Spudchukker III - Piston Hybrid

Harness the power of precision mixtures of pressurized flammable vapor. Safety first! These are advanced potato guns - not for the beginner.
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MrCrowley
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Tue Apr 07, 2015 4:10 am

Juggernaut12121 wrote:Another dumb question, does your piston slide back far enough to where the front end goes back into the housing? The way I have mine out on paper it does slightly and I'm worried that it could catch the wall of the housing (being somehow off center) and potentially kill itself. And (MrCrowley, if you're reading this) how well does a solid piston work out/is there too much stress?
I am reading this :D

With both my pistons, the sealing face (about 20-25mm thick in both cases) would be just short of the the start of the housing (barrel nipple). Your piston should be centred anyway, if it's not you're probably going to run in to an issue sooner or later. Just make sure there isn't lateral or vertical movement of the piston when it moves back in to the housing and that the sealing face clears the housing.

Image

The solid piston is heavy and may slightly reduce performance (slower opening time) but I haven't noticed any reduction personally (not exactly objective) and it works for me fine. I would've reduced some of the weight by making it a spool-shape but a Spudfiles member made it for me for free and I didn't want to get too nitpicky :wink:

If you have the option to have a piston machined for you at a decent price, do it. It saves you a lot of hassle. The homemade piston was fun to make and was valuable experience as it taught me a lot about the piston hybrid design but it also requires more maintenance and a lot of troubleshooting.
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Juggernaut12121
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Tue Apr 07, 2015 8:40 am

I went through and found what my two piston designs might weigh, the two piece connected with a stainless steel bolt should weigh near 479 grams and the solid one should be about 555 grams (does this sound about right?), anyway I figure that it wouldn't be much of an increase so I'll probably go with the solid piston, should be easier and more durable, if I'm ever able to actually build the thing :lol:
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve
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MrCrowley
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Tue Apr 07, 2015 2:38 pm

I think mine is closer to 1kg :O

So you should be fine :D
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