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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.
"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.
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.
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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
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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.
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... ;-)
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
I wonder if wrapping a few turns of gauze over the cd would get you both the surface area and seal you need for a compressed air release? It is amazing what 200 psi will get you in velocity.p. Using propane and kerosene soaked tennis balls, you can get a spectacular show...warning...big flat non flammable area highly reccomended.
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
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
Great show: the scientific method meets real-life engineering meets blowing stuff up. Shame that the Discovery Channel gives it such little support
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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
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.
[Fuck Beta]
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