Another pic dump. Finished up the plumbing and started on the wiring. This quad setup is using those lengths of 1/4" tubing that feed the solenoids as reservoirs. The solenoids are 1.5mm orifice, 4psi, 12v, sealed coil, Italian manufactured units that come out of Keurig coffee makers. Yes, the valves hold 150psi just fine. No, they don't cycle with 12v at 150psi. They cycle wonderfully with 24v at 150psi. Yes, the solenoids are very light. Fitting all this into the Atlanta hull has been challenging put I was able to tuck the solenoids to each side of the reg. I have no idea if I'll be able to get all four cannons to fire at once, or hard, but I'll keep working towards that goal.
Been down with Covid but managed to get a little boat time in today. Had to redesign the Atlanta guns due to a spurt issue (gas flow/piston issue). Today was the first test fire of the new design. The rebuilt cannon is no longer spurting, is hitting hard, and the hyperlight solenoids are cycling nicely. Just need to rebuild the three remaining cannons and test simultaneous fire. Video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WqZFs7wveo4vrXf2A
Some cannon making lessons learned... So I built these fancy looking cannons for the Atlanta rebuild. Goals were weight and space savings, and performance. Key points where these compact 10-32 barbed tees I had, turning down the tee caps and tees, and drilled pistons. Though they looked cool, they didn't fire worth a damn. They were spurting. The spurting was being caused by those tees which happened to align perfectly with the inlets on the drilled pistons as seen in this pic. The gas flow wasn't hitting the top of the piston and not depressing it, basically bypassing it. The obvious fix is to replace the pistons with undrilled ones. Another issue popped up at this point. Those turned down tee caps didn't have enough meat left on them to allow wrenching off the caps without heat (to break the small amount of blue Loctite I used). Which meant pulling the cannons off the boat to do the work required. So I machined up a new set of undrilled pistons but I didn't want to reuse the old caps for obvious reasons. Didn't have any new caps in stock but I had these 3/8" nylon spacers and a bag full of compression nuts so I came up with this setup. The nylon spacer is threaded 10-32 to screw the tee into. The compression nut was machined a bit on the inside to form a flat for the spacer to sit on. The hole in the nut was also enlarged by a 1/16" for easier fitment of the tee. Once assembled the nylon spacer seals gas tight against the tee. No thread sealant required. A little red Loctite and the tee gets threaded on. And the finished cannon ready to go back on the boat. Testing of the first cannon went very well. I'm finishing up with the last three cannons and will begin group test fires soon.
the whole time I was looking at that post and pics, this song was blaring in my head ALIEN WEAPONRY - Kai Tangata (Official Video) | Napalm Records (youtube.com) this is some shocking stuff. that bottom tee and spacer design alone is incredible.
