SpudFiles

here is my minigun. ive been through tests and evan made a mini minigun (pics soon) but here is the ultimate deign. its based on a cloud system and has several revolving barrels. it will hav a hole in the top of the front endcap ( behind the barrels) and will have a small hobby motor to make the barels spin. the chamber will hold 2000 airsoft bb's and will shoot about twice that in a minute.

OK... I like your "gatling" concept but I'm sorry to say that it's flawed beyond repair.

First of all, cloud guns are NEVER predictable. BB's fire out at random. By having several spinning barrels, There is a great chance that a bb will fire when there is no barrel in front of the hole.

Second, what are you hoping to accomplish by having spinning barrels? This has no beneficial effect on the gun's performance, and in fact, it impairs it! Cosmetically, sure it looks cool, but in reality it does nothing!

Your design might work occasionally if you get lucky and a bb happens to fire when there is a barrel in front of the hole. Every other time it'll just fly out in any direction.

If you really want this to work, nix all the barrels save one, and keep it in a fixed spot. What do have now? A regular old cloud! Or you could sit down and figure out how to time a cloud to fire EXACTLY when you want it to. Even then, what is the purpose of multiple spinning barrels? You will not have increase in ROF whatsoever.

The real Gatling gun works by using a crank that coordinates the firing of the gun with the rotation of its barrels. The rotating barrels allow it to achieve a much higher ROF because they are constantly being fed new rounds via ammo box and they are ready to go when they reach the firing point.

Refer to this link for a great diagram of the gatling gun: http://science.howstuffworks.com/machine-gun1.htm
Go to page 2.

Sorry to seem a little harsh on you but it's better I do it now before you waste all the money trying to build this thing.

Multiple barrels do increase firing rate for clouds.
The reason should be obvious.

Spinning the barrels doesn't help, though.

There is lots of things we do that serve no purpose as performance goes, so I wouldnt jump on someone when there simply trying to implement such a "cool" feature. You ditz! In a cloud the BB's follow the air stream, the air stream will go out the barrel. Sure, some will proably not make it for reasons such as a fast RPM of the barrel and such, but there not going randomly plink off that rotating face with the barrels emebed in it.

If youve seen DR's concept on SpudTech, that looks like it has a chance of working and Ive considered several times of making something like that. Flaring the ends of the tubing will also help. Strange thing because prior to reading this thread I was reinitating my intrest in a gatling launcher.

ive decided to still build this thing becase as i said i have already made a smaller one of these and it sho amazingly! pics soon...

Just make sure you have a propper air input; a blowgun won't cut it anymore, you'll need a .5" ball valve (at least) if you are using airsoft bbs.
For normal bbs, you can use a 3/8" valve.

im using a modded 1 inch sprinkler valve, i thought it was obvous from the pic. guess not sorry

oh and im using a motor that spins really slow, like 60rpm

if the cloud doesnt work well try a vortex block maybe?

yer i might but can i make a vortex block out of clay? like really hard clay thats been cooked for strenth

oh dont worry i no how to make one out of bondo body filler now...

Hey boiling lead why cant a blogun be used? Is that just for this particular design or is it obsolete across the board?

Spinning barrels are completely uneccary the only reason they make spinning multi-barreled guns is to keep the heat buildup from melting them.

But you could use a hi-flow (not blow gun) valve and multiple barrels if you want a higher rate of fire.

does the barrel have to be at the top? or can i be at the botem?

The spinning barrells have nothing to do with cooling them! The whole design of a mini gun is made so it is efficiant, load, cock, fire, eject. This is going on as many times as it has barrells. And the only way to make that happen is to make it spin.