Autocannon

[GhengisDhon]

One of our club members came up with a concept for a for a small compact gun. I've been playing with the concept for the last few weeks and come up with a prototype. Its basically a miniature baseball pitching machine.

I've dubbed it an "Autocannon" after the Battle Tech gun that shot high rate of fire, exploding shells.

Our AEG gearbox based guns shoot at approximately 150 ft/s. To achieve this same rate, with the 1" diameter wheels I have on the autocannon, it would need to be spinning at about 35K RPM which is not feasible. I imagine the prototype was spinning at well under 10K RPM. I could see this shooting at a high rate of fire, however.

Still needs a lot of work, but the concept does seem feasible.

[GhengisDhon]

[GhengisDhon]

Also been working on a new concept for a loader. Looks kinda simple, but took quite a few attempts to get it working right. (Even had to use real math to get it to work.)

[GhengisDhon]

[Zenta]

Nice work! Very neat and compact design. Looking forward to see it finished.

[jwatte]

Looks like fun! :-)
I had a Nerf gun that worked like that in the office for a while.

[Gertlex]

Neat projects! Does the worm screw make it any harder to detect when the loader has filled (e.g.) the supply tube to the gun?

[GhengisDhon]

Does the worm screw make it any harder to detect when the loader has filled (e.g.) the supply tube to the gun?

Well... that was a bit of unexpected surprise of the screw loader. It actually doesn't exert a lot of force on the BBs (some but not a lot). If you put a large resisting force on the output BB, the rest behind it just slip back through the screw so I guess the amount of force it exerts is the amount of friction of the BBs.

Haven't tried it on the supply tube of the loader yet to see if it can push the BBs through the tube.

[GhengisDhon]

Does the worm screw make it any harder to detect when the loader has filled (e.g.) the supply tube to the gun?

Well... that was a bit of unexpected surprise of the screw loader. It actually doesn't exert a lot of force on the BBs (some but not a lot). If you put a large resisting force on the output BB, the rest behind it just slip back through the screw so I guess the amount of force it exerts is the amount of friction of the BBs.

Haven't tried it on the supply tube of the loader yet to see if it can push the BBs through the tube.

[GhengisDhon]

It actually doesn't exert a lot of force on the BBs (some but not a lot).

Well.. I retract that statement. I just performed a bit more testing on it and it is exerting a lot of force on the BBs. Must have been my last iteration that wasn't putting out a lot of force. Not sure what changed between them.

Maybe this weekend I experiment with the loader tube and let you know.