4 Strong 3d Printed Slingshots That Fit In Your Pocket.

There are literally hundreds of 3d printed slingshot designs available on the web. As a survivalist, I like to download and test many of these slingshot designs to see what is powerful, accurate, and comfortable.

Gone are the days when I used to whittle down a piece of tree branch wood to fit my hand. Now it’s all 3d printed in a few hours depending on the speed and quality of your printer. Most of these designs will use around 100 grams of filament depending on infill settings. It will cost you around $2 to $3 to print one of these slingshot designs out.

In this post, I will go over some of the 3d printed slingshots that I make and use regularly. All were printed at 100% size of the original file and 0.2mm layer height at 80mm/s speed using PETG filament. The infill was 70% cubic for added strength and was printed laying flat. They were all printed on my Creality Ender 5 pro 3d printer and minimal sanding was done just to smooth the edges.

These 4 strong slingshots were all tested using Theraband Gold cut at 20cm long tapered. The Theraband slingshot rubber was 2.5cm at the widest and 1.5cm at the narrow end.

The Boy scout 3d printed slingshot

This boy scout 3d printed slingshot model is an excellently designed pebble shooter. It has grooves for your fingers and thumb as well as a large hole to tie it off on the bottom.

There are two free .stl model files to choose from groves and holes or slots. This is for the type of rubber you will be using and the tie-off method.

This style of finger grip molded slingshot is becoming very popular due to its compact design. I like it a lot and it is now my daily shooter as it fits in my back pocket easily.

Print Settings

Printer: Creality Ender 5 Pro with upgrades.

Filament: Amazon Basics Blue PETG 1.75mm

Rafts: No

Supports: No, if printed up and down. Bed-only supports are needed if laying flat which I recommend.

Resolution: 0.2

Infill: 50% cubic or above. I like to do 70% on all my slingshots.

Print time: 9 hours with 102grams of filament used.

Rubber: Theraband strips.

This slingshot 3d model is perfect for my hands and is very accurate. Due to the side grip, it will take some getting used to the finger spacing. Your hand will be using different muscles compared to a more traditional Y model slingshot.

This is my favorite 3d printed slingshot. It has a wide shooting V and a comfortable grip. No need to resize it unlike some of the others mentioned further down in the article. If you have bigger hands a resize of 10-20% may make it perfect.

The JP 3d printed back pocket slingshot

I call this one the JP 3d printed slingshot due to the JP initials stamped on the front of the slingshot. It’s a free download so it’s an easy project for anyone wanting to try it out.

You can shoot over the top or through the forks with this one. I like that it already has sling groves to help keep the rubber Theraband in place. If you want to use Theraband tubes you can easily tie the tube off around the side or the back of the slingshot. Another option would be to drill a small hole for the slingshot tube to be attached.

With the correct rubber installed you can easily hunt rabbits and other small vermin with this Peashooter.

I printed the JP slingshot with black PETG with 70% infill cubic and I had no flex when being used. Only 80 grams of filament was used and it was a decent print at around 7 hours laying flat.

If you have bigger hands I would scale this slingshot slightly larger 20% should be fine. You can always do a quick 1/2 hour print to test out the shape and size and scale smaller or larger to suit your hands.

For its size, this one is great as a back pocket slingshot but I found it slightly small for my average size hands. I would print this again at 10% larger for a perfect fit.

Print Settings

Printer: Creality Ender 5 Pro

Filament: PETG Black 1.75mm

Rafts: No

Supports: No, if printed up and down. Bed-only supports are needed if laying flat which is recommended.

Resolution: 0.2

Infill: 50% cubic or above. I like to do 70% on all my slingshots.

Print Time: 7 Hours with 50% infill at 80mm/s. 80 grams of filament was used.

3d Printed Catapult SY-Z3

This free 3d printed slingshot model SY-Z3 comes in 3 different versions:

• 95 cm
• 110 cm
• 110 cm more smooth for printing upright.
• You could also scale the free .stl files using Ultimaker Cura if you wanted a different size.

This was my least favorite 3d printed pocket slingshot as it was really small and had a lot of sharp edges. Sure it looks cool and has a nice shape but the ergonomics are wrong for the default size. To be more comfortable it needs to be printed at +20% size at a minimum. I printed the 110cm version and it was still too small for my hands.

They are designed with a top slot or side slot, and no need for printed supports. This means you can shoot over the top or through the forks with the two different slingshot .stl files included. I really like the top slots as it lets me wind up the Theraband rubbers and slide them into the slots. Friction will then prevent the rubber band from coming out. No need to tie it off. This slingshot is designed for flat rubber and not tubes.

I still prefer to print my slingshots laying flat and then dig out the supports for the slots with a small knife. Printing your slingshot laying flat will give it extra strength due to the way 3d printers layer the filament.

Print settings

Printer: Creality Ender 5 Pro

Filament: PETG Orange 1.75mm

Rafts: No

Supports: No, if printed standing up. Bed-only supports are needed if laying flat (recommended)

Resolution: 0.2

Infill: 70% cubic or above. I like to do 70% on all my slingshots.

Print time: 8 hours 5 minutes. 85 grams of filament were used.

Feihu-style-slingshot 3d printed.

This free Feihu-styl-slingshot 3d printed slingshot design has been reverse-engineered from a very popular China model. The original design was developed by world record holder Deng Fei hu.

The slingshot that Deng Feihu used became known as the Feihu Fork. So it is interesting to see a free 3d print slingshot model come out that I can try.

This strong slingshot has a fork width of 85mm and top slots for those who want to try them out. It is designed to use flat Theraband gold as a top slot tie is provided. This means it is an over-the-top slingshot shooter. But you could use any color that suits your draw weight and projectile size. This slingshot is not designed for circular tube rubber.

Like some of the other slingshots here, it needs to be printed slightly larger an extra 10% resize should be fine.

Print Settings

Printer: Creality Ender 5 Pro

Filament: PETG White 1.75mm

Rafts: No

Supports: No, if printed up and down. Bed-only supports are needed if laying flat.

Resolution: 0.2

Infill: 70% cubic or above. I like to do 70% on all my slingshots.

Print time: 8 hours 30 minutes with 115 grams of filament used.

How to Attach Therabands to a slingshot

Check out this video on how to attach a flat band rubber to a slingshot.

For top slot slingshot rubber check out the following video on how to install the rubber. It works really well.

How to convert a slingshot to a top slot with no tie.

Most 3d printed slingshots can be converted to a top slot with no tie slingshot. All that is needed is to drill a 4mm, 5/32 inch hole in each of the slingshot risers. This hole will be around 1cm down from the top of each riser horizontal to the ground.

No use a fine-toothed hacksaw to cut from the top middle of each riser down to the hole that you just drilled.

Use some 200-grit sandpaper to smooth the inside cut.

Congratulations you now have a top slot no tie mont for your slingshot.

Slingshot other names.

Other slingshot names include Catapult (United Kingdom), Tirador (Philippines), Peashooter (United States), Gulel (India), Getis / Gulel (Nepal), Kettie (South Africa), or Ging, Shanghai, Pachoonga (Australia and New Zealand).

Conclusion:

As you can see I like to use PETG filament for my 3d printed slingshots. It has a higher shock rating than PLA and will handle outdoor temperatures better. This is why I also use PETG for all of my 3d printed camping gear.

PLA can be brittle and that is why I don’t use it for slingshots. In fact, I made the famous Adderini 3d printed crossbow sling bow fully out of PETG and it is holding up very well. It was my favorite project so far. Very powerful so check out my review.

So which strong 3d printed slingshot was the best? I liked the Boy scout. It was sized correctly had a large shooting V and was very comfortable. It is now my daily pocket catapult.

Let me know what other slingshot designs you like and I will add them to this post. Happy rock throwing.