So, as promised, the cannon build ....
I've turned foam before, back when I had no lathe. I did it with a large "U" shaped setup built out of 2x10. There was a large flat base with two uprights, one upright had a hole for a drill. I chucked up the threaded rod after fitting the drill into the large hole, the other end sat in a bearing. It worked OK, but not great as the drill kept falling out of the hole.
Now that I've got the lathe, I might as well use it right? If this cannon was an inch smaller in diameter I think I could have pulled it off over the bed. How can you turn a foam cannon that is larger then the mini lathe you have? Since you could turn several sections and glue them together, the real problem is how do you overcome the swing over the bed issue? You could build something like this.
Here we have the extended rear bed for a 7x12 mini lathe. It's just a piece of 2x10 with a piece cut off to form the support. Some shelf brackets and another piece of wood hold it in place. A hole was drilled to fit a small bearing that the threaded rod rides in. Yes, bench space has been exceeded. It's not really a smart idea to have it overhanging the bench like that. This will be fixed with the expansion of the shop in the somewhat near future.
The cannon itself is 21 discs cut out of pink insulation foam held together with 5 minute epoxy. A hole was drilled at the center of each disc to hold it onto a long piece of threaded rod. At the ends two nuts and as large a washer as I had on hand was used to clamp it together while the epoxy hardened.
You can see the washer here as well as the rough cutting of the foam.
More to come...
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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