Barrel sealing air cannon

[moseslonnie]

Howdy!

This thread will be the home of my new project in upcoming weeks. hopefully when its all over I will have a functioning high pressure air cannon with a barrel-sealing, piston operated high speed valve.
the first chunk I decided to tackle was the piston itself, which will control both the release of air upon discharge, and also to seal the barrel while the system is being pressurized.
I turned the piston from some mild steel i found in the scrap bin, and this was my first effort to turn a steel part to accurate dimensions. Please give some feedback on my work! im still learning and any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[xalky]

This oughta be fun to watch! What are you gonna be launching with it? Do you have a design that you're using, so we can see what your building? )

 

[ScrapMetal]

Cool project. How about more details on the cannon, size, configuration, working from plans or your own design? That kind of stuff.

I'm fairly new to machining as well and from what I've found, making "parts" is one thing, making parts to accurate specs and repeating is a whole 'nother ball game

Looks like you've got a pretty good handle on it to start with.

Looking forward to seeing your build and thanks for sharing,

-Ron

 

[moseslonnie]

Ill be making some CAD models here in the next few days, its a little tricky to describe the mechanism in writing so I may wind up drawing a few pressure maps and posting them. Im thinking about making interchangable barrels so it can launch anything from steel bearings to tennis balls, but at the moment it will be a 1" bore. the Barrel sealing valve design is a mashup of projects i've seen on the internet, but for the most part its my own design

- - - Updated - - -

Here's a CAD model i used while turning the piston

 

[melsdad]

How is the progress on this project?

sent from my hand held hickymajig