We decided to do make a t-shirt cannon. I made this thread for advice on building one, anything helps!
-CC
I would take a good look at team 254’s T-shirt cannon, Shockwave:
Most T-shirt cannons aren’t this advanced (or beautiful 
) but it’s worth looking into their process.
If you do a quick forum search you will find some good info, a lot of teams seem to be building canons…
I have looked at the threads, but many point to 254’s cannon. The main issue we have with their design is we cannot find what solenoid they’re using (it’s out of date?) and you cannot adjust distance with it.
-Also, t-shirt cannons are a great way to promote sponsors (more money for your team) and your team.
To adjust for distance you simply change the pressure that you charge the system to. more pressure=more distance (in theory, at least).
I was specifically talking about the 254 cannon, they had one fast acting solenoid (no change of pressure in a pre-fire tank). I also haven’t understood what pressure they keep their scuba tank at (150 psi or the 3300 psi the tank is rated for?).
They keep their tanks at 3000psi, they’re always charged. The solenoid they use is very expensive, I can’t remember where they got it. It is adjustable, although even on the shortest distance setting it goes VERY far.
That is not correct. This would be EXTREMELY dangerous, as the solenoid is only rated to 150 PSI (I believe).
We have one tank at ~3000 psi and the “accumulator” tank at ~150 PSI.
We can sort of adjust distance by changing the time the solenoid is open for.
We got the valve from MAC. I would say that this isn’t such a specialized application that the exact valve we used needs to be used.
I would encourage teams wanting to create something similar to research what’s out there. We picked the valve we used for a number of reasons, safety being the primary concern. Even if the exact part number does not exist anymore there are countless functionally identical valves out there.
Sorry, my mistake.
hey check oyt team 540’s t-shirt bot. here is the link.
http://www.team540.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27:t-shirt-bot&catid=1:robots&Itemid=7
How do you manage pressure between tanks (how do you keep one tank at 150 psi?), pressure regulators are pretty expensive when you deal with ~3000 psi.
How many shots can you get off with one tank at 150psi?
We based our t-shirt cannon off of 254s layout. What we used and thought was safest was the K value that connects to the 3000psi SCUBA tank and then the 150psi SCUBA regulator which is not very expensive.
The accumulating tank at 150psi for us is enough to shoot one t-shirt about two hundred feet.
Our team’s page with info about the T-Shirt Cannon. Hope to get an engineering journal of it within the month.
http://kalanirobotics.com/team3008/Research_and_Development.html
and a video of ours
Good luck!