HEAL 320psi 20mm copper cannon (now with damage videos)

[Ragnarok]

Quite, except some songs are just that good that they can take that repeated listening to some extent. It's actually a good self-regulator, if I find I'm listening to one track too much, eventually I'll get bored of it.

I had to watch that video hundreds of times when making it, and try and roughly match it to the music track in a way. It's part of the reason my next video will likely use numerous songs for the music track, saves me needing to hear the same one a hundred and one times.

[daniel323]

This is "H.E.A.L.", or usually, just HEAL without the periods.
HEAL is simply an acronym of the words "High Efficiency Air Launcher".

More specifically, it's HEAL v1.3, because it underwent a couple of minor rebuilds, then a pretty major one that changed a couple of things.
It cost me about £300, roughly $600 USD, through the various revisions, including the custom pump but to build it again from scratch would cost a bit less. A pretty large amount of money, but you get what you pay for - and, correspondingly, this is the single most powerful cannon I have ever built, out classing my old combustions in twice the bore size.

The design took into account most of the comments I had about my last cannon, Behemoth, making it both powerful, and reasonably good looking.

The length is about 29 cm longer than which ever barrel I am using, so for the current 125cm barrel, 154 cm. It weighs in at ~4.2 kg without attachments ,and increasingly more with attachments such as the suppressor, bipod and laser module. (Not shown in the pictures)

I can take it up to 22 bar (320 psi), but I usually use it at 10 or 15 bar. The valve is an optimised 22.1mm seat diameter piston valve with smooth flow edges to up the efficiency, piloted by a 1/2" QEV.

It has various barrels, two in 20.3mm bore, of 100cm and 125 cm, which have a basic sliding breech and a 26.3mm bore barrel in production, of currently undecided length - which will be muzzle loaded.
The chamber is 26.3mm ID by 120 cm in length.

I also have a few known muzzle energies and velocities for the 125 cm barrel. Typically, it will get about 400J at 300 psi, but with a heavier projectile, it will theoretically manage 580J.
I also managed to record an approximate muzzle velocity with a paintball, which clocked in at somewhere over 300 m/s (~1000 fps)

Some photos of it a little while ago. It has now got a bipod and muzzle twist lock, but I haven't got photos of that. (Also, I can't take them, as I don't have HEAL at the uni with me)

Full length picture
Rear
Valves at rear
Breech, handgrip and guard
Polymorph grip
Homemade high pressure pump

I'm afraid there are no videos, but I found this damage pic on my phone:
Frozen paintball through water filled box at 10 bar (there was a bin liner inside)
No doubt, I will get pointed at "The Box o' Truth" and asked how thick the box in question is. The box was 8 inches deep when the weight of the water forced the sides out slightly - and the paintball still exited the box doing a fair pace, making a mess of my backstop.

I know that I could punch tougher ammo through well over 12" of water, because my previous, less powerful cannon, Behemoth, could put a 3/4" steel ball bearing through 24 gauge steel, then 12" of water, then another layer of 24 gauge, then leave with enough velocity to make a hole through the 3/4" thick fence behind, and still leave into the fields beyond to never be seen again.
After that, I started using a backstop. (Normally a hefty chunk of tree stump that we have in the back garden from a tree the family had extracted several years back).

All the other photos are on the computer at home I'm afraid, and I'm not there until at the earliest the weekend after next, so there's a bit of a wait for more pics.

EDIT:
The video for your entertainment:

EDIT: Youtube vid down, you'll need Photobucket: Link to Photobucket mirror

[rp181]

what a nice first post. What was the point of bumping a topic just to quote some text?

[Ragnarok]

what a nice first post.

You know, it looks exactly like my seventh post (yes, I know that).

Nice to know that someone was so excited by HEAL they couldn't complete a post in my thread, presumably from wetting themselves with excitement, and having to run off to change their underwear.

I kid... mostly. People have come close to voiding themselves in other ways when presented with this.

[daniel323]

yeah sorry, i was so excited i wet my pants.

[rp181]

This is my first time actually seeing it. And honestly, i really don't get all the excitement. =p

[Ragnarok]

And honestly, i really don't get all the excitement.

I have a good PR man.

Actually, I'll be honest, by today's standards it's nothing all that special.
However, bear in mind, HEAL is over 20 months old now (although it was already 6 months old when I shared it here). When I made it, the world of spudding wasn't where it is today, and it was for a long time, one of very few 300 psi cannons.
At the time, the 300 psi cannons were mostly either tiny (and filled by a shock pump), or powered by CO2. The 300 psi track pump allows it to use large volumes of regular air combined with a long barrel, meaning it can achieve abnormally high velocities for a pneumatic, exceeding 1000 fps on some shots.

In a way, HEAL was one of the cannons that helped pioneer the wider use of high pressure, small bore launchers - or so I like to pretend.
So it depends on what standards you're judging it by. When it was new, it was special. Now, not so much, but it still holds it's own.

However, we'll see what happens when it's sequel gets finished in March - that should revamp the formula, and get things back towards modern standards.

[VH_man]

However, we'll see what happens when it's sequel gets finished in March - that should revamp the formula, and get things back towards modern standards.

We all can Barely wait....

That and it Better be able to take 500 PSI.... at least. Its the highest ive gone with my gun, And its insane. I can just IMAGINE what its like with an IMPROVED HEAL.......

[Ragnarok]

it Better be able to take 500 PSI.... at least. Its the highest ive gone with my gun, And its insane. I can just IMAGINE what its like with an IMPROVED HEAL.......

More along the lines of "500 psi at most", I'm afraid - there just aren't the parts to handle any more than that.

Anyway, it'll be air hungry like nothing else.
Trying to supply ~23 litres of air per shot to a semi-auto is going to be enough of a challenge in it's own right.

[jeepkahn]

Kicking up an old topic Just because it gets referenced so often...

Here's a thought, Why don't we (in another thread), Nominate certain cannons/launchers to be stckied in the cannon showcase or linked to in the wiki...

They should be ones that were/are ahead of their time in innovation/fit&finish/power/wowfactor/etc...

The reason I suggest this is because certain ones get refered to alot in other threads and are sometimes hard to find...

Well anyway, Sorry to hijack, back to your regularly scheduled program...

[mark.f]

Already a wiki page...

http://www.spudfiles.com/spud_wiki/inde ... 6_articles

[Ragnarok]

I love being 7 months ahead of people's suggestions.

I should note at this time that the wiki page has not seen a cannon update in a long time (6 of the 7 months since I created it.)
I keep meaning to get around to the update, but it is a wiki, so anyone's free to edit it themselves, thus saving me some of the trouble, and actually helping take some of the subjectivity of it being only my opinion.

[jeepkahn]

Cool , I never realized that was there.... Now we just have to remember to point people to that portion of the wiki when we refer to differant launchers...

[Ragnarok]

There's a lot of that going on. There are things I've written for the Spudwiki that I know seldom get linked to (forum etiquette and rules stuff mostly), in spite of their potential usefulness.