SpudFiles

spudtyrrant wrote:what exactly are you researching for(or is that classified)

Transonic impacts involving full-scale heavily instrumented ordnance systems and system components.

Transonic? Son, I am disappoint.

The gun is designed to research that which happens in the real world; not make projectiles go arbitrarily fast. In the real world, transonic is a very common velocity regime.

I was taking the piss. I guess once you go over the sound barrier you get projectile stability issues as it is..

And of course muzzle energy will be absurd..

Looking forward to it being complete..this is your first hybrid isn't it?

D_Hall wrote:Bends are commercially manufactured castings. Put it this way: I had a six figure budget.

And yes, there has been much talk of what this thing will fire. It's a research tool, after all.

Most high pressure pipe is not cast. Cast iron is brittle. An outfit in Chicago IL makes them. They press malleable iron pipe over a tungsten mandrel while induction heating it. I was very lucky and got a tour of the place by the owner They make fittings from 1/2 inch to 48 inch.

The finished product is finished to either take a welded flange or is beveled for a butt weld to pipe.

Their home page shows a pair of red hot elbows being formed. For a hint on scale.. Look for the fire extinguisher at the lower right.
http://www.weldbend.com/

It is amazing to watch. The pipe loads cold and with stepped pushers, pushes the pipe over the mandrel. As it moves it suddenly turns red hot as it passes through the induction heating coil and is then bent.

Here is a stack of straight pipe ready to be bent by the machine behind it.
This is smaller pipe.

Just in case you are wondering the pressure rating for this stuff;
http://www.weldbend.com/Technical%20Dat ... essure.htm
400 PSI seems to be the lightest stuff they have.

Well if you are going to name it VERA, you need to at least get the owner's name spelled right. It is Jayne. And it is a girl's name. At least he has boy parts...
Oh god, what a browncoat I am at heart.

Technician1002 wrote:

D_Hall wrote:Bends are commercially manufactured castings. Put it this way: I had a six figure budget.

And yes, there has been much talk of what this thing will fire. It's a research tool, after all.

Most high pressure pipe is not cast. Cast iron is brittle.

Fair enough. I assumed cast since the finish resembles that of sand casting. Alas, I'm not really that concerned one way or the other about how that piece was made. It's pressure rated and suits my needs; that's all I care about.

Woot!

Still a lot of work to do, but today the barrel was mated to the rest of the gun.

My God that thing must be HUGE! I am very excited for the day the press release comes out!

Overall length is on the order of 60'.

Weight is (IIRC), approximately 14 tons.

When do you expect it to be finished and have a press release?

I'm still thinking sometime this fall or maybe early winter. There's still a fair bit of construction required and we're finding little details that have slipped through the cracks (no surprise). Once we get it finished, then we'll still have to put it through the safety board, get procedures approved, etc.

whatever happens keep us informed.

Main component construction is basically done. Still lots of little stuff (like plumbing!) to do. Spent the last few days pretending to load gun and such so that we can identify the things that didn't work as well as I'd hoped and such. Made a few minor design changes as a result of this.

Suffice to say I believe the gun could (now) be operated by 1 person. I don't imagine you'd ever WANT to and our safety regs would prohibit it, but it's possible. I use that as a measure of how clean the design is.

In other news, yesterday I crawled through the combustion chamber. Definitely impressive to be looking through it from the inside. Big!

D_Hall wrote:Suffice to say I believe the gun could (now) be operated by 1 person. I don't imagine you'd ever WANT to and our safety regs would prohibit it, but it's possible.

Oh come one, you have to have a pair of keys