Kids day conon

[CBjamie]

My kids day canon

tennis ball canon

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Very nice, higher spec than I imagined, that's not your average home depot garden sprinkler valve - and it looks like the traverse and elevation mechanism is quite sophisticated too. Do you tie it down for firing or is the trolley free to recoil?

[CBjamie]

The valve is a high flow gate valve rather expensive, The traverse is a simple center swivel mechanism machined from aluminum with a Delran bushing the ends ride on caster wheels to keep it from tipping sideways, its manually operated (for now), The elevation is made from parts of a train door operator system that we build at this company. It's a fast twist screw mechanism mounted to the frame and direct to the valve, there are pivot point at both mounting location to allow for the arc movement. It to is manually operated for now. the base is on caster wheels for ease of movement and we put a 40lb sand bag behind it when firing. This photo was taken before we installed the charging valve and the pressure proportioning valve.

I am wanting to go semi auto with this canon, so any ideas on how to make a loading port and a feed tube will be appreciated. We have a couple ideas but don't know if they've been tried before. Any input is welcome. Thanks

[CBjamie]

[youtube][/youtube] ok i think i got this now. yea it worked

Well a year has passed very quickly and Kids day was the 27th. We had another very successful event, the canon continues as the main attraction. As promised we achieved our goal of going semiauto ( we can go fullauto to). I hope the link to the video works

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

That's pretty sweet!

The firing valve sounds a little... flatulent. How are you piloting it?

[CBjamie]

Thanks, It's a lot of fun especially when you load it with silicone filled tennis balls. We can launch one over 200 yards at 10bar pressure set. The valve has a self pilot circuit, it needs a 2 to 4 bar input for a second to close the valve then you can fill at full pressure. It uses a 24 volt magnet valve to fire. We use a digital input proportioning regulator to control the pressure changes, it's all controlled with a computer program called Lab View. Yea it sounds kinda angry, we nicknamed it the Growler.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

we nicknamed it the Growler

Slang for something else around the north of the UK

It uses a 24 volt magnet valve to fire.

The "fluttering" noise might indicate that the main valve is rapidly opening and closing, possibly because the pilot valve has insufficient flow. Using a smaller solenoid valve as a pilot instead of a solenoid valve directly should give you better performance, though for the purposes of this cannon it might not be needed.