alright guys. Because I have to progress in my welding class to finish the valve, I've been driving myself mad trying to think of flaws in the design and how to make something simple look good and yadda yadda yadda. It's around this time in a project where I get burned out and disappear for a while. So to combat that, I approached things like sherlock Holmes and started looking at fun modifications for the shooter.
So I started looking back at valves and indicational pressure meters that light up. It was then that I looked back at solenoid valves and I've made a discovery. It is possible to use one.
To put this in perspective, I'll tell you what I was blantatly not thinking about. It's very obvious looking back at it.
http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?14,5870
This was the only valve I could find that was simple enough to build at home that would work for our purposes. Here is what was wrong though. I figured this thing couldn't hold any pressure because the pressure would instantly push the nail either way. You would have to counteract it with a spring. The problem with a spring is that it would have to be super strong. Here is the solution.
In our first week of physics, we looked into forces. Our first problems were like this:
---5---> + <----6---- = ?
It's obvious that the the answer was <---1--- If two forces were to fight each other, that is five pounds of force pushing right, and 6 pounds pushing left, then one pound of pressure would remain still going left.
Now to put that in perspective to web shooters.
I thought that in our case it would end up looking like this:
the force of the spring (----100psi-->) + web fluid (<---300psi) and that's what I thought it would be, which is why I discounted solenoids.
Upon looking back on it, I realized it would work better if you had the fluid come from two sources:
fluid coming from the left tube (--150psi-->) + Fluid coming from the right tube (<---150 psi--) That is how fluid naturally works. It will find equal pressure in it's container. If you have that pressure going to one spot, it would naturally be 0 psi as the two forces would equal eachother. That means that if we used the spring from a mechanical pencil, it wouldn't matter, because the fluid makes it so that there is no pressure to fight. Therefore:
Fluid from left pipe (--150psi->)+ spring (--.25psi-->)+ fluid from right pipe(<--150 psi--) = (--.25 psi-->) That means that all the magnet would have to fight is the force of the spring which could be as weak as possible.
We can make a simple solenoid valve from simple parts at home depot. That also explains the old stan lee design.
And it explains why he can bend his wrists. Spring steel will flex with his hands and won't break the device. All you would need is two copper wires.
I know this is kind of hard to understand so if you need extra explaining feel free to ask. Basically, all you need to know is that with this info, it proves that we can trigger the mechanism with a switch instead of a lever or button or anything else.
