SpudFiles

Just want to say hello, I just built a pneumatic air canon to launch tennis balls for the National bring your kid to work day $/28/16. It was a great success and the kids loved it, but not as n=much as the adults who had a blast taking to its limits. We used sch 80 pvc chamber is 6" x 34" long and barrel is 2.5" by 52" long, we used a 2" solenoid release valve. We charged to 120 psi and can launch a tennis ball 100yd easy. we filled a tennis ball with pennies and launched it over 250 yards, and shot it thru a3 pieces of .25" ply wood at 10 yards away. I will post some pics as soon as I get them loaded on my PC. Thanks for having me, looking forward to getting info from you guys as to how to take this canon to the next level. Plans are to make to semi auto and fully computer controlled.

Welcome to the forum, that's a pretty large scale cannon you described - not bad if it's your first build!

Yea it's the first air canon build. But it was built in an engineering test lab for a large manufacturing company that design's and builds sophisticated train brake systems. so we had access to a full machine shop with some talented machinists, and cost was not a factor. We put this together rather quickly for the kids event along with a bunch of mechanisms for a Rube Goldberg activity. We want to scale the canon up for next years event by going fully computerized control and semi auto firing system.