SpudFiles

Well if you really want to investigate what is happening in a video, then video form really isn't the best way to view it. So I have made these pages I call flipbooks that allow you to interactively view my high speed camera recordings. Just wait for the page to fully load (may take a little while on slow connections) and then move your cursor across the image.

You can check out my current flipbooks lower down on this page:
http://gbcannon.com/creations.html

They should smoothly transition between frames once the page is completely loaded. If they don't then let me know what browser is causing problems and I can look into it. I do know that they don't work right in IE8 unless you go into compatibility mode, but I'm hoping that gets changed before the final release.

I've also made a little JavaScript app that can be used to measure the speed of objects in the flipbooks. It does have some known bugs, but nothing I'm terribly worried about. It was mostly made for myself, but if you find anything that I could improve in it let me know.
http://gbcannon.com/projects/flipbooks/measure.html

Works great! Those are great recordings.

Really interesting flipbooks. Initially I thought the flipbook approach would be a little annoying but it's easy to understand and has decent precision so you can focus on a certain time.

I'm looking forward to whatever else you produce with your camera.

I would say make the instructions abit bigger, took me awhile to find it =p

Thanks for the feedback. Since you already found them it's hard to say how much the change helps, but I made them a little bigger and changed the color.

suggestion:
Under creations, you have several catagories. Put those in a drop down menu on the creations link.

Wow this flipbook interface is surprisingly effective and convenient. Very well done!

I find that clear piston valve flipbook is the most interesting.
You can see the pilot volume air exhausting and the whole pilot volume turns white because of vapor condensing.
A lot of time later, the piston "bounces" but actually just starts moving again when the pressure in front of it drops.

I'd love to see more of that! Heavier/lighter projectiles, more/less pressure, and probably most important: Different pilot valves! (Or the same pilot valve with a flow restriction)

I got a nice little chuckle out of that "ball valve versus a hammer" flipbook. Honestly, I've never thought of opening a ball valve with a hammer.

As far as feedback, I was able to view each one without any problems.

Now that's a nice idea. It shows everything very conveniently, and it's quite addictive to play with too...

hubb017 wrote:Honestly, I've never thought of opening a ball valve with a hammer.

What?! You've forgotten the engineer's law of motion?

If it moves and it shouldn't, duct tape it.
If it doesn't move and it should, WD-40 it.
If it still doesn't move, belt it with a hammer.

Bonus points if "belt it with a hammer" is said with a Lancastrian accent - but you'll probably know nothing about that.

It's usually the simplest things that get overlooked, right? And, no, I do not know anything about Lancastrian accents. Sorry.

Yeah I'll try and get some more shots on the clear valve when I get the chance.

The ball valve was pretty darn fast with the hammer. Sure it wouldn't work great with a hand held gun, but if you're going to have a mounted gun I would say it is a viable alternative to a piston valve, especially with heavy ammo. I'm also planning on rigging up a spring actuation setup to see how fast it opens. I think we may be a little too hard on the good ol' ball valve sometimes. Not that I'll be building any ball valve cannons anytime soon, but it's still a good noobie valve.

Your video shined a whole new light on ball valves (and hammers!)
I now realise that for long-barreled cannons, a ball valve with a pneumatic ram can give just as good performance as a piston valve.

If it still doesn't move

Its HAMMER TIME!


After that, you could always try a pneumatic ram, or do it mythbuster style:
With explosives.