Ignitors

pneumaticspud · Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:44 am

Wouldit be possible to have 2 ignitors for the cannon? like you have 1 lantern lighter and a BBQ lighter. im sure it would be but i just wanted to check to see if it would work.

paaiyan · Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:59 am

Why would you need two?

MisterSteve124 · Thu Aug 23, 2007 11:15 am

Yeah it would, people have done it. But if you want that just to have 2 sparks you can get two sparks just with one igniter.

jimmy101 · Thu Aug 23, 2007 11:20 am

Like paaiyan said, why?

If the goal is to use both spark sources simultaneously then it won't work. It would be very difficult to get the two different devices to fire at the same time.

If the goal is to use one or the other for a particular firing, then yes that will wrok.

paaiyan · Thu Aug 23, 2007 11:27 am

If you want two sparks you can just put two gaps in series.

pneumaticspud · Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:06 pm

i was just wondering. thinking of some plans for my combustion cannon that im making

paaiyan · Thu Aug 23, 2007 12:07 pm

Well... You could use two ignitors, but it would be pretty much pointless.

Pete Zaria · Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:33 pm

I can see doing it for redundancy. Maybe the BBQ sparker's electrodes got knocked out of alignment, or a wire is loose, etc... having a lantern igniter for backup wouldn't hurt. Especially because they're $3... Though there are much easier ways to get two or more sparks. Spark strip anyone?

Just make sure you put all the "holes" in the chamber (for electrodes, gas metering, ignition, etc...) where a pipe and fitting overlap (where there are two layers of pipe), make it as safe as you can. Conveniently, doing so also tends to make it nice and air-tight.

To answer your question, you could probably mount 50 different igniters if you really wanted to.... but there's no need.

Peace,
Pete Zaria.

pneumaticspud · Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:47 pm

yeah i was just gonna have the lantern lighter as a backup. thanks for the help .

f.c · Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:13 pm

if you wanted you could use two bbq ignitors and press them at the exact same time.

jimmy101 · Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:04 am

f.c wrote:if you wanted you could use two bbq ignitors and press them at the exact same time.

That would be very hard to do. The entire combustion process only takes ~50mSec. So, you would need to hit the two buttons within a few milliseconds of each other.

Much easier to use a single piezo and two spark gaps. The spark gaps might have to be made a bit smaller but the size of the gaps has pretty little affect on the performance of the gun.