Vortex Disk Development
We decided to do a little investigation to see if we could improve the flight characteristics of the Nerf Vortex ammunition. The Vortex blasters are a line of Nerf blasters that launch disks instead of darts. These disks consist of a flexible plastic core surrounded by a soft foam ring. The launch characteristics of the disks are very dependent on the consistency of the core material. Therefore, when testing new core profiles, it was necessary for us to injection-mold the cores from the exact same material that the factory uses. This required that we purchase a small bench-top molding machine, and we also had to create our own injection molds. It was a lot of effort, but the process worked remarkably well.