Overview of cartrige:
The body of the cartridge is a steel nipple or piece of copper pipe. At the back of the cartridge there is a check valve that doubles up as the sparker too (described later). At the front of the cartridge, there is a male adapter threaded onto a female adapter. In between them is a burst disk as shown here at advanced spuds: http://advancedspuds.com/burstdiskinst.htm. This will hold the fuel mixture inside the nipple or section of pipe like a regular burst disk. On the female adapter at the front end there will be a small piece of pipe that will hold the ammo, and will be pushed into a coupler connecting to the barrel.
The back end of the cartridge (the part with the check valve/sparker) is basically the check valve designed by gipetto on his stirrup pump http://www.spudfiles.com/forums/easy-st ... 13277.html. Because my writing is probably very confusing, feel free to refer to the diagram below.
Check Valve:
It’s a fitting that has a ridge (female adapter) that a washer is epoxied to on the inside thus making sure the washer doesn’t blow out of the adapter during ignition. There’s a bolt with a neoprene washer on one end backed with another metal washer. The neoprene face as well as its metal skeleton is inside the cartridge, and pushed against the washer epoxied to the adapter, thus forming a metal-neoprene-metal seal. On the end of the bolt protruding from the adapter, there is a spring that pushes the bolt outward, thus causing the cartridge to seal like a Schrader (which the back end of the cartridge is, basically.
Electrode
The bolt is coated with some insulating material (I’m thinking it’d be wrapped in electric tape). The bolt as well as the metal washer are to be very close to the metal structure of the rest of the cartridge, so that when an electrical current is applied to the bolt and the metal surface of the rest of the cartridge, a spark will form between the washer that gives the neoprene structure and somewhere else in the chamber. Again, refer to the pictures.
As far as I can tell, it seems like a pretty solid design. My only concerns are that:
A. The lip that holds the washer in place on the back end will not hold the washer (However, it held 400psi in Gipetto’s pump).
B. The washers will break under the pressure spike (again, it worked in Gipetto’s pump).
C. The spark won’t form for some reason (Would making the backing washer pointed help?)
D. The burst disk system won’t work because the threads will rip it up.
E. The thing will explode for some reason that I didn’t think of.
F. They’ll be too expensive to mass produce (I’m thinking in the quantities of a revolver or gatling gun).
So that’s it. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to test this any time soon or maybe at all, so don’t expect any prototypes from me in the near future. Therefore, feel free to try it out if you want to. Where I live I probably won’t be able to utilize this type of stuff anyway.
So what do you think? All comments, criticism, and ideas are welcomed.
Cheers,
Danny
