Sunday, September 2, 2012

RC motor/flywheel tommy 20

I gutted an RC car I found at a thrift store to make this set of flywheels.  The wheels are 2.5in in diameter.  The cool thing about big flywheels is that the linear velocity, or the speed of the outside of the wheel, is in direct proportion to the diameter.  This means that all else being equal doubling the size of the flywheel will double the the velocity of the dart.

The big flywheels along with bigger motors and running it at 12-18v got ranges of around 100ft with some going way farther and some going way shorter.  I stripped 2 gears for the full auto mech before I realized I need to just run it with a 9v and power the flys separately.

This could fire both streamlines or fathead darts.



While this thing was tons of fun running it at that high voltage with home made flywheels caused the motor housing to shake loose from the shell no matter what I tried to do.  The flywheels were just very very slightly off center so they would cause a good amount of vibration and with that much mass and that much power it was always just a matter of time before what ever I used to attach the flys would give out.

The vibration also cause a ton of noise.  This thing sounded like a vacuum cleaner fighting with a chainsaw.  It was fun while it lasted but I feel like between this and The Darthramballs I've done all I care to do with the tommy 20.

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