Direct plunger

A direct plunger is a type of plunger system. It used to be the most common plunger type before the reverse plunger was introduced.

However, the most recent series of dart blasters, N-Strike Elite, has reintroduced the direct plunger in order to achieve higher ranges.

The direct plunger system is favored by the modding community, as it gives a blaster much more power.

Details

The direct plunger's main parts are a plunger rod, a plunger tube, a plunger head, a catch, an O-ring, and a spring. When primed, the plunger rod and head move back, compressing the spring inside. When the firing trigger is pulled, the catch releases, and the spring moves the plunger head forward, and the air hits a dart, firing it. The direct plunger has little dead space, and if modified with a padded plunger head, almost none.

Types

Standard direct plunger

A standard direct plunger is coated with a rubber cup or an O-ring, so that when the blaster is primed, the rubber creates a seal, thereby forming air pressure to shoot the dart. Most older blasters used cup-seals, where the seal was a large rubber cup, however most current blasters use an O-ring. Modders take advantage of this by making tighter seals, increasing the size of the plunger to create more pressure, adding extra O-rings, etc.

Motorized direct plunger

Main article: Motorized direct plunger

A motorized direct plunger is the same as a standard direct plunger except for the fact that there is a motor inside the blaster, so that the mechanism can repeatedly fire without any manual priming.