APH - alternative to ball valve?

Build a homemade water gun or water balloon launcher and tell us about it.
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kokopelli
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Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2009 5:08 pm

APH - alternative to ball valve?

Post by kokopelli » Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:29 pm

Hello SSC forum people!

I'm in the process of building an APH (ostensibly for my children - yeah, right, for the children).

I asked Ben if anyone had ever attempted to use a blow-gun nozzle.

Something like this:

Image

Ben thought it would be too narrow and wouldn't work well.

Ah well.

Any luck experimenting with alternatives to the ball valve for the trigger for an APH?

Kokopelli

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SSCBen
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Joined: Sat Mar 22, 2003 1:00 pm

Re: APH - alternative to ball valve?

Post by SSCBen » Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:15 pm

I could see some use for blowguns for when small nozzles are acceptable, but other small valves that would be better exist too.

From what I know, a blow gun does have a mostly straight path. In my PM I said the flow path was complex, so this wasn't completely accurate. It's not completely straight but not bad.

You might be interested in these water guns:
http://forums.sscentral.org/t5723/
http://forums.sscentral.org/t5095/post46597.html

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adronl
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Re: APH - alternative to ball valve?

Post by adronl » Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:32 pm

I do not see any reason why it would not work. If you noticed that RolandTower's gun uses air lines.
http://www.sscentral.org/homemade/rolandtower.html
The only problem with the air nozzle is from my experience they do eventually wear out a bit and leak but so do ball valves if you buy a good one and use Teflon tape and a hose barb you shouldn't have much of a problem. It may not create the most perfect stream but it will work and you can make the stream more laminar with other attachments you can purchase. In fact there are lots of optional tips that screw onto these that you can purchase and the air hoses are all rated for pressure. In fact you could have a nozzle as big as many of the home made guns here but not have to make it yourself.

I actually intended to use these in my first gun but I went with regular water hose for higher volume and more power.
Last edited by adronl on Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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C-A_99
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Re: APH - alternative to ball valve?

Post by C-A_99 » Wed Jul 22, 2009 4:18 am

Blow guns don't seem to allow for much flow, which is why they're generally not used around here except for sprinkler valve modifications. (which are for water balloon launchers; check the WBL forum for more details) Perhaps you could get the blowgun and APH to perform as well as an XP or Hydro Power, but I wouldn't expect anything better.

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