Updated the front page. I put up a picture of the piston valve mounted to FEAR's combustion chamber. Check it out if you're interested.

Watching that video, I'm thinking "Wow, those ships, tanks and military forces sure do look like they could be American forces, why would an American arms company show its products blowing up its own people?...oh, it's a Russian arms company. Duh" In Soviet Russia, you do not blow up container, cont...

Different topic, same project, Have you accounted for the impact force of the valve against the end plate? I'm looking at you tie rods for holding the end plate on to the pressure chamber, and taking into account operating pressure, piston size, and travel my gut tells me to be concerned the tie rod...

Ah yes, I reviewed Martin's stuff before well before my project. The only similarity is that Martin's valves and mine are both piston valves. The specific internals of my valve and how it pilots are different and "new" from other valves as far as I can tell from my research the past few nights. Only...

Ah I made a silly assumption and forgot what I learned in chemistry. Thanks saefroch, that was interesting about the pressure treated wood.

Your not putting a damper at all Jack. I have no doubt someone likely has a patent out based on the concepts this valve is based on, and likely even a similar design so I'm pretty skeptical at the moment. But if I have the resources I might as well use them and see where the road goes. @mark, Simply...

The design of this valve was made with the potential of commercial production down the road. For the applications I've designed it for, I know of no other valves with the same design features as mine. The patent fight might not be worth it, but I won't really know until I look into it and see if oth...

To clarify, "questionably wet wood" that should be left to dry was described to me as "dripping" wet, and no respectable contractor I know would use wood that was exceptionally wet for fear of it drying resulting in cracks or shifting things out of being square or aligned. I know this from my experi...

So I have some good news and bad news that has developed very quickly over the past few days. The good news is I have a friend who is patent lawyer and is interested in helping me patent my valve design (the physical design features and application). I also have family and acquaintances from differe...

As someone with experience with a SawStop, I thought I would throw my two cents in. SawStop finds the majority of its buyers in the companies and places where many individuals use the table saw. It was built with the individual user in mind, but it is intended to be sold to places that have a large ...

This is my final project for a class at Stanford, which is why I haven't posted on spudfiles in a while. The video is of a 75PSI test with compressed air. The valve is designed for operation pressures of 1000psi and use on my hybrid cannon FEAR. Porting is 4" and the valve is all steel construction....

A member of spudtech did a test a long time ago, and find that over a 54 hour period, gasoline had no effect on the PVC at low temperatures. http://www.spudfiles.com/spudtech_archive/viewtopic.php?t=7896 Some companies also refer to their PVC has having good->acceptable resistance to gasoline, and I...

You could glue the fuse in, and then dip the end with the fuse in wax. You should have a good seal then and no issues lighting the fuse. But I agree with above, the gasses from combustion will probably escape out the fuse hole unless you can generate a very rapid pressure increase. Drawing on my exp...

The schools you're looking at all have good programs. You should look at Stanford if you're also looking at Berkley. I'm doing ME at Stanford and it is an absolutely incredible program. You may also want to consider New Mexico Tech, it's one for the few schools that not only has an excellent ME prog...

Ahaha good one.