Mini Cannon Firing and Destroying Targets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxHW-QGMuZ4

by aaronbrethorst • 16 years ago

62 28 16 years ago

jrockway• 16 years ago

No amount of Internet fame would motivate me to intentionally break a glass next to my desk. Glass is pain to clean up, and when you miss a tiny shard, you will know it... someday.

Also, how does this compare to a BB gun?

bshep• 16 years ago

I thought the same thing... also shooting at the egg right next to his computer, not a good idea, what if it splattered on the keyboard.

Also, where do I get one?

ido• 16 years ago

In the youtube comments he says he made it himself.

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

The egg splattering on to the keyboard would not happen because there is not enough kinetic energy in that small bullet to make it splash back very far, the lightbulb though for sure put some fragments in to his keyboard because the shards bounce off each other and will cause some shards to go in the opposite direction of where the bullet came from.

See here for some more 'bullet impact' video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfDoQwIAaXg

mhb2• 16 years ago

Taig lathe and mill:

http://www.taigtools.com/mmill.html

Brass:

http://www.mcmaster.com/#brass/=70iaxr

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

The difference with a BB gun is I think mostly the length of the barrel, I'm surprised he could get that much accuracy out of such a short barrel.

pmiller2• 16 years ago

What difference would barrel length make? Most BB gun barrels aren't rifled, and that's the only thing I can think of that would make a longer barrel more accurate.

orborde• 16 years ago

I'd be cagey about building one of these; that little charge of gunpowder may well be enough to inject that little ball a nontrivial distance into me.

hugh3• 16 years ago

Sounds like a good reason to be cagey about firing one of these.

staunch• 16 years ago

I wonder what how/if the ATF classifies these. I want one.

sown• 16 years ago

I was wondering that same thing myself. As the technology gets better the chances of being able to "download" a gun and print it out become higher.

erikstarck• 16 years ago

I wonder how the mass adoption of 3D printers will increase the availability of guns. I mean, you can just download and print one (if the material used when printing is strong enough, of course).

And it doesn't stop there. A friend of mine is a transhumanist philosopher at Oxford. He ranks home made viruses as the number one threat to mankind this century.

Anyway, cool video.

PostOnce2• 16 years ago

So far as I know, no plastic guns exist, our plastics technology just isn't there yet. Even if it were, it wouldn't be the same sort of plastic you feed into a 3D printer, or at least any off-the-shelf one.

I too have wondered about this. I also wonder about machinists moonlight as arms manufacturers :P

relevant plastic guns article:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1202/is-it-possible...

Devilboy2• 16 years ago

Not all 3d printers use plastic, there are processes for most metals including titanium. They work by depositing layers of metal dust and fusing it with lasers. The resulting parts can be very strong depending on the process.

rdl2• 16 years ago

You could make everything on a gun out of plastic (commonly done), except for the parts subject to the detonation and bullet (chamber, barrel). Those COULD be made from ceramic. A plastic projectile would also be possible (it'd need to be pretty dense; not sure how best to do that -- it would still look like a bullet on an x-ray, unless inside something else, in which case you might as well do lead inside a form-fitting lead case, inside another object)

lutorm• 16 years ago

It's not like guns are hard to get, in the US at least. I'm sure you can buy a bunch for the price of that 3D printer...

JoeAltmaier2• 16 years ago

It is neither illegal nor immoral to own a gun. Strange thing to wonder about - where I hail from you might as well wonder about the availablility of toasters.

JoeAltmaier2• 16 years ago

http://www.gunsandcrime.org/faildxprmt.pdf

rdl2• 16 years ago

Very few parts of guns require high-end machining and materials (barrels, specifically, are difficult/expensive). These are also not particularly highly controlled -- the barrel for a rifle can easily be repurposed as the barrel for a machine gun.

(A badly made barrel could be totally usable for a combat weapon; it just wouldn't last for 100 years and put a bullet into a palm sized group at 500m)

Receivers are historically the one part of a firearm which are considered to be "the firearm", and are not subject to particularly high stresses, especially on the AR-15 design. They can be machined by relatively incompetent people from aluminum, or made from plastic (Cav Arms sold these commercially for a while).

Guns just aren't that hard to make. The hardest parts of firearms to produce clandestinely are powder and primers, since that's more a chemistry problem than anything else. I'm not sure what the state of the art is in homemade smokeless powder, but black powder would be possible to make on your own (if a bit dangerous).

pirko• 16 years ago

Heavy smoker?

mhb2• 16 years ago

Why is the ball going up?

bad_alloc• 16 years ago

Maybe he didn't drill straight.

mambodog• 16 years ago

When I saw the title of this post my brain brought up mental images of 'minigun' and 'autocannon' and sort-of combined the two, and as such this really wasn't what I was expecting... neat, though.

Mini Cannon Firing and Destroying Targets

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