I enjoy making air powered spud and paintball cannons. Shooting spuds and other objects can be fun, if conducted safely. Shooting paintballs in a "Demolitions Role" at paintball games is also fun.
Visit my Devastator-II Paintball Canon page. I have been working on the successor, the Devastator-III. also have a number of other canons, including "Big Bertha". Picture galleries of all can be viewed on the Dead By Dawn Tech, and various game gallery pages.
New: Visit the new Technical edition: Turbocharging Sprinkler Valves.Projects
Devastator-I Prototyping Canon
Devastator-II Paintball Canon page
Devastator-III Paintball Canon page
Paintball Ballista (No content here until we unveil the ballista at the paintball game it's designed for)
Ghandalf's Staff (No content here until we unveil the staff at the game it's designed for)
Technical
Valve Types and Turbo-Charging Sprinkler Valves - This page describes the various valve types in theory, operation, examples, and brands. It also covers techniques for turbo-charging commonly used sprinkler valves for very high performance operation.
Sprinkler Valves - gotta love them - but they're slow by default; gotta turbocharge them (see above).
Lever Arm Globe Valves - sometimes known as "Whistle Valves" are available in high (400) and low (150) pressure versions.
McMaster-Carr has them on this page: Metal & Thermoplastic Globe Valves. I need to map the flow rates of these valves to the sprinkler valves. In particular, I think economies of high pressure may make these more valuable than sprinkler valves, and that with smaller valves, pipes, etc.
Plug valves - nice, compact 1/4 turn valves. Palmer Persuit gets $14 for them. Again, McMaster-Carr for the win, check these Plug Valves out. And less expensive to boot (than Palmer - $6 vs $14).
References
I also plan to post PVC resources & calculators online
Links & other resources
Dan Thames has Big Red another canons as well. Carl and a couple other heavy weights can be found on the spudguns resources on the web.
http://www.Spudguns.org
spudguns Yahoo group
Current Suppliers
Humphrey Pneumatic products. Their NC distributors are Livingston & Haven & Scott Equipment Company . Find your distributor. Note - their site is hard to peruse if you don't already know what you're looking for. Poor website design in my opinion. Here's a good site map of Humphrey to help you skip the BS or go to the Spec Sheet Library.Livingston & Haven. phone 704-588-3670 / fax 704-588-56221 (?) 11616 Wilmar Blvd. Charlotte, NC 28241Clippard Pneumatics You can request their catalog, but the entire thing is also available for download in pdf & zip files. Their NC (are) distributers are
Scott Equipment Company. phone 1-800-222-2903 or 704-875-1611 / fax 704-875-0625; 10800 Twin Lakes Parkway, Charlotte, NC 28269
NC: Carolina Fluid Components, Inc., Charlotte, NC 28273, ph 704-588-6101 / fax 704-588-6115Yahoo's got a good page on Industrial Suppliers. And here are a few folks I deal directly with
working with Dell Savage dsavage@cfcsite.com
SC: Barker Air and Hydraulics, Greenville, SC, 1-800-922-3324, ph 864-288-3537 / fax 864-288-2962
McMaster-Carr - Industrial SuppliesIndustrial Surplus (Hydraulics, vacuum, compressed air): Burden's Surplus Center in Lincoln NE 800-488-3407
Grainger - Industrial Supplies
U.S. Plastics - Plastics Supplier