Elemental Objects – Consumer products

Elemental Objects supply a range of PCP air rifle accessories – mainly aftermarket magazines for Daystate, BSA, Air Arms, FX and Brocock rifles.

Magazines tend to be an afterthought for air rifle manufacturers as it is a small add-on rifle accessory. Typically, these manufacturers only produce quantities to match the number of new air rifles manufactured, even though most end users like to have 4-5 spares when using the rifle.

When problems arise from international shipments, magazine stock levels are depleted fairly rapidly and can take months to come back into stock. Typical air gun sales for a manufacturer in the UK reach 100–150 per week. However, there are multiple manufacturers of air rifles, and each brand has numerous models. Once you add in the fact that there are five different calibres available, the variation surrounding a magazine’s design is quite high, therefore high volume manufacturing processes like injection moulding aren’t feasible.

Air rifle manufacturers typically choose CNC machining as the volumes are suitable and precision is required, but this is expensive.

Addition recognised that this air rifle accessory is a perfect candidate for industrial 3D printing, especially via SLS which allows a mixed build of parts. In this particular instance, approximately 400 magazines can be manufactured in a single build, all to suit different brands and sizes to fulfil resellers’ orders.

Because of the wide range of rifles available, many magazine variations are required, which makes the parts unsuitable for mass production. These difficulties and general cost of producing air rifle accessories meant that, for stockists and end users alike, OEM parts have been hard to come by, with long lead times, high cost and often unreliable end performance.

Addition developed a complete range of magazines which are entirely 3D printed using optimised materials. After product testing was proven successful, they went on to supply volumes of up to 300 units packed and quality checked per week, and all shipped to retail outlets throughout the UK. EO has approximately 20 resellers now actively selling the magazine throughout the UK. This level of supply means that product is now available with reduced lead times and at a price which is competitive with OEM products. In some cases the Elemental Objects magazines outperform the OEM magazines and their unique design appeals to the customers. Addition was able to utilise its control over its in-house manufacturing to ensure the kind of product reliability that customers in this market have come to expect.