Fully-automated Golf Ball Gun

If you get in the line of fire this golf ball launcher is gonna leave a mark, or worse. It’s based on the same premise as the sausage gun, but now everything is automated and no meat products are used.

A hopper stores a row of golf balls. When it comes time to load, a ball falls into the chamber, starter fuel is sprayed into the combustion area with the aid of a fan, and after both chambers are sealed the propellant is ignited.

We’ve embedded two videos below for your amusement. It looks like [Chrille] and his friends are being careful with their creation. We’re glad for that because this is about as dangerous as the high-velocity ping-pong ball launcher.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjww3qBC7OI]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeQmgaMeJAc]

23 thoughts on “Fully-automated Golf Ball Gun

  1. Rather than increasing the projectile size, I’d be more interested in seeing a better rate of fire. Probably have to use something other than a gravity feed, and maybe used pressurized air instead of a fan. A golf ball machine gun. THEN scale it up.

  2. For being hairspray-fueled, that thing is REMARKABLY consistent about firing. I know when I do a potato/tennis ball cannon using hairspray as the propellant, it’s hit or miss most of the time no matter how well I ventilate the tube beforehand. This thing hits every time. Nice work.

  3. @piku

    The problem with using bowling balls is that even if your barrel can fit them, the weight of even the lightest bowling ball will cause greater back pressure than the door seals, and therefore will probably just blow the actuated doors right off the gun instead of launching the ball.

    To make a projectile work, the weight component opposite the direction of fire must be less than or equal to the pressure of the expanding combustion gasses in the direction of fire, while still being less than the pressure needed to break the seals around the pneumatic doors or the plastic of the breach walls.

  4. Way cool, I am guessing that large tank is just compressed air to drive all the pneumatics opening and closing chambers, any reason for choosing that over solenoids? What is the propellant?

  5. even if you purpose built a regular cannon just to fire bowling balls I don’t see hair spray having enough potential energy to effectively launch one. You would probably have to build a giant combustion chamber.

  6. Now they need to make it automatically acquire and track moving targets.

    In the wider shots, it looks like the ball might actually be going slower than a ball hit by a driver. I wonder how fast the balls are actually traveling.

  7. Nice :)

    Still, I would like to see a more powerful version using pressurised gas mixtures or more powerful mixtures like acetylene/air or butane, propane and pure oxygen. That would be more fun, also somewhat more dangerous…

  8. @andrew

    We measured the speed using a chronometer to about 95-100 m/s. You can see the chronometer in front of the cannon in the second movie clip. We were also surprised by the look of some shots, but I think they look like they go slower then they actually do because they have a downward spinning motion.

  9. This is totally badass and I’m sure it’s a blast! I would like to see improvements in rate of fire, but I do realize it takes time to clear the chamber and spray the fuel.

    Like someone said above maybe pressurized fuel/gas & oxygen injection (pressurized air could also clear chamber)? Also for greater distance and accuracy maybe a longer barrel with gas break at end of barrel? Maybe even simpler finding a more combustible propellant?

    These are just random thoughts, this thing rocks as it is!

  10. Two wheels on either side of the barrel (barrel is golf ball sized)

    Two slits in the barrel.

    Wheels fit Just in the slits (slightly smaller than the golf ball).

    Lower wheel spins.

    Feed balls into barrel.

    balls then fire with a rate of fire dependant on speed of spinning lower wheel.

    Also as lower wheel spinning would give back spin on the ball which would give a better trajectory.

    Result very easy but AWESOME golf ball machine gun hack.

  11. somebody will implement a gps into this, with the golf course info. (most courses are already in gps, including the cup and the obstacles) Park your cart and push a button, this device adjusts rotation and height and then fires off a round at it’s best guess for a hole in one. sort of a new battle bots idea or contest of sorts.

  12. Fred: Did you hear about the man named Juan who was murdered on the golf course yesterday?

    Alice: No! Really?

    Fred: Yes. The police said he was killed with a golf gun.

    Alice: A “golf gun”? What is that?

    Fred: I don’t know, but it sure made a hole in Juan!

    (groan…) :)

Leave a Reply to bajakensCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.