removing the print without damaging it if I had used glue.

low quality print

Low quality? They weren't kidding. The top layer wasn't nearly complete and there was so little material that the disk is flexible. I am going to have to ask on the UM forum if this is normal or if I should expect better results from the low quality setting. Based on this, the LQ setting looks pretty useless. Let's try that again at the normal quality setting. The normal quality print took 46 minutes.

normal quality print

Now that's better. The normal quality print came out great. The dimensions are spot on and the disk fit perfectly in the target stake (see first photo). But how does it work as a target? I reluctantly shot the printed target with my Crosman 1400 .22 air rifle at 3 pumps. The pellet punched a nice hole in the disk but the disk did not shatter the way the Shatterblast targets do.

both targets shot with same rifle

Hmmmm. Despite the brittle nature of PLA, it holds up better than I expected. It could be because of the 20% infill. It looks like the infill lattice almost acted as a frame to isolate the impact from the shot. Perhaps if I printed it with 100% infill the disk will shatter? But that would take too much material and take too long to print. Not going to try it.

rear view of hole

This was a fun little experiment but I don't think 3D printing is an efficient way to make breakable targets. Maybe I can make targets that can withstand an airgun shot without damage? Perhaps with ABS? Then 3D printing might make sense for targets. But that's a project for another day.