Breaking the Sound Barrier

Some friends of mine and I decided to have a bit of a farm get away weekend recently. One of the things we decided would be fun while away was break the sound barrier... With a really big cannon.

Some of you may be familiar with the pNuke system of air toys which have featured in videos such as Sleepeater... The cannon used here is a more powerful and scary version with a custom built valve and some other trickery.

Modified deluge valve fitted to the air tank.

Fire deluge valve with a 5/2 3/8th inch pilot valve.

The barrel is a 6m length of 40mm scaffolding pipe coupled to the pNuke via some very big rubber hose and Mikalor super heavy duty hose clamps.

Clamps securing the rubber hose to the steel pipe. 

Rubber hose coupled to the deluge valve.

Unfortunately we were unable to achieve supersonic projectiles, I think this is due to the maximum flow through the valve not being high enough or the interior of the barrel is too rough.


Despite this the result is pretty spectacular...

As usual, Glow Sticks are pretty impressive in the dark:

We made a projectile out of rolled up newspaper and gaffer tape... It promptly disintegrated when launched.

An attempt to fire a lemon resulted in a lemonade mist... No pieces of the lemon were found.

Putting the Light Into Proportion

The Silly Light has had it's first opportunity to really shine... Ahem.

As the gig was the first "final" assembly I wasn't 100% sure as to how it was all going to turn out... Jez and myself set about pulling the house apart in order to bolt the Kee gate hanger down.
The ironwork is a mixture of Unistrut brackets and a spare construction plate I had lying around. The end of the scaffolding pipe is inserted into this gate hanger to keep it in place.

The festoon lights were gaffer taped to the pipe just before we put it up.

After the whole thing was assembled, the pipe was propped up on one of my ammunition cases as the shade was hanging a bit low. The rope top stay was tied to the hand railing and it was done :-)

The effect is almost exactly what I wanted to achieve, if the light is assembled again I want to prop the pipe up higher and spread the light further.

Thanks to: Jez, Dave and Joel for helping with the assembly, Will for help with disassembly and anyone else I have been rude enough to leave out.

Part One: Where the idea came from.
Part Two: First testing of the light shade.
Part Three: I try out a mercury vapour light source.
Part Four: Procuring parts like the street light.
Part Five: Test assembling the frame.
Part Six: Going away from the frame idea.

Time for a change of plans.

Things have been a little quiet on the Light With No Sense of Proportion front lately... I've been too busy with my day job, rewiring a friend's house and being crook to work on it.

Anyways I finally hung the streetlight fitting inside the lampshade to try it out: Unfortunately it's not all good news.

The ghostly sodium spirit.

The result looks pretty cool, it's almost getting towards my desired streetlight with christmas lights aesthetic.

The mass of the lampshade and streetlight together is a little greater than expected... As a result the pipe bends a lot more than I would like. 

You may be able to see the bend in the pipe here.

So the use of Plan B is necessary: The pipe will now be cantilevered from the first floor  "balcony" with a top stay to prevent the pipe from drooping. Stay Tuned...

Light With No Sense of Proportion: Sunrise

Nothing much to report other than a quick test of the 150W High Pressure Sodium street light. It's got a decidedly sunrise glow to it. 

Check out my size 12 feet for scale against the lantern...

The lantern hides quite nicely in the lampshade, so with some very minor mods this creation is going to be finished at long last.

Light With No Sense of Proportion: Test Assembly

After a day of exploring tunnels and being disappointed by a monster truck I did some more work on the silly desk lamp.

I did a test fit of the new hanger described in Part Four and hung the lamp shade from it.

About this time I turned my attention to what the pole was going to be supported on. In my collection of big kids meccano there is a stack of galvanised steel pipe and a box of various Kee fittings, left over from my bed and then used for Sleepeater and now to be used for a light stand.

First thoughts centered around the idea of making some form of tripod with the pole slung below the apex with a chain. This proved to be no where near strong enough with the part I had to hand.

The next frame idea was slightly inspired by a trebuchet...

And it supports the pole quite nicely :-) The only addition required was a chain backstay at the back to stop the vertical pipes bending. There are some pretty impressive forces involved in this project.

I then set about hanging the lampshade from the pole and fitting the luminaire for another "how does it look?" test. Anyone who has seen the Get Smart Cone of Silence may well find one of these photos more than a little amusing. It is not staged - I am actually fitting the mercury vapour high bay there.

This way up...

Light With No Sense of Proportion: More Parts

Today I was only able to procure parts for the ridiculous light. There is more work to be done this weekend.

I found the shackle and gate hanger for fixing the chain to the end of the pipe..

I purchased a 150Watt High pressure sodium street light fitting on Trademe for the grand total of $31 and a matching Philips SON-T bulb from Cory at Advance Electrical So yes this project is now going to have a rather "HEMP" aesthetic, but I think that will add to the fun.

There is another dimension to add to the silliness of this project: Around here a lot of the street lights are fitted with strings of festoon lamp holders for festive purposes...  The pic below more or less gives you an idea of what they look like during the day:

Now I have such a string left over from the Walk Through Fire video for Cobra Khan 

Does the arm need to be fitted with these lights?

Is "only" 150Watts going to be powerful enough?

Testing: The Light With No Sense of Proportion

I did a test with a 400W Mercury Vapour HighBay and started finalising the suspension hardware.

A test with the bare bulb hanging in the workshop proved without a doubt that the light output has a very prominent green tinge. I was also a little disappointed with the light output.

While I left the luminare running to allow mumbling at it I set about shortening the chains and temporarily hanging it off the end of a 6m length of scaffolding pipe I had handy.

That ugly flange is going to be replaced by a repurposed KEE gate hanger with a big shackle.

With the three phase variac on the end of the pipe as a counter weight, I precariously balanced the pipe on the rim of Big Scary Fan™

This thing is actually starting to come together :-) Next on the list is to make a stand to support the pipe and find a better light source.

SHIHAD - Sleepeater

When Sam Peacocke approached me about doing some effects for a Shihad music video I had no idea how apt the title was going to turn out :-D

I was given a ten page PDF of how the video was to play out... It required a spinning shaking chair, water cannons, smoke machines and a wind cannon. For me it simply read: Lets make some cool stuff :-)

The pNuke:

This cannon resulted from my initial "more power Igor!" approach to the water cannon idea. The pNuke is a 9kg gas tank fitted with a 2" solenoid sprinkler valve. The tank is pressurised  with an air compressor, activating the valve dumps the tank with quite some violence.

Thanks to: Greg at work for helping me out with the welding and James at Deeco for the valve.

Testing the pNuke with no nozzle:

The water is thrown even further when you fit the pNuke with a nozzle:

The following video shows why we decided to only use the pNuke as a wind machine... It's simply too violent when shooting water:

My Dad being pNuked:

Smoke Ring Cannon:
We did initially want to shoot smoke at everyone in the video... Software glitches filling our tent with smoke made us decide at about 1am on the saturday morning that smoke was a bad idea.



The Gentle Annie Water Guns:
These were used for generating the streams of water than fly behind and into each person as they spin on the chair.

A bank of 3/4" solenoid valves fill a bunch of polypipes with water and then use compressed air to "empty" them in a hurry.


Valve Bank:

The Gentle Annies required two different air supplies in order to achieve the desired effets. The pNuke was also supplied with regulated and filtered compressed air.

Air Supply Manifold:

The Final Result: www.sleepeater.co.nz/

Check back soon :) This is a work in progress...