Alumide Shotgun Slug – “the Needle”

For the shotgun user, we all like to try out different types of slugs, maybe you’ve come across the “needle”. The needle slug is a 3D printed Alumide shotgun projectile. Alumide is a mixture of nylon and aluminum powder. It makes a pretty strong structure, the load was only 4 grams so its a light load.

This was based on a “pen shank” created by Michael Yeh. Greg from TAOFLEDERMAUS Youtuber gets a chance to shoot this needle at a clump of clay and jelly down range. Check out the results below.

There were a few more shots taken at a vest without any level IIIA plates, see the video below.

Video Transcription
[Intro]

Hi this is Jeff of TAOFLEDERMAUS, today we’ve got another submission by Michael Yeh, a 3D printed, oddly-shaped projectile that’s based on a pen shank that he invented. That’s right. And like I said, this is printed with Alumide. Alumide is a mixture of nylon and aluminum powder. It makes a pretty strong structure, but it’s still pretty light. This only weighs four grams.

We’re out here shooting the 3D printed “needle”, the Needle is the name of this round made by Michael Yeh, you’ve seen him before, sending us some great 3D printed rounds. We’re gonna give this a try, you can tell it sorta looks like a rocket-pod on a helicopter. It’s got a couple of little through-and-through holes there, maybe we’ll get a little whistle out of them. So we’re gonna try them against Mr. Grumpy Clay down there, and see what we can get. Alright, Michael, let’s give this a try.

Ok I’m ready!

Here we go!

[Shot]
[Laughter]

Wow!

So you can see what we found, here. We found a little plug down here on the bottom, and all its little spires broke off. Then in here, one, two, three, and then the little tip. Right up in here, just the tip. And here’s what’s cool, this tip bent, but didn’t shear.

Wonder how it hit? Probably hit sideways or somethin’.

And then he took the wad to the nose. If you’re taking a wad to the nose, you’re doin’ it wrong.

[laughter]

Now you may have heard how quiet the shotgun was, we had a full-powder charge in there, but when you have a very lightweight load in there, something like four grams, it’s often not really enough to really light the powder and give it full velocity. And as you can see, this projectile never stabilized, flying sideways when it hit the clay. Ok, let’s take a shot at some ballistic jelly!

Ready?

Yep!

[Shot]

Oh yeah! That was better!

Ok!

So the wad was stuck in the front, and you can see the needle round, there’s the point, it actually turned around.

Is that the front or the back? I see– look, you can see the track going through there!

This was the, uh…

No, what the heck happened there?

This…this almost looks like this is the track, but this thing did rotate, so… the wad was stuck in here. I dunno. We’ll have to see. But as I found it, it was still sitting like this.

Ok

Unless it did hit nose-first in there, and spun it around and caught the wad on the back side?

You can see some kind of a track, like, maybe it–wait. It went way in there and then bounced– it’ll spring back.

It’s actually in perfect condition.

Awesome!

Send that back to Michael for a refund!

Yeah! That’s the one I didn’t mark, too, for some reason.

You’ll be able to see it on slow-mo, but it either went in tip first and almost penetrated all the way through, or spun around.

Wow.

Now this shot was noticeably louder, and you can see we have a much higher velocity. Another difference that we can see here is that we can see that the projectile is flying nose-first for most of the way, and then at the last split-second it flips around and hits the gel backwards. It’s interesting to see how the wadding is kind of engulfed in the cavitation hole there.

Home-defense distance!

[laughter]

Ok, I’m ready!

Also, not recommended for home defense! [fire]

[laughter]

Wow!

Look at the triangular-shaped impact from that thing hitting sideways and kinda keyholing in there. It’s the almost exact same shape as this flying and going -boom- right there.

So that’s not very stable, but it was accurate enough!

Wad. Accurate enough for home defense!

[laughter] Yeah!

Look at the picture of the wad, it’s a perfect transfer, like silly putty.

Now this shot was noticeably louder, and it was flying at a much higher velocity this time. This is probably at least hitting mach 1.

So this is like, 300 yards, you say?

Yeah it’s about 300 yards, it’s a sniper shot.

Call of Duty 300 yards. Ok. It looks like we plant some hickock seeds. He’s starting to sprout up!

That’s right! It’s Roleplayer gaming 300 yards.

[laughter] Ok! Whenever you’re ready! [Shot] AWWWWW.

Ok that was another weak-sounding shot, but we had pretty good velocity. You can see the slug tumbling end-over-end, it never regained stability, though. But we still had fun doing it. I hope you check out michael’s channel, he does a lot of different stuff. Crossbows, he does some reloading, black powder stuff, it’s pretty
cool, the kid’s really smart, and has always impressed me. And some of the stuff we have coming up, the Australian Fosterless slugs, I’m not sure what we’re calling them there, we have another Tim Hamilton Turban brass slug design, and this is another Tim Hamilton-designed, just like the dumbell design that we shot the other day, and then finally we have the UPK2, a very cool russian slug, and here’s a demo of it.

OK, hit it! [Fire] wow.

I still have a lot of stuff that people have been waiting for me to shoot that they’ve sent to me, some of them waiting a couple months so bear with us, the weather hasn’t been very good, but we’re slowly catching up on this stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed this, thanks for watching.

Sources: TAOFLEDERMAUS Youtube