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Homemade CD Shooter?
Rinisari asks: "I've recently come into a very large amount of defunct, yet still structurally intact, CDs. I did some searching about on Google, but turned up nothing on my goal: A Compact Disc Cannon. Has anyone ever built a device for shooting CDs in a horizontal or vertical fashion? I'm thinking almost something like one of those foam disc shooters..."
CDs fit perfectly into a clay pigeon thrower, not the mechanical type, but the spring loaded type you use to throw them by hand realy far. I don't know how much this helps though. Clay pigeons are cheap, but I guess if you realy want to take out frustration on AOL this works.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
The World Series of Poker on ESPN features a poker player who can slice a banana with a thrown playing card. Maybe you could try slicing a raw potato or other object in this manner with a CD. Then you could organize a contest and sell the TV rights.
Which Hellrazor was it with the DJ that shot CDs out of his face? You could pick up some design ideas from that guy. ;)
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I'm sorry but we can't tell you as shooting CDs could be a terrorist act. God only knows how many millions of AOL freebie CDs there are available for free to anyone who wants them and these could become lethal weapons in your hands. You are a sick little monkey, go home and ask your dad to give you a paddling, and no supper for you either, mister! The FBI will be around in the morning, please have your clothes packed and an extra-large tub of Smooth-o-lube when they arrive.
I was going to make a disc launcher a la Starsiege Tribes, but never took the time to find/make the proper gun structure. My idea was to cut the top off a CD-R spindle full of AOL CD's and mount it upside down on the gun so gravity would feed ammo into it.
What I'd have is a typical gun structure, but with a loading mechanism made to support stock spindles (of 25, 50, or perhaps even 100 CD's). When recoiled, the CD should fall into place onto a small bolt or something. The trigger would drive this bolt forward sharply along a rail by a spring or rubber band. At the end of the rail, the bolt would have to drop down so the CD can fly free of the mechanism. I hadn't put much thought into a semi-auto system, though.
Buy the gadget you linked to, disassemble it and figure out how they did it?
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
I have one of those foam disk shooting things, and from what I can tell, all it consists of is two rapidly rotating, short cylinders. When the trigger is pulled, a simple spring mechanism pushes the foam disk forward slightly, bringing the disk into contact with the rotating cylinders (which are positioned on either side of the launching route). The disk hits both rotating cylinders, and then gets accelerated quickly out of the launcher.
You should be able to build this mechanism with little difficulty; the only problem might be that the CD's may be too fragile to be quickly accelerated in such a matter.
=)
Paul Lenhart writes words!
They don't exactly fly like a Frisbee at all. If you're looking to throw one far, you might try looking at a potato cannon and use pipe sufficently large enough to fit a CD. I wouldn't expect much luck though.
must ... play ... tribes
"Has anyone ever built a device for shooting CDs in a horizontal or vertical fashion?"
Sort of. I used to fling bad CDs into my friend's cubicle. Written on each one was "SCUD... Don't worry, you probably weren't the intended target."
"Derp de derp."
I'm thinking the following:
1) Magazine feeds a CD to a dremel motor which spins the CD in place to about 5000 rpm. As it is spinning up, the...
2) capacitors in the railgun are charging. Since the disk has an aluminum layer, it should be able to be ejected from a railgun. So when the capacitors are charged...
3) a switch kills the dremel motor, which drops the disk into the railgun receiver. CD shoots off, rack another one into the spinner-upper.
4) Repeat.
Alternately, hack an old CD drive to spin and release the cd.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Stuck it under my tire and peeled out.
Go down to your local batting cage and watch how the balls are tossed out. You can probably add a flywheel for weight and a rubber piece for friction to any kind of motor and get what you are looking for.
Build a balista. You will need to build a specific "cup" to hold the CD.
An advantage to a balista is that once you tire of shooting CDs you can switch to other fun projectiles >:->
Since when is 33 CD's a "very large amount"? I used to get that many AOL discs in the mail each week.
The Survival Research Labratories developed a pitching machine which pitches 2x4's at 200 mph at a target up to 800 feet away.
An engine, two car wheels and a loading mechanism. You could use a similar mechanism for your CD 'tosser'.
But please, always remember to wear your safety goggles. And safety gloves. And a safety shirt...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Just rewrite the firmware for your CD-ROM player: let it spin up to its maximum speed and then open the tray.
I managed to collect just over a thousand CD's a few years back, well over 800 of them AOL CD's. This is quite an achievement given that AOL has no point of presence in New Zealand, so I have no idea why those CD's were here in the first place. I was planning to make a CD launcher using a pair of small rubber wheels, but in the end I gave the whole lot to a friend for part of an art project.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
My vision is of a CD spindle looking clip that loads the "ammo" from the top (gravity fed), with a bolt like thin sliding arm with a center spindle, to push the discs forward one at a time while holding the rest of the stack out of the way. When the trigger is pulled, the arm slides forward to launch a disc, and releases the next disc in the stack onto the top of the chamber. As the trigger is released the disc falls into the chamber where rotors on the sides of it, or the spindle on the arm spin the disc up to speed. When ready, the trigger is pulled, pushing the arm and spindle forward to the launching wheels. When the disc gets to the launching wheels, the spindle drops out of the way. The wheels themselves are rubber, touching each other, and spinning in opposite directions, such that when a disc is pushed into them, they spit it out rather quickly. They should be near the center of the disc on top and bottom of the track the disc slides on, offsetslighly to maintain the rotation on the disc itself, but keep the path of the disc somewhat straight out the end.
just a thought, dont look at me if you try to actually build somthing from this and hurtyourself.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
My thought was get some bottle rockets, or those model rocket engines, and attach them in some clever fashion. Either with good old duct tape around the edge for the bottle rockets, or one right down the center with the model rocket engines. But I would recommend like someone said earlier to wear safety goggles, gloves, shirt except I would add pants, shoes house, and be sure to notify the FAA you'll be using some air space.
"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction here and merely hoped.
All you need is two things - something to spin up the CD before shooting it, that would provide for much greater stability - a CD-ROM drive would be a nice place to start, and a mechanism to disconnect a spinning disk from the clamp and give it a solid shove forward along some track or rail.
Once you have something that shoots, you can go the extra mile, evolve it into something along the lines of a CD gatling and make yourself one of these and post us some pictures of the result. (Yes, I know, the projectiles in the picture are not CD's, but you have to admit there is a resemblance, and think of all the money you'd make selling it on thinkgeek)
-
...but if you build it, you sure as hell better videotape the cannon hitting stuff.
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
didn't your mother ever tell you? ;-)
"You could put someone's eye out with that!"
I can easily think of a mechanism to make this gadget work. Let me give you a few hints and you can work out the rest.
Think about tops, not disks. You guys are all thinking about spinning a CD down a slot. Instead, think of it as a spinning top revolving on its axis, like a CD is designed to do. Nothing says you can't modify the CD slightly. You could glue a small spindle into the center of the CD, or just cut a small slot in the edge of the center hole, so you can make a removable spindle with a keyed rod that goes in the slot to keep the CD from slipping.
So if you've understood what I'm getting at, you now have a CD with a little wooden spindle sticking up from the top and bottom. Essentially you now have a very thin, wide top. It used to be fairly common to have wooden top "launchers" or "brackets" with notches that held the top and bottom spindle on a top. In this case, you'd need a piece of wood about an inch thick and about 1 foot long. Cut a slot down the center of the wood to allow the CD to pass through. Cut a V shaped notch across the end of the stick, perpendicular to the slot.
Now you can set the spindle of the "CD top" in the notch. Wrap some string around the spindle, pull, and you've got the CD spinning at high RPM. flick the rod and your CD is flying.
I looked around the web and this page is about as close as I came to finding a top bracket.
http://www.turnertoys.com/tops4_toddlers.htm
You can kind of see what I'm getting at, but this version just drops the top down, it's not intended for tossing, and the plane of the top isn't centered in the bracket, it's below. But I think you'll get the idea. Now go build it..
real men make hard drive platter launchers.
As you can read in this slashdot article CDroms break up when they are spun to fast. When a CD launched from a cannon hits a wall, you can bet that the flying debris can seriously injure you... I would be VERY careful...
Someone tried to do something like that with technic lego (and succeded). Take a look at his page.
I will adapt
Call me hardcore, I remember a little Ninja Turtles toy that did just this, but with smaller, pizza-colored hard plastic discs that hurt like @*#^$. I think it used small motors to spin and launch the discs because the pizza thingies would fly everywhere, bouncing off walls/expensive vases/my forehead. Now those things were about 2" wide, and 1/8" thick, so they were relatively "dull". If you did this with CDs, I think it would be a safety risk because CDs are thinner, thus "sharper" and lighter so they fly faster and farther and dig deeper into your victim's skin if properly aimed.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Disc guns that actually shoot straight are a tricky engineering challenge, but the "Shot-Blade" pretty much solves it; I reviewed it a while ago. The Shot-Blade has a lot more spring power than it needs to shoot its little lightweight projectiles; I could see it being reworked into a CD launcher of some kind.
I was putzing around with an old vendor CD the other day, when i came up with a low budget model of what you're looking to achieve. I stuck the CD onto magic marker, and flung it forward while spinning the disk backward with my left hand.
It worked rather well - but i guess it depends on your point of view. The person whome I hit in the neck, making a red line across his throat probably wouldn't have thought it was so successful.
With great CD power comes great CD responsibility.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/utgoty/weapon_prof ile.php?weapon=ripper
You mean something like Survival Research Labs' Pitching Machine?
:D
This thing shoots 6' long 2x4's at over 120mph using the same concept... Except using tires and a 500 cubic inch engine.
I don't think you'll be able to copy the "foam disk launcher" design as it uses a spring, and you have to pull the trigger to reset the spring for firing. Since a CD weighs much more than the little foam discs, you're going to need a spring you won't be able to set with your fingers.
Like everyone else, I'd recommend the use of an electric motor. The simplest design would be two rubber cylinders placed vertically, one powered, the other spinning only because it's touching the other. But the trajectory will be a bit unpredictable because the CD won't be spinning.
To get spin on the CD, you could use just one spinning cylinder, another cylinder placed the width of a CD horizantaly from the other.
I'd skip the idea of a loader for now, and just load them by hand. The loader will require very precise construction so that you can just grab one CD at a time. So, unless you know someone you just have to hurl 50 CDs at in 10 seconds, I'd just skip it.
For the motor, you could start with a small drill for prototyping, then move up to a router for more heavy duty stuff. But I don't see anyway to avoid the eventual need for the motor from a gas powered lawnmower (or a truck).
My first reaction was along the lines of "Man, that's asking for trouble". It'd be a fun toy to make, but once you fire a few disks you'll get an understanding of how dangerous this is. I know I'm not the only one to comment on this, but what the hey...
My experience is only with hand-thrown CDs (at a distance of 15m or so) but:
Sure, you can have fun designing a machine, but it's a downright dangerous result you're looking for. Can't you exercise your brain with a safer problem?
Like nuclear fission... ;-)
Get a slingshot, one of the big fancy ones with an arm brace. It needs to have an opening significantly bigger than the CD, so if you may need to modify the slingshot or build one based on current models but with an enhanced aperture. Cut out the small leather/plastic ammo holder, get a piece of metal about 3/5 the diameter of a CD, bend to curve around the CD with lips at the top and bottom of the disc (the lips should only be at the middle of this metal piece and probably not more than an inch wide, with a taper away from the disc, otherwise it may grab the disc and you'll find it in your forehead). Done.
Probably not worth it. I think it would be MUCH more fun to shoot the smaller mini-cds.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
If that thing got up enough speed, could slice clear through the neck, and head would roll. Probably not such a good idea. (Although if anyone builds it, please post video ;-)
Reality has a liberal bias
http://www.philohome.com/hammerhead/hammerhead.htm
Man, I don't think you want to do this. I mean, I know that any homemade launcher like a potato cannon can be dangerous, but I certainly can't throw a potato though drywall (although it could dent). However, I have thrown a cd halfway through drywall during college. So be forwarned.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Werent there some people who made videos of themselves, spinning CDs on the tip of a dremel until the centrifugal force made them explode in omnidirectional-flying shards of plastic?
Also consider, the stuff used to bind the aluminium to the plastic substrate is usually toxic.
As an unofficial PETA activist I must ask you to stop planning to use ferrets as amunition for your sick weasel-guns.
...Shooting ferrets from a railgun, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Sadistic bastards.
Any attempt to use ferrets as weapons will be considered an act of murder and we will return the favor on behalf of our long slinkylike furry friends.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Use a side rail.
I would like to post an ascii blueprint here but the lame "lameness filter" won't allow it, sorry.
There you are, staring at me again.
I've been wanting to do this for a looooong time...Still have people giving me stacks of cds from time to time.
The concepts I was working with:
1. Foam disc gun spinning roller concept
2. Yellow (or blue) metallic clicky spring-launched plastic disc concept (late 70's or early '80s gold or blue metallic plastic guns with attached magazine in front of trigger)
Option 2 I suspect would work on a larger scale. Of course, I decided option 1 sounded like more fun. Couldn't get a cordless drill to spin fast enough - could gear it up, but I don't know that it would provide enough torque.
So I used a Circular saw. Got a smooth-edged blade for it (masonry abrasive, IIRC) and rubber-coated the edge of the blade. Didn't have a top roller, just a smooth(ish) top surface. The idea being that the spinning rubber coated sawblade would grab CD & chuck it down barrel.
This was a total failure, of course. Insufficient squishyness in the system meant that the sawblade had too little or too much headspace, and cds would alternately slide through or be flinderized by the blade. And the rubber on the blade lasted about 15 seconds.
Sooooo, I needed more durable ammo around the same caliber. Grabbed a stack of 5.25 HDD platters (doesn't everyone have those?), changed to carbide tipped blade (bite instead of friction), and went to town. Got a few to fly pretty damn well, but WICKED curves on 'em - without spin stablilization, they curve bad.
So, somewhere in my basement are a dozen or so somewhat chewed-up HDD platters, and most likely the CD on which I burned the photos & video.
My suggestion: Go the clicky-spring-gun route - not sure what to use for the spring effect, but it can be done.
Yea,I guess you could consider heat toxic at high doses.
Back when I was in college ('90-'91ish), there was a Yorx CD player in the main lounge. If you failed to hit stop before hitting eject, the CD would launch and impale itself in the ceiling.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
just like an AR15, use an underslung magazine with a spring feeding new rounds into your "barrell"
your barrell could be very simple as well, a horizontal slit, with s soft foamon the left side rail and a teflon tape or other similar low friction materila on the right side rail.
to load a single CD from the magaziine ito the barrel, you would use a pull back slide like a crossbow, when fully retracted, the magazine would be free to push one cd into the barrel, upon releasing the slide (slowly) the slide would push the cd forward just enough to contact the foam on the left. upon poulling the trigger, the spring loaded slide would then be free to fly forward with all of the stored energy int eh spring, and force the CD out of the barrell. meanwhile, the high friction material on one side of the barrel would induce rotation counter clockwise and offer stability to the projectile. but then again, this is just my udea using 3 springs and some woodwork (spring 1 for magazine feed, spring 2 for the slide/launcher bolt, and spring 3 for the trigger mechanism).
the bright side of CDs is pretty good at reflecting light (it's actually a mirror-like finish) and should make decent solar concentrators. For eg: a lot of CDs forming a concave "dish", with the object to heat at the focal point.
I've seen linear motors using aluminum sheets as the moving part, but the spinning of the disc means there's another problem to contend with. Unfortunately the eddy currents induced in a spinning aluminum disc by the electromagnets in the rail gun will act as a powerful brake, causing the spinning to slow rapidly.
A better bet would be to make the disc spin by having something at the rail gun exit that the edge of the disc rubs against.
I don't know why people want to use rail guns where simple mechanical devices will work though. I think it would be much simpler to have two sets of counterrotating rollers side by side, running at slightly different speeds, the disc passes through them and is accelerated forward and spun at the same time. No capacitors or coils, just two electric motors and four rollers. A mechanism similar to a printer paper feed (designed to seperate individual discs from a stack, rather than individual pages of paper) could feed discs into the rollers.
Putting moderation advice in your
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104409/
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
Taking the comments into account and the mention of a spindle in another thread, how about this:
1) 2 metal spindles with a flat rubber disk on the end of each. The rubber disks are facing each other and the CD is clamped between them. Looks like a spinning top.
2) The spindle shafts are inserted between the rails of 2 railguns mounted on top of each other, with a roughly CD thickness gap between them.
3) Bottom spindle is set on a small thrust bearing. Top spindle goes through a sleeve type bearing and protrudes. Dremel tool with rubber disk mounted spins against the metal shaft. Now we have rotation.
4) When caps are charged up, both railguns fire. The propel the shafts, still in contact with the CD and still spinning, down the track. At the end of the track there are 2 options:
- a)the whole assembly - CD, shafts, bearings - get ejected at high speed. The shafts and bearings quickly peel off like sabots, leaving the CD to travel downrange.
- b)the shaft and bearing assemblies are captured at the end of the railgun tracks with snubbers. The railgun tracks must then be made to curve gently out at the end of travel, pulling the rubber disks attached to the shafts away from the CD and letting it fly.
I knew a guy who shot cds with a dremel tool... http://www.powerlabs.org/cdexplode.htm
All he did was speed the cd up, then let it fall off the tool onto the floor. The friction between the spinning cd and the floor caused the cd to accelerate to a high velocity. When it hit a wall it shattered into pieces.
Idea 1:
Simple:
a) Speed CD up with dremel tool
b) Drop CD on its side onto a flat smooth surface (parallel to ground like floor), as Sam Burros did.
c) Make sure the CD is going to go away from you!
Idea 2:
Harder:
a) Speed cd up with Dremel tool.
b) Drop CD onto specially crafted rails +wall:
c) The wall is on a side, which serves the same purpose as the smooth flat surface in Idea 1.
d) The rail(s) beside the wall are VERY slightly grippy
e) The rail(s) further from wall are as smooth as possible
f) Make sure you spin the CD in the correct direction! (Don't have it grip on the wall and shoot backwords!)
Please tell me how it works out! : )
This will never work though, but I need to the spare parts for my cd changer, so if you could mail them too me when your done...
You go... In pieces!
roflzwtfbbw
Another cool feature was at the top of the ammo cylindar was a rectangular funnel so you could theoretically catch disks shot at you and they would be back ready to be shot back.
I looked for a picture but I couldn't find one on-line, though I am sure I've seen smaller versions in the cheap-toy section of places like Target or Wal-Mart.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Method 1:
:)
The most obvious way is to take a couple of flexible rubber wheels, mount them so that they are touching each other, spin one really fast using a motor (causing the other one to spin in the opposite direction), and then feed the CD between them. Instant CD shooter.
-Advantages: Easy to build, works.
-Disadvantages: The major problem with this method is that the accuracy sucks. Although you can get some amazing speeds, your CD is shooting flat, with no spin to it. So you don't get much in the way of distance. It tends to tumble in mid air and get a lot of drag.
Method 2:
Spin the CD using a motor of type, then have it release the spinning CD into something that will shoot it directly (not using a spinning rotor mechanism like method 1).
-Advantages: Spinning CD allows for a superb accuracy if you build the thing right.
-Disadvantages: Hard as hell to construct. Essentially, you have to spin your disc up to speed and then shoot it using something with a linear motion. This means a spring or a spinning belt mechanism with some very critical timing (if you don't want to lose all your speed). This translates to a much lower muzzle velocity.
Method 3: My favorite
Combining both of the above methods, we'll make a couple of rubber rotors which are one CD's diameter apart. The CD, when it enters, will touch both rotors, but only barely. We need a slide mechanism to keep the CD in the correct orientation as it enters, and to some extent exits, the launcher itself. Spin on the CD will be achieved by rotating the rotors at different speeds.
-Advantages: Gets a high muzzle velocity as well as spinning the CD, giving a reasonably good accuracy. The track launch mechanism, with a bit of creativity, can be adapted to make it into a fully-automatic CD firer. Feed it a stack of CD's and it punches them all out in a burst.
-Disadvantages: A bit harder to build.. Requires constructing a track for the CD to travel on, a couple of rotors that move at differing speeds (meaning either gearing/belts or two motors).
Have fun!
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Cool !
A gun with a rate of fire that's expressed in MBps !
If launched in significant quantities at the right altitude, would a flock of CDs register on radar?
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
Since AOL makes free CDs so readily available, use a stack of 100 super glued together as the projectile. A large pvc tube slightly larger than a CD would work good. Using the same design as a potato gun, have a chamber at the bottom to fill with gas and ignite. This should send the stack flying somewhere fast and hard. Fun enhancement: 1. Mount a spike through the center of the CD's (please don't try this at home) 2. Dremel slightly spiraled ruts down the side of the glued spindel. Should add a slight amount of spin and increase distance. 3. Fill the center of the CD's with a "message in a bottle" and cap off the ends before firing. This would be lovely for exchanging threats in a high impact manner.
Ah... you're thinking of the perpetual /. favorite, Sam Barrios, of Powerlabs fame. Pics and video here.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking