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Unread 28-08-2015, 12:59
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fovea1959 fovea1959 is offline
Herder of programmers
AKA: Doug Wegscheid
FRC #3620 (The Average Joes)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: St Joseph
Posts: 325
fovea1959 will become famous soon enough
spud gun/T-shirt gun valve

The team took on an off-season project that includes a T-shirt gun. It's all working, but the range is a little short. We're using a sprinkler valve to shoot (Rainbird, I believe), shot tank is going to about 50-70 PSI...

One of the students in town from another team with spudgun experience thinks that part of the problem is that the stock valve does not open quickly enough, and suggested making one of the mods commonly seen on youtube; it appears that the mods involve not actuating the valve with the solenoid, but venting the back side of the diaphragm to atmosphere to snap it open. The problem there is that you need a smaller valve to open the back side; the examples on youtube are all manually actuated.

Has anyone done a sprinkler valve mod, but kept things under computer control? I think I know how to do it using a FESTO or SMC to vent the back side, but I sure don't want to reinvent any wheels. ("I'm a programmer, Jim, not a design engineer....")