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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.
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.
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!
"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
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."
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...
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
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... ;-)