My wife is in Oregon working at our pizza place and visiting relatives. Since we're deep in our annual development cycle at work (software), I'm in the office 12+ hours a day anyhow, so it's a good time for her to travel.
Unfortunately, my team is so kick-butt that we ended up with the whole weekend off because we're on schedule. I say unfortunately because that means that I have been free to work on some 'projects'.
I've been helping my neighbor with his car audio setup by building him sub-woofer enclosures, but the coolest thing I did was build a flame cannon.
I modified my pneumatic potato gun by putting a torch in the front. I loaded it with a couple cups of denatured alcohol, put a piece of tape over the end of the muzzle to prevent the vapors from getting to fire early and igniting prematurely, then lit the torch. Imagine, the torch is blowing flame in front of the muzzle.
I then fired it. Firing it consists of hitting a switch that opens a solenoid valve that has been holding the compressed air back. The valve opens instantly, all the air pushes out and forces all the alcohol out in a big spray.
Normally, it's just be a big cloud of alcohol. But with the intense flame, that cloud instead becomes a massive fireball.
I fired it straight up from a test stand. My friend with the fire extinguisher said that the flame got more then twice as high as the power lines next door, so we're figuring the fireball (which expanded into a mushroom cloud) got to be about 30-40 feet tall.
It was truly awesome.
Funny thing, this morning one of the neighbors who watched it said that the police showed up 10 minutes later asking if someone had a 'flame machine'. Apparently they were called by some concerned neighbors.
tee hee
I will post pictures soon.
