Crazy Slingshot Guy At It Again With A 220 Lb Steel Ball Cannon

August 30, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

80mm_slingshot_cannon

Good old [Jörg Sprave].

That guy just doesn’t quit building insane slingshots. If he’s not honing his machete slinging skills in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, he’s blowing out car windows with giant steel balls.

The huge cannon you see above is modeled off a small slingshot he made a while back, which fired 8mm steel bearings. In its larger form, the slingshot is said to be ten times the size of it’s smaller brother, firing 80mm steel balls with incredible force. In the video below, [Jörg] and his friends cart the slingshot out to a huge empty field where they run it through its paces on several different objects. Their first shot flies about 220 yards into a high tension tower, after which the boys aim their sights on an old car.

The power with which the slingshot fires is definitely impressive. With a few well-placed shots, the car is pretty much done for.

Now that we’ve seen [Jörg] fire off saw blades, machetes, and giant ball bearings, we can’t wait to see what comes next!

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Gauss Weapons

February 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

This collection of gauss weapons use rare earth magnets to accelerate projectiles to damaging speeds. They work using the same concepts as a coil gun, but instead of just one projectile travelling along a length of guide track, there are many projectiles that work in a chain reaction. A series of magnets are placed at equal distances along the track. Each has a couple of large ball bearings on the muzzle side of the magnet. The first ball bearing is fired using mechanical force – like a spring mechanism – and accelerates as it approaches the magnet due to the attractive force of that magnetic field. When it impacts the magnet it sends one of the ball bearings on the opposite side down the track where it will accelerate when it nears the next magnet in the chain. The weapon above achieves a final projectile speed of about 68 miles per hour, breaking six fluorescent tubes in a row on at the right side of the apparatus.

Still prefer rail guns that use electromagnets? Check out this gauss pistol kit that is about as powerful as a BB gun.

Assassin’s Creed Blades Make Us Wince

October 14, 2010 by Mike Szczys 109 Comments

[TheBserk] made himself a set of auto-locking and auto-retracting hidden blades inspired by those in the game Assassin’s Creed. As you can see in the demo (and build guides) after the break, they work really well. We don’t like the idea of sharpened metal ramming its way past our wrists. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen dangerous arm-mounted hacks.

Reminiscent of Taxi Driver, [TheBserk] uses drawer slides from the local home store for his build. They are cut to length, and modified using springs for the automatic action. There is a lock to keep the blade extended, and a pull-wire to actuate it. Although dangerous, the build is well done. We think someone has mechanical engineering in his future, and possibly a trip to the emergency room.

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Office Warfare

October 3, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 16 Comments

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a Ruler, rubber band, and a pen make a bow and arrow? How about tape, a ping pong ball, and a lighter coming together to make a ‘Zooka. We didn’t think such destructive weapons could possibly be made from office supplies, but the famous [John Austin] is here to prove us wrong. He’s been miniaturizing toys and their munitions including Transformers, Star Wars, Jurassic Park for years. With the resent release of his new book, he’s left us the grace of a few teasers.

[Thanks Chris]

Open Source Weapon Makes You Puke

September 28, 2009 by Devlin Thyne 44 Comments

[Limor] of Adafruit Industries and the Ice Tube Clock has made her own open source non-lethal weapon: The Bedazzler. After attending a conference by the DHS where she saw the big-budget Dazzler, she decided to make her own. Thirty-six LEDs, six switching FETs, a Boarduino, and a former flashlight later, the Bedazzler makes a better rave toy than a weapon. It doesn’t work as-is, but we figure it will only be a matter of time before someone hacks this to make people… umm hack. See the video after the break.

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Dry Ice Cannon

August 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/6034556%5D

[Alexander] sent in his entry into a “creativity contest” at his university. He and some friends put together this dry ice cannon. Take note of the creative mechanism they used to mix the water with the dry ice. A large amount of gas is expelled as soon as the two begin to meet. If the gas is supposed to escape through the same opening, it is difficult to get all the material through. They have added a second opening just for the exhaust during mixing. Great job guys. How about some downloadable plans.

The World’s Spookiest Weapons

May 15, 2008 by Eliot 9 Comments

As purveyors of a fine hacks, we often get pitched on what are generally considered very bad ideas. Luckily, most of these ideas die on the drawing board due to a lack of time and energy or maybe having a shred of moral accountability. There’s nothing that government funding can’t fix though. Popular Science has put together a gallery of The World’s Spookiest Weapons. It’s a who’s who of real and speculative engineering that could lead to our eventual destruction. Opening with the atomic bomb, it moves quickly into more bizarre territory, everything from heat rays, to rail guns, to gassing people with elephant tranquilizers. Our personal favorite is The Rods from God. Imagine getting smote by a precisely targeted metal power pole dropped from space that has accelerated to 36,000 feet per second thanks solely to gravity. What a wondrous world we live in.