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..."

Comments

I don't see why you can't build one....

[herrvinny]

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.

Have you ever thrown a CD?

[jaredmauch]

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.

Re:Have you ever thrown a CD?

[woobieman29]

Parent post is spot on.... If you have ever tried to throw a CD you know that the discs are extremely understable, and will corkscrew and flop to the ground if you put much effort into the throw. I can't imagine that a disc will be able to fly any appreciable distance out of a launcher unless the aerodynamics of the disc are changed to make it stable, or maybe slightly overstable.

Perhaps you can do what some others have done and make a set of groovy coasters by putting the cd in a microwave for 3-4 seconds? If you haven't tried this....it's pretty cool.

Re:Have you ever thrown a CD?

[Cuthalion]

I've had no problems throwing cds 75m, when there wasn't a lot of wind. I was throwing like a hammer frisbee throw.

Re:Hellrazor?

[aneurysm36]

They did it in this movie too.

Are we looking to make something that will shoot them frisbee style, or frag grenade style?

Re:1977 Ford F-100

[Piquan]

Y'know, come to think, you may be able to rig up an old baseball auto-pitcher (the kind with the two tires). Make it one tire, vertically mounted, with a tiny gap above a steel plate.

Disclaimer: This is just a hypothetical device. I assume no responsibility for safety or liability if you actually build it.

Ballista

[Bishop]

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 >:->

Survival Research Labratories Pitching Machine

[stefanlasiewski]

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...

Hammerhead

[sunoke]

Someone tried to do something like that with technic lego (and succeded). Take a look at his page.

One possibility

[Daniel Rutter]

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.

Re:A Dremel? Like in the a-splodin CD experiments?

[Mr. Slippery]

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?

Mythbusters, though IIRC they used something much more powerful than a Dremel tool.

Great show: the scientific method meets real-life engineering meets blowing stuff up. Shame that the Discovery Channel gives it such little support

Re:A different approach...

[TubeSteak]

This sounds like it'd work, but i just measured a cd and they're around 4.75 inches across. So that creates two problems: 1. you have to find 5" PVC and 2. you'll still have a gap of 1/4" which is waaay to big. I'm sure something could be worked out.. but it'd be a pain in the ass & a stack of CD's big enough to be worth launching would probably be fairly heavy with all the flight characteristics of a brick.