BOOMSTICK! And other projects...
It's been a week and a half. First, the entertainment news: Went to Alamo Drafthouse (goodness I love that place) and saw "Live Free or Die Hard" -- lots of fun! Boom! Pow! Sifu was there too, and assistant instructor, and her daughter; plus my group of six or so (well, M's group; she started it). Great fun!
Now, in a similar vein, last weekend I did design and shopping for the new boomstick (which is what I'm calling it now). This is basically a potato cannon mechanism WITHOUT the barrel to launch the potato, and optimised for maximum... noise.
I have a double-barrel-sealing design with O-Rings (darn it all to heck) that is as far as I know, unique. Most designs do face-sealing or a combination of face and barrel sealing (e.g. the Supah Valve). Mine is different! Yay me! And it bangs something fierce, let me tell you.
THIS weekend, I re-shopped and am rebuilding it with massive quantities of photos, because it's going to end up as an article. MOST of my effort on the boomstick project was shopping. I had to end up using PVC, which is essentially a hollow bomb in this application, so the final device has to live in an armored box for safety. That's going to suck. However, ABS does not come pressure rated ANYWHERE that I can find (DWV use only; no pressure; no good). Pressure rated materials in this size (e.g. copper, Ipex Duratec or Duraplus) costs ten times as much. That is, a fitting that would be $3 in PVC is $30 or MORE in these materials. So a $100 project would cost $1,000 or more. Argh!
Also, in addition to the boomstick project, we did a bunch of experiments in outfitting my scrap speakers as Cymatic drivers (e.g. vibrating dust, water, glycerin, salt, and so forth) and creating magnet-snapped-in bowls and giant sheets of foam-core and plates and stuff, for optimal display. This is in prep for my demo and show at Dorkbot 9, on July 12th at Cafe Mundi (www.dorkbotaustin.org). It will be fun! Nik and I have tried a number of systems, and are putting together a script now; it will be silly, it will be entertaining. I hope.
My current pain in the neck for the Dorkbot is getting an external camera to work on my macbook pro, so I can broadcast the image on the screen, so people can see it. It's beginning to piss me off; I may have to use M2's laptop PC instead (I've got an Intel cam and a mac ally IceCAM, both of which work on XP and neither of which seem to work on Intel OS-X).
Finally, as if that wasn't enough, we cut the gas chamber off of one of the Fire Tubes (see: flipside, Ruben's tube), made a one-way valve out of scrap sheet tin, silicon caulk, and an overhead transparency, and finally did a burn test of it tonight. It was much improved! I was absolutely UNABLE to blow ANY of the fires out via sound (which, as people who watched me operate it at flip, is saying a heck of a lot).
Next up -- cut off the OTHER end, strap on another gas chamber, one-way valve, and speaker, and double-feed it with double sound drive (both in and out of phase). That will be next weekend, and I'll make video of that.
All in all, a good week vacation.
Oh, and I played games with Nik, napped, and stuff, too.
Posted by Edwin at July 7, 2007 09:06 PM