Can you make a pneumatic cannon shoot snowballs?

[An0nim]

Winter is getting closer and closer and so does my fauvorite part of it - snowball fights. And I kinda want to spice these fights up. And I think tahat the best way to do it is to introduce a lil bit of scrambling or ib other words - artillery.
I want to make a pneumatic cannon shoot snowballs so I can achieve more range than by throwing them. But I doubt that a snowball can survive the acceleration. I thought about using a sabot to hold the snowball together but I doubt I can make is separate from the projectile so only the snow impacts the person unlucky enough to be on the receiving end. I also thought about putting a foam circle behind the snowball which would hold the air behind it allowing for different size snowball and act like a pillow so the snowball doesn't get destroyed but it would have a chance to yaw in the barrel.
Does anybody have experience with firing snowballs?

[farcticox1]

[An0nim]

yeah I saw that video but the pressure he has in this thing is much lower than the pressure in the cannon I'm planning to build

[D_Hall]

A snow BALL might be difficult. But a snow cylinder would have the same effect and would be easy to put your foam pusher plate behind.

[An0nim]

A snow BALL might be difficult. But a snow cylinder would have the same effect and would be easy to put your foam pusher plate behind.

Yeah I thought about this too but it would have much more friction and sharp corners would make it unstable in flight. It possibly could even desintegrate in air.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

With a U-shaped section of hot wire it's conceivable that you could cut a concave face in a foam cylinder that would support a spherical projectile.

That said, if you're accelerating a snowball so fast that it might not survive then maybe it's going a little too fast to be fired at people, I would do a lot of testing beforehand, and you'd also have to be very sure that it's just snow in your projectile and no solid foreign matter.

[D_Hall]

Yeah I thought about this too but it would have much more friction and sharp corners would make it unstable in flight. It possibly could even desintegrate in air.

Friction for any reasonable projectile is negligible in the "does this thing even work" sense. As for unstable flight, you're going to have unstable flight with any "normal" snowball. You're not likely to have the level of quality control required to stop such.

All that said, some of your response are starting to get a bit concerning.... Just how fast/far do you plan on going here? Keep in mind that launching IS going to compact your snowball to a certain extent. At some point, no matter how fluffy what you put into the barrel was, what you're going to get coming out of the muzzle is a block of ice. Not cool (pun most def intended).

[An0nim]

Yeah I thought about this too but it would have much more friction and sharp corners would make it unstable in flight. It possibly could even desintegrate in air.

Friction for any reasonable projectile is negligible in the "does this thing even work" sense. As for unstable flight, you're going to have unstable flight with any "normal" snowball. You're not likely to have the level of quality control required to stop such.

All that said, some of your response are starting to get a bit concerning.... Just how fast/far do you plan on going here? Keep in mind that launching IS going to compact your snowball to a certain extent. At some point, no matter how fluffy what you put into the barrel was, what you're going to get coming out of the muzzle is a block of ice. Not cool (pun most def intended).

Don't worry it won't THAT fast. Also I wanted a big low pressure tank not a small high pressure one so the acceleration won't be high enough to make it ice. And if it is I'll just use it as a flex not a weapon in a real snow battle.