Buulding control boxes!

Boom! The classic potato gun harnesses the combustion of flammable vapor. Show us your combustion spud gun and discuss fuels, ratios, safety, ignition systems, tools, and more.
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CannonCreator
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 3:19 pm

I am making a new cannon, And I want to make my own fan control and spark igniton control box. Has anyone done this beofre? any tips?

p.s. I searched the forums, and found nothing
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hi
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 3:28 pm

people do it all the time. ive made control boxes that do both, its isnt hard at all. you just need to get one from radio shack or a simular store.

i made mine out of wood left over from model airplanes, which works fine, but the plastic one look better.
"physics, gravity, and law enforcement are the only things that prevent me from operating at my full potential" - not sure, but i like the quote

you know you are not an engineer if you have to remind yourself "left loosy righty tighty"
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frankrede
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 3:29 pm

Nope, your a genius who would have thought of something like that!
wow.
Obviously you have seen in somewhere!
A tip?
Make sure yous tun gun is properly insulated in the box.
Current project: Afghanistan deployment
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CannonCreator
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:43 pm

were do I get the casing for the box?
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Pete Zaria
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:48 pm

CannonCreator,

You obviously did not search enough; I told you in another thread no more than ten minutes ago that you can get those project boxes at Radio Shack.

3 second google search on "radio shack project box" yeilded this:
http://www.radioshack.com/sm-project-bo ... 32230.html

These pages should give you some ideas, too:

http://www.bcvids.com/store/index.php?cPath=23_30
http://www.advancedspuds.com/ignite.htm

Peace,
Pete Zaria.
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CannonCreator
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:00 pm

sorry dude Im new, and its hard for me to get around on this site. Thank YOU SO MUCH FOR THE LINKS!!!
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Pete Zaria
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:03 pm

No problem at all :)

I'm sorry if I seem like an ass; I'm just trying to keep this forum clean.

There are only 3 or 4 active moderators here. There's a LOT of useless bull$hit from n00bies to clean up, and I get frustrated with it sometimes.

All I ask is that people search before they post and try to use decent forum etiquette. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Peace,
Pete Zaria.
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rebalgray
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Sun Aug 12, 2007 8:31 pm

Pete, I for one think the members here should treat new Spuders with a little more respect. What may be a stupid question to you people that have been at this for a while isn't to a new guy. Wouldn't it be just as easy to answer the question than to jump all over him. I had the same thing happen to me last week. I asked where I could find 1\4" neoprene. A guy came back with have you even looked. I may be new at spud guns but I've been looking things up on the net for years. Isn't this forum here to help people? If it isn't close my account. I belong to other sites that are glad to answer questions.

Martin
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Pete Zaria
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Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:27 pm

rebalgray wrote:Pete, I for one think the members here should treat new Spuders with a little more respect. What may be a stupid question to you people that have been at this for a while isn't to a new guy. Wouldn't it be just as easy to answer the question than to jump all over him. I had the same thing happen to me last week. I asked where I could find 1\4" neoprene. A guy came back with have you even looked. I may be new at spud guns but I've been looking things up on the net for years. Isn't this forum here to help people? If it isn't close my account. I belong to other sites that are glad to answer questions.

Martin
Rebal,
I've debated this same topic before, and you make some valid points.

There are a few inherent problems with forums like this. This forum particularly is targeted towards home-made cannons, so, unsurprisingly, it attracts a lot of young (frequently immature) members.

The biggest challenge of the moderating staff here is to keep the forum clean; removing argumentative and unproductive bickering type posts, posted spam, pranksters, and last, what we've refered to as "dumb questions". My point is that, the mods have a lot to do already without the newbie members.

However, you're absolutely right, something that's second-nature to a long-time member will be a new concept to a newcomer.
That's why we've provided extensive Wikipedia and How-To sections that would answer 90% of the so-called dumb questions, if only members would take five minutes to look/search.
This is why I (and some other forum patrons) get irritated by such simple questions. We just don't like to spoonfeed people when the information they want is right at their fingertips.
I try to be curious and politely ask the new member to search before posting next time on his/her "first offense". However, in this instance, CannonCreater had gone on a short (12-post) posting spree which required at least 5-6 minutes of my time to clean up after. I had asked him to stop in other threads, and PM'ed him also. I hope that explains my "harsh reaction". I've since talked to him via PM, and I think we're on the same page now.

As for your last question, of course this forum is here to help people. If you look around, it's actually quite productive at that; people sharing designs and ideas, exchanging opinions, showing off their finished works. There are also rough spots, like this thread.
It's difficult to try to maintain the atmosphere of an open, idea-sharing, engineering-community type forum while also dealing with large numbers of frequently immature members. I hope this doesn't discourage you from participating in our forum.

Peace,
Pete Zaria.
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