SpudFiles

hi, just a quick (quick for a pro, VERY long time for me.) mockup of my new, simple cannon, looks pretty cool though, switch on the front is for fan, rear is piezoelectric ignitor, i personally like simple designs., should be done reasonably soon if i can find all the parts.

Nice, good job on the CAD. But if you are looking for simple and lots of power, then BUILD A PNEUMATIC CANNON!

EDIT: Apparently you already did, oops

What program did you use? Looks pretty good! I'd say upgrade your pneumatic cannon first and then build this.

Power yes, but combustion cannons are much more common and easy to build.

To be honest, i do much prefer combustion, mainly because it takes much less effort as everything does not need to be perfectly sealed, and because i just cannot understand Piston valve (or cant be bothered to understand them)

EDIT: I used google sketchup to do this

If you want to do a pneumatic cannon, then the recipe is simple: Air chamber (same as combustion chamber) ball valve, barrel. No seals required. And very powerful. In fact you can simply Google ball valve air cannon, and people have made diagrams and stuff for these guns. Also don't worry about piston valves.

I much prefer pneumatics, much more predictable! The spud wiki is extremely helpful with piston valves, here's the page on QEVs (ready made piston valves)

Potatoe ememy, i recently did one of these cannons, but to get any power out of it,i think i need a faster valve.

Actually, that is a very good point about the reliability, i sometines have to blow out all the feul and refeul it. It does gat annoying

You could get more power by
- using a longer barrel
- using a faster valve (eg. QEV)
- using higher pressure
And a few more but those are the simple ones.

Just a note on your original combustion design- if you want to set the cannon barrel-up then you'll be setting it on the piezo which could accidentally fire it.

PotatoEnemy17 wrote:If you want to do a pneumatic cannon, then the recipe is simple: Air chamber (same as combustion chamber) ball valve, barrel. No seals required. And very powerful. In fact you can simply Google ball valve air cannon, and people have made diagrams and stuff for these guns. Also don't worry about piston valves.

Well a typical advanced combustion will usually out-perform a ball valve pneumatic by quite a large margin. If we're talking about ~100PSI pneumatics here, go with a fuel metered combustion. You have to remember that combustions have no flow restrictions and a 'valve' that opens instantaneously (in other words, there is no valve). Even if you're only getting ~80PSI from the combustion, the gases are still far less dense than air and will more often result in better performance.

MrCrowley wrote:

PotatoEnemy17 wrote:If you want to do a pneumatic cannon, then the recipe is simple: Air chamber (same as combustion chamber) ball valve, barrel. No seals required. And very powerful. In fact you can simply Google ball valve air cannon, and people have made diagrams and stuff for these guns. Also don't worry about piston valves.

Well a typical advanced combustion will usually out-perform a ball valve pneumatic by quite a large margin. If we're talking about ~100PSI pneumatics here, go with a fuel metered combustion. You have to remember that combustions have no flow restrictions and a 'valve' that opens instantaneously (in other words, there is no valve). Even if you're only getting ~80PSI from the combustion, the gases are still far less dense than air and will more often result in better performance.

I agree, but if he gets a fridge compressor
Personally I only built ONE combustion and fired it ONCE because they are only powerful by their size, a mini combustion can not be compared to a mini pneumatic. (Also because I have hybrids and 230bar air source )

MrCrowley wrote:

PotatoEnemy17 wrote:If you want to do a pneumatic cannon, then the recipe is simple: Air chamber (same as combustion chamber) ball valve, barrel. No seals required. And very powerful. In fact you can simply Google ball valve air cannon, and people have made diagrams and stuff for these guns. Also don't worry about piston valves.

Well a typical advanced combustion will usually out-perform a ball valve pneumatic by quite a large margin. If we're talking about ~100PSI pneumatics here, go with a fuel metered combustion. You have to remember that combustions have no flow restrictions and a 'valve' that opens instantaneously (in other words, there is no valve). Even if you're only getting ~80PSI from the combustion, the gases are still far less dense than air and will more often result in better performance.

Maybe an advanced combustion might out perform a simple ball valve cannon, but once you do a ball valve cannon, a QEV cannon is only a step away. Plus a ball valve cannon can be spring loaded.

Another option is using a burst disk pneumatic cannon. It takes extra time to load it, but it will likely out perform any combustion. And remember, loading a burst disk isn't much more work than loading a combustion cannon.

EDIT: Also the cannon truemanotor originally suggested is clearly not an advanced combustion cannon. truemanator even referred to it as his new "simple" cannon.

I don't think Mr C was referring to his original design, just stating that an advanced combustion would outperform a ball valve pneumatic.

Also, with a well built combustion, a hybrid is only a step away

truemanator said he likes simple cannons. Here's the problem to get a powerful combustion you need to build an advanced combustion or hybrid, both of which are inherently not simple (hence the name advanced combustion) But if you want power AND simplicity, a pneumatic cannon is just the thing. After all, everyone likes simplicity in a cannon and MOAR POWER!