SpudFiles

By the time you carve out a big enough chamber and piston I'd have died of old age ;p

Itl work one way or another.

Could some one point me to a link that has some one building one of those steam cannons. I looked at google and I couldnt find anything but theories and some stuff about myth busters.

FeLeX wrote:Could some one point me to a link that has some one building one of those steam cannons.

here's one from the spudtech archives.

Thanks JSR. I've seen one of those before on air-power.net
I was wondering if any one has ever made one where the chamber is heated up and water is added then?

The mythbusters didn't seem to have much success with that design, I think it's a better idea to build a pneumatic type launcher substituting the air for steam.

Well I searched arround some more and I came across this. I think if velocities like those could be achieved then it is worth taking a look at it.
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiment ... annon.html
And with the ETC guns, could 4 maybe 5 camera flash caps ionize very small ammounts of water to shoot a bb or maybe a pellet at reasonable velocities?

FeLeX wrote:And with the ETC guns, could 4 maybe 5 camera flash caps ionize very small ammounts of water to shoot a bb or maybe a pellet at reasonable velocities?

Not really. The effect doesn't really start until you use about 1kV, and a couple of hundred joules of capacitors. Camera caps are about 6 joules each at full charge, so you'd need about 10 times that many in a mix of series and parallel.
You need some fairly serious hardware, a lot of research and some good solid experience to get into proper electric acceleration.

Alright thanks. Does any one think that a decent power steam cannon can be made using the setup shown in the link?

More than possible, but it's going to take a LOT of work to perfect.

how about carbide cannos were you a water it make acetalyene and an ignition,
there are general gunpower cannons
balistas, crossbows, the triggers are a pain in the butt to make properly

rubber band guns
knex machine guns (rubber band power)
solid rocket propelent
your arm and skill at throwing stuff
etc

dry ice + burst disc? coke + mentos + burst disc? they are two things i can think of which haven't been mentioned but i will have a think and try and find some more.

Ragnarok wrote:I always thought the lethal would come from a poison, and for that, you don't need much velocity. Blowpipes are fine, and that's only using a few psi from the lungs.

However, whether a poison would survive several hundred years is yet another matter. The next problem is if they've developed an antidote for it in that time.

Most of the really nasty toxins available hundred of years ago would have been naturally occuring biologicals. They would not stay toxic for very long.

One common biological used on blowdarts and the like has always been just human poop. It is still in use today.

As proved by the Vietcong. I give them credit for being good at what they did.

Thanks for all the feedback. Has anyone here used electric motors to shoot projectiles? would it have a decent amount of power?