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Full auto airflow questions


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#1 Cross22

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Posted 24 July 2019 - 02:00 AM

I am trying to find a way to create a system that continuously feeds Rival balls to a flywheel cage. In the photo below you can see the basic setup with the air pump on one end blowing into a Y connector which has a funnel connected to it, then a hose and finally the flywheels at the far end. (The funnel/hopper currently does not have an agitator but that's going to be engineering problem #2 so I am ignoring it for now).

 

When I drop a single ball down the funnel and then turn on the pump everything works great. When I turn on the pump first and then try to drop a ball down the funnel, there is significant blowback pushing the ball back out. If I manually push the ball down the Y piece of course it shoots out just fine. If I disconnect the outgoing hose from the Y piece and run the test there is no blowback and again the balls come out as expected. Question: how can I fix this and get a continuous feed of balls down the funnel and up to the flywheels?

 

Some parameters: the end goal is something like a stationary mini-gun where you just keep dumping balls into a large hopper. I know I could seal off the hopper and pressurize it similar to what Savage did for his ping pong mini-gun, but I want this to be an open system! The hopper needs to be lower than the flywheel - maybe 3 feet or so. That's not much but it precludes a pure gravity fed approach.

 

Any ideas?

 

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#2 1Wildscot

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Posted 24 July 2019 - 12:46 PM

Or, you could just buy an OOD Jupiter and Proton Pack. What you want has already been done by Luke at Out Of Darts...


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#3 Meaker VI

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 01:47 PM

You've got to seal the hopper. Otherwise airflow will push the balls back out since that's the shortest path. I tried this exact sam thing on the mk13 with darts.


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#4 Cross22

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Posted 29 July 2019 - 02:28 PM

Thank you Meaker. 

I have made some progress in the meantime. Turns out the corrugated hose is causing most of the airflow restriction. By using a hose with a smooth interior there is very little backpressure in the hopper.


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