Spudding Preference Survey

[Moonbogg]

1.-Ballistic efficiency calculator (based on initial conditions and
GGDT/HGDT output)

2. C - constuction, followed very closely by design
3. E - Every build is heavily optimized and simulated before I buy materials
4. B - Depends on the builds (aesthetics & function are equally important)
5. 6
6. 9
7. 8
8. C - Moderately
9. Spud gun videos categorized by cannon category/class with voting/rating/feedback capabilities

[rp181]

1.What kind of new (simple) applications could the community benefit most from?
Select Two.

-Adiabatic compression calculator
-Speed of sound calculator (for any gas or mixture of gases and any
temperature, within reason.
-Universal fueling calculator (including several fuel/oxidizer and buffer
gas combinations)
-Ballistic efficiency calculator (based on initial conditions and
GGDT/HGDT output)
-Muzzle speed based on hang time (where gravity, air pressure, Cd, and
other such annoyances can be assumed to be constant)

2. Which stage of a launcher's life do you most enjoy?
a)Idle theorizing
b)Design
c)Construction
(I can't choose....)
d)Testing
e)Normal use
f)Bragging on Spudfiles about it

3.How much do you research and apply physics in areas relevant to this hobby?
Pick one.

a)Never
b)Rarely
c)When necessary
d)Moderately
e)Every build is heavily optimized and simulated before I buy materials (Im not made of money :p)
f)I theorize and calculate more than I build and test
g)I've never actually built anything, my work is entirely theoretical

4. To what degree do you value aesthetics in a build?

a)Function follows form
b)Depends on the builds
c)After it works, I make it pretty
d)Occasionally make some effort at improving appearance
e)If I built it and it looks good, it wasn't on purpose

5. On a scale of one to ten (one being lowest), how interested are you in achieving high kinetic energy? 7

6. On a scale of one to ten, how interested are you in achieving high speeds? 5

7. On a scale of one to ten, how interested are you in improving accuracy?
0
8. To what degree do you strive for innovation?

a) It's all I do.
b) Most of my builds are innovative
c) Moderately
d) Only when some other design criterion demands it
e) Rarely/never
f) wut? i jst wont bo0m .... so I can fit in....

[Technician1002]

My long answer..

-Adiabatic compression calculator
-Ballistic efficiency calculator (based on initial conditions and
GGDT/HGDT output)

b)Design

f)I theorize and calculate more than I build and test
I have more designs on paper than I could ever build. Only the best most practical gets built.

a)Function follows form
It has to be usable first. The Dragon looked nice, but was too heavy to be effectively hand held and triggered. The cellular test cannon was best as a mortar. The shorter tank QDV finally became effective as a hand-held shoot from the hip shirt launcher that was easy to use.

KE, for competition reasons.. 10, but with lighter projectiles for the competions. Projectiles in competition includes rolled t shirts, eggs, marshmallows, and golf balls. I have not done any with super dense metal rod projectiles where raw KE was the goal. A full pop can or Gatoraid is about the best I have done for raw KE numbers. KE just under 2,000 ft lbs is the best I've done.

Speed? The need for speed within contest rules is the contest. A solid 10 on this one.
Rules.. no more than 100 PSI compressed air may be stored. Attempting supersonic golfballs. See the engineering challenge?

Accuracy, moderate to high. Precision 10-30 yard golf ball launches onto a horizontal target was the only accuracy challenge I played with. Say a 5 on this one.

Innovation, b) Most of my builds are innovative I have never even built a traditional spray and pray, sprinkler valve, or ball valve cannon. Those basic designs are the ones to beat in the competition. Why build one?

# 9 is difficult. I hate having a hobby spread too thin with too many forums with too few members. If you build a site, the most important thing will be a prominent link to here. Second may be a specialized subtopic specifically not covered here such as pyrotechnics, delayed fuses, advanced physics, etc. However, for the reasons they are forbidden here may be reasons you don't want to cover them either.

On a new site, the change would simply be cosmetic.. a user moderation system such as used on Slashdot.org. Posts would get rated by the community. You could use spudbucks to buy moderation points to mod posts up as useful, informative, funny, insightful, etc or down such as a troll. Then when you are in a hurry you can read posts with more than +2 mod points and the trolls would vanish with minus mod score. It works well on slashdot and I like the moderation system. Moderated posts do get reviewed with a meta-moderation review. A bad moderator will lose the ability to give moderation.

Dull posts don't get moderated. Useful posts rise to the top, and inflammatory posts vanish below the moderation limit set by viewers to be ignored. Users receiving too many negative moderations lose posting privileges.

[btrettel]

1. No opinion.

2. A

3. F

4. D

5. 8

6. 8

7. 5

8. A

9. Detailed photos, specifications, and performance data for a large number of guns.

[DYI]

Adiabatic compression calculator: Adiabatic processes can be described with simple equations... What precisely will this find? Will you give it an initial pressure and volume and a final volume and find the pressure from there assuming no work or heat transfer?

Ballistic efficiency calculator: Do you mean energy efficiency? Again, this is a relatively simple calculation. I'm not certain it's worth an application.

By "ballistic efficiency", I'm talking about pneumatic/chemical energy stored in the chamber versus projectile KE. They're all simple calculators I've done before as spreadsheets, and thus shouldn't take much time to do.

It's a high school project, it's not intended to be really useful

[ilovefire]

1. -Muzzle speed based on hang time (where gravity, air pressure, Cd, and
other such annoyances can be assumed to be constant)
2. c)Construction
3. c)When necessary
4. a)Function follows form
5. 6
6. 7
7. 9
8. c) Moderately
9.

[psycix]

1 I dont really know. Some are just quick calculators to shorten your own calculations, but on the other hand I'd rather calculate it all by myself.

2 A, and then B, theoretical work

3 F, by the time I finished designing/optimizing something, I usually start designing something else.

4 C, I like a nice "tacticool" look, but never at the cost of performance.

5 9, but I am more interested in sectional KE than total KE. Small/medium caliber, high energies.

6 5

7 7 Optics are nice.

8 C, I try to design new stuff.

9 Diagrams of valves and mechanisms, maybe some sort of "design database" where diagrams can be uploaded, rated, and improvements can be suggested. In the end this would build a nice list of all spudgun related mechanisms with a diagram explaining how they work and how to build them.
A webshop with spudgun parts would be nice too. No forum board.

[D_Hall]

1.What kind of new (simple) applications could the community benefit most from?
Select Two.
-Adiabatic compression calculator
-Speed of sound calculator (for any gas or mixture of gases and any
temperature, within reason.

2. Which stage of a launcher's life do you most enjoy?
b)Design

3.How much do you research and apply physics in areas relevant to this hobby?
Pick one.
f)I theorize and calculate more than I build and test

4. To what degree do you value aesthetics in a build?
a)Function follows form
HOWEVER, I would like to add that if a design will not be "clean," I won't build it. IOW, I'm all about good designs, but I don't care about fancy paint jobs or anything like that.

5. On a scale of one to ten (one being lowest), how interested are you in achieving high kinetic energy?
8

6. On a scale of one to ten, how interested are you in achieving high speeds?
5

7. On a scale of one to ten, how interested are you in improving accuracy?
5

8. To what degree do you strive for innovation?
d) Only when some other design criterion demands it


9. What would you like to see included on a new site developed by yours truly?
The price of failure. There's very little work on what can happen when things go wrong (PVC frags and such).





Aside: Your questions regarding muzzle energy and velocity are very subjective. One man's high energy is another man's glorified fart.

[Brian the brain]

I suggest using the poll option for this thread.

Easier.

[Zeus]

1. Speed of sound calculator.

2. A & B (I've nothing to show for it though)

3. F (Only because the two times I didn't theorize it to death I either
nearly went deaf, or pierced a finger. If it wasn't for that, I'd say
G)

4. E (Those two devices looked like a pile of ape excretions)

5. 5

6. 10 (On a par with accuracy)

7. 10 (High velocity means a flatter trajectory, thus less need
to compensate for drop with longer shots)

8. B (Where's the fun in designing the same thing all the time, what
about a coaxial cascading burst disc setup)

9. I couldn't make another site, PCGUY might not like me. (And I can't
do HTML code, although if I could I'd have the reply box respond
to the tab key)

Good luck with your project, all I know about any programming languge
is the name.

Regards

Lachlan

[Edit: Just forgot to finsh typing something, and if I didn't put it in
you'd think of me as a total lunatic]

[mark.f]

1.) Universal fueling calculator (including several fuel/oxidizer and buffer
gas combinations)

2.) B

3.) D

4.) D

5.) 5

6.) 5

7.) 8

8.) C

9.) Theory (of course), tutorials on basic stuff like capacitor charging/SCR operation (discharging), coil winding. Also, of course, a "showcase" and some basic feedback channels.

[Ragnarok]

1. What kind of new (simple) applications could the community benefit most from?
-Speed of sound calculator
- Universal fueling calculator

Muzzle speed based on hang time (where gravity, air pressure, Cd, and other such annoyances can be assumed to be constant)

I should note that boilingleadbath did something like this over two years back: http://www.spudfiles.com/forums/hang-ti ... 12187.html

2. Which stage of a launcher's life do you most enjoy?
b)Design

3. How much do you research and apply physics in areas relevant to this hobby?
f)I theorize and calculate more than I build and test.

4. To what degree do you value aesthetics in a build?
b)Depends on the builds
If I'm doing something seriously, I'll avoid making it look like it's a total scrapheap, but it's unlikely that I'll decide that something has to look pretty.

5. How interested are you in achieving high kinetic energy?
5/10 - while I like to improve it, I'm only really interested in "firearm like" launchers - hand-held launchers with relatively small calibres, and I'm not really prepared to sacrifice that in the name of energy.

6. How interested are you in achieving high speeds?
5/10 again - in a similar vein to the above, I do like to improve velocity, but I don't ever build launchers with the aim of absolutely maximising muzzle velocity.
My primary areas of interest are pneumatics and reluctance coilguns, and neither is really a particularly high velocity system.

7. How interested are you in improving accuracy?
10/10 - I've spent years trying to design a launcher/projectile which will hopefully meet MOA accuracy. That's not to say I won't build a launcher unless it'll be accurate, but there is no launcher I wouldn't be very very interested in it being accurate.

8. To what degree do you strive for innovation?
b) Most of my builds are innovative
I won't say that I never just go the simple way, but I'm unlikely to be interested in building something unless there's at least some originality involved.

9. What would you like to see included on a new site developed by yours truly?
I'm going to have to agree with D_Hall here - it would be good to see a site which demonstrated why safety should be a primary concern.

[grock]

muzzle speed based on hang time, fueling

E

D

C

8

8

8

C