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Unread 01-10-2006, 12:45
Donut Donut is offline
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

If you're using a tank with a 1/2" hole, why not move most of your system down to about that?

We decided to go with a 3/4" Rain Bird Valve and 5/8" ID tubing since we knew the tank was a bottleneck. The advantage is we now have a higher psi rating on them all, and I'm not so afraid to take it up to 120 when the time comes anymore.

Of course we're actually testing it today, we'll see how it goes.
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Unread 01-10-2006, 21:39
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

There are several things here:

*You want your air to move as easily as possible = use the biggest valve you can, and the biggest pipe/tubbing from the chamber to the valve to the barrel. In a perfect world, if you were using a 2" barrel, a 2" valve and 2" pipe from the chamber to the valve would be great. That may not be possible though.

So, your 10 feet of 1" tubing is costing you a lot of power.

*You want to release all of your air at once+ get the fasting acting valve you can find. A good solution is a sprinkler valve. These are electrically controlled, so you could use them with the FRC robot components.

In a perfect world, you might use a large chamber, have a pipe come out of one end the same size as your valve, have that pipe turn 180 degrees, go into the valve which then goes right into the barrel.

Really, you want as little extra pipe as possible.

These t-shirt launchers are a lot like pneumatic potato guns. I suggest you explore this site for some quality information:

This is a god example of an efficient gun that you might consider.

http://spudtech.com/detail.asp?id=52

You may want to peruse the rest of the site for more information, especially the "links" tab.

If you want more information about optimal chamber to barrel size ratios, PM me, there is much more info out there.
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Unread 01-10-2006, 22:13
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

I'm still skeptical of unmodified sprinkler valves. That's a heck of a restriction in your system if you can avoid it. Energy spent making your robot honk is energy that's not getting transferred to your shirt. I will admit, however, that you might not have a better option before 10/20. As you'd guessed, a large chamber connected directly to your valve would be much much more efficient.
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Unread 02-10-2006, 00:24
Andrew Schuetze's Avatar
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
I'm still skeptical of unmodified sprinkler valves. That's a heck of a restriction in your system if you can avoid it. Energy spent making your robot honk is energy that's not getting transferred to your shirt. I will admit, however, that you might not have a better option before 10/20. As you'd guessed, a large chamber connected directly to your valve would be much much more efficient.
Thinking along the same lines, I traded in a Rainbird valve this evening for a 1 inch ball valve with a three inch lever handle, rotates 90 degrees.

The plan is to test this manually as a comparison to the sprinkler valve and if it yields a better performance, the we will have to build in a festo solenoid activated pneumatic piston to open and close this valve remotely.

We have a bit more time to prototype as we are shooting for, pun intended, the final game of the fall when the two schools who comprise our robotics team play each other

Our current setup is in the CD media.
bench prototype It shoots a tee shirt 25 yards downrange with a maximum altitude of 30 feet at a 45 degree angle and internal pressure of 110 psi. Performance is limited by a slow opening valve. We discovered this when we added a second valve to our set up and were testing the timing of the two opening together. We decided the mechanical operation of the pressure diaphram was not going to yeild consistant and tunable results for a simultaneous opening.

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Last edited by Andrew Schuetze : 02-10-2006 at 00:28. Reason: added CD media link
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Unread 02-10-2006, 01:10
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

I have found in my vast experience and long history of projectile launchers. the more kenetic energy you can put into a mass before it leaves your grip the faster and further it will go. i have completely given up on Compressed air and almost only use CO2. its cheap, available anywhere with paintball. and as long as there is Liquid CO2 present in the tank the gas maintains a pressure around 1100 PSI. the more pressure you have the smaller you can make your device and the more energy you can put into your projectile's mass. i have stop referring to my CO2 potato launchers as launchers and rather as potato sniper rifles. the vegetables come out of the barrel so quickly that at a range of about 30 feet potato's atomize upon impact of a hard surface. If you relay want to throw a t-shirt up into a crowd with compressed air alone you are going to need allot and I mean allot of it! and a very long barrel to transfer that energy to a shirt. if you want a device you can hold in your hand and shoot out into a crowd an long distances of 150 feet and beyond you simply need more pressure. But please be carefull and remember how Maude Flanders Died.
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Unread 02-10-2006, 08:24
Gdeaver Gdeaver is offline
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

A sabot casing will greatly increase performance. There's allot on the web for water balloons. Co2 is much better than air, however it's high pressure and needs allot more care. Co2 has it's limits when when large volumes are released. The drop in pressure limits the flash rate. That's why nitrogen has taken over for serious paint ballers.
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Unread 02-10-2006, 09:05
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gdeaver
A sabot casing will greatly increase performance. There's allot on the web for water balloons. Co2 is much better than air, however it's high pressure and needs allot more care. Co2 has it's limits when when large volumes are released. The drop in pressure limits the flash rate. That's why nitrogen has taken over for serious paint ballers.
i agree a sabot case would allow you to increace the surface area that the compressed gas pushes on witch will transfer energy to it more quickley. however I don't think there's much sabot casing you can do with a rolled t-shirt. witch by itself can be used as a sabot casr for another object.
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Unread 02-10-2006, 13:26
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

We performed the test of a manual ball valve today during class. We doubled our range and added to the altitude achieved. The diaphragm based sprinkler valve opens too slowly and limits air flow as suspected. To make this a remote device on the robot we'll use a short throw pneumatic cylinder activated by a festo solenoid. I've got video of the test but no place to upload at the moment that the school filters will allow me access.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schuetze
Thinking along the same lines, I traded in a Rainbird valve this evening for a 1 inch ball valve with a three inch lever handle, rotates 90 degrees.

The plan is to test this manually as a comparison to the sprinkler valve and if it yields a better performance, the we will have to build in a festo solenoid activated pneumatic piston to open and close this valve remotely.

Performance is limited by a slow opening valve. We discovered this when we added a second valve to our set up and were testing the timing of the two opening together. We decided the mechanical operation of the pressure diaphram was not going to yeild consistant and tunable results for a simultaneous opening.

APS
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Unread 06-10-2006, 01:36
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Finally got our cannon mounted, finished, and tested today. ~40 feet at 80 psi. We hope to extend the range later, but it will be more than good enough for Homecoming tommorow.
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Unread 16-10-2006, 00:51
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

It may or may not be relavent now, but if you use CO2 it will be up around 800 psi.

EDIT: oops didn't see the second page of the thread.

And aren't paintball gun tanks at around 800 psi?

Last edited by John Gutmann : 16-10-2006 at 00:53.
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Unread 16-10-2006, 10:02
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Quote:
Originally Posted by sparksandtabs
It may or may not be relavent now, but if you use CO2 it will be up around 800 psi.

EDIT: oops didn't see the second page of the thread.

And aren't paintball gun tanks at around 800 psi?
yes, you're right. i have to correct myself from before.

wikipedia: "at room temperature it becomes a liquid at a pressure of 60 bar. A tank of liquid carbon dioxide provides a constant 60 bar pressure until the tank is close to being empty."

60 bar = 870.226 psi

Last edited by Tytus Gerrish : 16-10-2006 at 10:17. Reason: inc0orrect info
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Unread 23-10-2006, 12:35
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

We just built an air cannon to fire confetti.. with a delrin projectile we got something like 80-90 ft of range..

I agree that the biggest problem is the valve.. We got a manual-open spinkler valve which seems to work better than the solenoids (which seems to "honk" as others have said) to be honest, the best solution is to use a large valve but those are hard to find, and diaphram types seem to open faster (from what I've read)

we'll be improving our cannons (we have 2) so I'll keep posting.
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Unread 26-10-2006, 16:17
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tatsu
I agree that the biggest problem is the valve.
Our solution was to use a manual ball valve. This is mechanically operated via a pnuematic piston. Take a look here.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/25728

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Unread 21-05-2007, 17:52
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Exclamation Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Hope to have the robot robot reprogrammed during school tommorrow but this valve just came in today. The local area Parker sales representative was willing to help our our team so that we can take our tee shirt cannon modified robot to a minor league baseball game.
Quote:
I will be glad to donate an N series valve to your project.

The part number I come up with is a N3157104545. This is a 2 way NC
(Normally non passing) 12VDC coil with 1" ports.
I plumbed it in this afternoon and a manual test sounds impressive with an immediate blast of air at the full 100 psi. Will post some video as soon as the programming is done and we can capture the new and improved version of the cannon in action.

APS
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Last edited by Andrew Schuetze : 21-05-2007 at 18:02.
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Unread 23-05-2007, 20:59
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Re: Optimizing Air Cannon Range

Thanks to all of you on this thread and those who helped inspire it. Team 1766 is now looking into making a shirt cannon and then shooting it at sports events. We are hoping to use this as some sort of fund raiser for the team and hopefully even get the team a little attention from the public.
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