At Hackaday we think that hackers have the power to make the world a better place with their builds. This air-powered cheesy-poof rifle is not one of those builds, unless making the world a little more fun and slightly messier makes it a better place.
The principle of [NightHawkInLight]’s design is simple – an electric leaf blower provides the power, and a big vat o’ poofs provides the ammo. Getting the two together and providing a barrel is a matter of some simple plumbing with 1″ PVC pipe and fittings. But wait – lest you think this hack, like the ammo, is just a delicious bit of fluff, there’s something to be learned about fluid dynamics here. With a plain tee fitting, the leaf blower would only pressurize the magazine, making it difficult to chamber a round. But by adding a small restriction to the incoming air flow, the Venturi effect actually sucks ammo into the chamber and down the barrel, to the delight of hungry wildlife for yards around. Science!
There’s plenty of room for improvement to the design – something along the lines of this gas-powered, tube-fed snowball gun would be keen. As it stands, the cheesy-poof gun seems like good, unclean fun.
Thanks to [Matthew Reed] for the cheesy tip.
“Sir, you’re eating the ammo.”
I laughed out loud when I read your comment!
Thanks!
.This seems close to Maxim 23: “The company mess and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart” from “The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries” a popular handbook in the Schlock Mercenary universe.
Not to be confused with the Maxim machine gun of course.
A cheesy poop rifle? I can think of a few targets I’d like to try that on.
One thing is for sure; I’d try this on myself.
Would a sweeping tee have done the same vacuum producing effect as the glued in insert? If you flush mounted the tap into the container then it might produce an automatic feed type of action because of the vacuum and the cheese puffs are not getting hung up on the lip.
Sweet shooter – now you just need a hot dog gun to go with it. Wondering if there is a way to re route some of the airflow to create a vortex in the hopper to self agitate. Also consider mounting the cheesy poof container in the vertical to promote swirl? having to agitate may diminish the pure joy in auto fire mode
Couldn’t a paintball gun be modified to use the different caliber?
A paintball gun would probably turn the cheese ball to powder because of the sudden high pressure burst of CO2.
I love me the smell of cheese dust in the morning!
There are some good battery-powered leaf blowers to try this on, too. Animals eating cheese puffs reminds me of the movie Over the Hedge.
Neon Orange Racoon turds!
He needs a small bypass to direct some air into the hopper to swirl the cheese balls around. Not only will this agitate the cheese balls for him, eliminating the need for a manual agitator, it would also help force the cheese balls into the barrel, providing a huge increase in performance…The Cheese ball feed rate would go way up…
Just put the barrel in my mouth!
Anyone else hungry? On another serious note, really sweet hack – makes me want to build one (with possibly a few improvements!)
he needs to turn up the CPS (Cheese per second) by using an eariler design https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_8wRpgvhyg
Why does the title say “semi-automatic”?
The gun is full auto.
Anyways, all in all, a fun hack.