What do you get when you combine a Tesla coil, 315 film canisters and a fortune wheel? The answer is of course a film canister Gatling gun. [ScienceBob] has taken the simple film canister cannon hack to a whole new level. The idea is simple, the film canister has a lid that fits tight and allows pressure to build up, so if you fill it with alcohol vapor and ignite it with a spark gap, you get a small explosion that sends the can flying away.
[ScienceBob] uses 21 rows of fifteen canisters each around the wheel. There is a spark gap for each canister, and all the spark gaps in the same row are in series. You need a lot of volts to turn on fifteen spark gaps, and that is why the Tesla coil is part of the game. When the outer end of the wire in one row passes near the Tesla coil, a spark jumps and fires all the spark gaps, igniting the alcohol vapor and fifteen cans are expelled from the wheel. The wheel rotates until all rows are fired.
While this nice piece of artillery is sure a lot of fun to fire, but don’t ask us to reload it! If you want more power, check this Gatling gun that fires crossbow bolts, or the Gatling water pistol.
Well that’s probably the most intentionally random thing I’ve seen this year.
He was also on Colbert with two of these dueling across a stage. I think it’s also on youtube.
I think it would have been more interesting to see them all fire at once in super slo mo
What kind of EMI do you think this thing puts out? Also, what’s going on with the flames near the hub during the slow-mo right at the end?
Lots of EMI, especially if it is spark gap based, they are broad band offenders.
There is probably excess ethanol coming out of the containers when they fire, thats the flames.
Damn, we could have had this years ago if someone only thought of building the ic engine into the distributor… …..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKlnMwuCZso
Millennials be like “Dafuk is a film canister? ”
and them of us gray beards who know, “Dafuk do you get 315 film canisters from nowadays?”
My first thought was “Did he paint them white?”, because a proper film canister is black with a grey cap….
A lot of the most recent canisters are translucent plastic.
Fujifilm has had the white/translucent canisters since ~1990 or earlier. I think it’s just Kodak film that was known for the black canisters.
Kodak Tri-X currently comes in white translucent canisters with gray tops.
You can get them from alibaba, minim order is 500-10,000 depending on the seller.
That was my first thought when I read the headline – ” Where does anybody get film canisters these days? “
There’s another version where Americans go “wth are kinder eggs?”
https://img1.etsystatic.com/023/1/6311007/il_340x270.579120597_41mh.jpg
These and film canisters are two of the most useful things in existence for containing easily lost small items or small amounts of substances like hair gel. Except for the fact that they’ve since ruined the kinder egg container by fixing the lid to the bottom with a hinge which isn’t sealing properly all the way around anymore.
Hehe, yeah that security lid… just mentioned that to my GF when she got me an egg the other day. My conclusion is that too many kids swallowed them :(
Plastic?… I still have some of the metal canisters, i.e., ROF (Really Old Fart)
Those were so cool. I remember when they went to plastic and I was sad about that.
‘Member the metal canister ? Ooooh! I ‘member !
Standard 60’s hippie bud container as I remember ReOF (Relatively Old Fart)
Damnit. The idea is great. Awesome actually! But why did he put such a poor central axis guidance… I mean two simple ball bearings would have done the job. Also the board is way to flexible and the stand lacks of stability. What a shame, for me this ruins the whole hack.
i know what you mean, but there were probably other design constraints: time and the ability to quickly drill through it to ‘sew’ the spark gap cable. Maybe it would have been too heavy to assemble. but yes, just an A’frame with a couple of spokes to support the disc… I wonder how much kick those canisters were putting out…