Ping-pong Launcher Your Wife Can’t Know About

ping-pong-ball-launcher

Sometime the projects you see at the local hacker space are better left a secret when you return home for the evening. Case in point, this ping-pong ball launcher that can put holes in a sheet of OSB. The projectile is made more lethal because the ball has been injected with water to dramatically increase the density. Compressed air is used to propel it from the 14 round magazine with devastating effect.

We’ve embedded a video of the gun being fired after the break. The creator, [Ron Kessinger], demonstrated this at a Denver hacker space called Club Workshop. We’re hoping there’s no plans for turret automation because this thing’s dangerous! Either way, the significant other who usually watches out for our safety would never approve.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glvIJLeepck]

27 thoughts on “Ping-pong Launcher Your Wife Can’t Know About

      1. By definition, if it is full of lead shot, it is no longer a pillow. It is a sack of shot.

        I am pretty sure that once you fill it with water, it is no longer a ping pong ball.

  1. Hell – fire a pillow fast enough, no lead shot needed, and you’d have enough energy to kill something. (whether you can achieve such velocity outside of a vacuum is another matter entirely)

    Calling this a “water gun” is like calling the Columbia River a “slight trickle”

    1. Hell, my wife sent me the video just before you posted it. She included the tag line:

      “Would this keep the deer out of the garden better than that motion sensing sprinkler monstrosoty you built?”

  2. @ Mike Szczys, my wife would cheerfully help me build something like this – or more likely build a ‘rival’ one of her own to compete in destroying things.

    Geek wives FTW!

  3. Like a few others – filling a ping pong ball with water to make it lethal means it’s no longer just a ping pong ball.

    If you can fire a regular ping pong ball through OSB then I’ll be interested. Shooting something with the approximate mass of a golf ball through OSB is not so impressive.

  4. It may no longer be just a ping pong ball, but I think the point is that the gun IS “just a ping pong ball launcher”. IE, your light cannon is going to be found technically legal, unless loaded and used in a less than legal manner. Great for all those high-powered weaponry nuts. ^_^

    I somehow think a vehicle mount would get you pulled over though.

  5. @Riley

    Yeah, anything attatched to a car that can move off of the car is illegal. Google McMissile, where a woman was charged with firing a missile from her vehicle (said missile was a McDonalds cup).

    Apparently, no one around here knows how to make a tennis ball incendiary grenade. Fire one of those babies out of that thing and you’ve got artillery!

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