SpudFiles

As a member of the Capitol BEST Robotics team, Pflugerville High Engineering and Robotics (PHEAR), I got to go to the Maker Faire at the Travis county Expo Center. It was freakin sweet. I saw tons of techie things, including general robotics stuff, a booth dedicated to Microsoft .NET Farmework, CNC machines, and then a giant section dedicated to various arts and craps that nobody gives a rats hind end about. (Just kidding!)

There was also, however, a pneumatic cannon near an antenna display (basic inline) and my heart sunk when I saw DWV bell reducers. That made me kind of sad. There needs to be a SpudFiles booth next year.

Video I put together. Note, there are only three things I taped. Did you notice I got a new camera?

[youtube][/youtube]

I was at the California 08 Maker Fair (and the 07, but thats another story,) and I saw some pretty impressive shit I must say. The local Welding/blacksmithing/glassblowing/random-fire-arts-place called the Crucible, had a steel oxy/propane golf ball cannon, as well as all sorts of fun fire shooters and the likes. Coolest of all however, was the gigantic Tesla coils, used to cook a rack of hotdogs... I have a video of that somewhere. I was so scared that it would fry my camera at any instant! My friend who was there with the Albany County Computer Recycling Center (and their 8" tall human skull made from old computer pieces) said that the WiFi network went down for the first five minutes of every hour, when they were giving the Tesla coil demos. FUN!!

If we have enough California or nearby members, I will totally try to organize a SpudFiles booth next year. Any takers?

Great opportunity there! A couple of questions.

The guy shooting the smoke rings...what was the the process he was using to do the shooting? I understand the fog machine smoke producing part.

Also, the fire spitting robots at the end. Do you have some more "whys and wherefores"?

The giant spudgun toting people lift robot was a hoot. DWV aside, they actually did a pretty decent job on them. It would have been nice to get a video of them shooting.

starman wrote:Great opportunity there! A couple of questions.

The guy shooting the smoke rings...what was the the process he was using to do the shooting? I understand the fog machine smoke producing part.
...

http://www.instructables.com/id/How_to_ ... x_Cannons/
1 question answered.

I tried to get a video of them shooting, but I was never there in time. They were simply sprinkler valve over-unders. But, they did load about 4-5 ping pong balls in each barrel, and the damn thing would blast air raid sirens and heavy metal while it was going off! On a side note, the right shoulder cannon's barrel was a bit skewed off to the right.

Those same guys also had a homemade inkjet printer that printed 9 lines onto the ping pong balls! I got the guy interested in SpudFiles, and he gave me a card (as well as a few balls!).

Visit them at www.therobotgroup.org as soon as you can. They seem to be a mainly Austin-based group. That might be good or bad, depending on the level of cooperation we get with them. Who knows, they might end up being the guys to build the first prototypes of the ACS-1 to put on a new giant robot thing! But as far as I can tell, we are currently the most advanced air cannon group with any presence in Austin Texas.

And those fire spitting things weren't robots; they were pieces of metal artwork hooked up to blowers and a control panel, and there were so many propane tanks that I couldn't count them all. The big tall kind, too. They also used some kind of magic power. And the big white thing in the beginning is a giant fake snake carcass with a bike in the head, connected to a bunch of pedals and seats going down the rest of the thing. I tell ya, there was a lot of crazy stuff there.