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Homemade CD Shooter?

Posted by Cliff on Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:05 PM
from the careful-you-don't-take-someone's-head-off dept.
Toys
Rinisari asks: "I've recently come into a very large amount of defunct, yet still structurally intact, CDs. I did some searching about on Google, but turned up nothing on my goal: A Compact Disc Cannon. Has anyone ever built a device for shooting CDs in a horizontal or vertical fashion? I'm thinking almost something like one of those foam disc shooters..."
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  • Clay Pigeon Chucker (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jtev (133871) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:07PM (#9628678) Journal
    CDs fit perfectly into a clay pigeon thrower, not the mechanical type, but the spring loaded type you use to throw them by hand realy far. I don't know how much this helps though. Clay pigeons are cheap, but I guess if you realy want to take out frustration on AOL this works.

  • Uses for CDs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mbstone (457308) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:09PM (#9628686)
    The World Series of Poker on ESPN features a poker player who can slice a banana with a thrown playing card. Maybe you could try slicing a raw potato or other object in this manner with a CD. Then you could organize a contest and sell the TV rights.
  • Which Hellrazor was it with the DJ that shot CDs out of his face? You could pick up some design ideas from that guy. ;)

  • Terrorist scum alert! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DamienMcKenna (181101) <damien@mc-[ ]na.com ['ken' in gap]> on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:14PM (#9628731)
    I'm sorry but we can't tell you as shooting CDs could be a terrorist act. God only knows how many millions of AOL freebie CDs there are available for free to anyone who wants them and these could become lethal weapons in your hands. You are a sick little monkey, go home and ask your dad to give you a paddling, and no supper for you either, mister! The FBI will be around in the morning, please have your clothes packed and an extra-large tub of Smooth-o-lube when they arrive.

  • Shazbot! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dfiant (13407) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:15PM (#9628734)
    I was going to make a disc launcher a la Starsiege Tribes, but never took the time to find/make the proper gun structure. My idea was to cut the top off a CD-R spindle full of AOL CD's and mount it upside down on the gun so gravity would feed ammo into it.

    What I'd have is a typical gun structure, but with a loading mechanism made to support stock spindles (of 25, 50, or perhaps even 100 CD's). When recoiled, the CD should fall into place onto a small bolt or something. The trigger would drive this bolt forward sharply along a rail by a spring or rubber band. At the end of the rail, the bolt would have to drop down so the CD can fly free of the mechanism. I hadn't put much thought into a semi-auto system, though.

  • Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by coyote4til7 (189857) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:20PM (#9628764) Homepage
    Buy the gadget you linked to, disassemble it and figure out how they did it?

  • I don't see why you can't build one.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by herrvinny (698679) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:20PM (#9628765)
    I have one of those foam disk shooting things, and from what I can tell, all it consists of is two rapidly rotating, short cylinders. When the trigger is pulled, a simple spring mechanism pushes the foam disk forward slightly, bringing the disk into contact with the rotating cylinders (which are positioned on either side of the launching route). The disk hits both rotating cylinders, and then gets accelerated quickly out of the launcher.

    You should be able to build this mechanism with little difficulty; the only problem might be that the CD's may be too fragile to be quickly accelerated in such a matter.
    • IANAME (mechanical engineer), but I think this works with the foam discs because they are able to compress, thus not only providing a longer contact surface but enough pressure on the rotating cylinders so that they can be accelerated. A stiff body wouldn't work as well, the area of contact would be too small. You would have to build something that accelerated the CD from behind, probably along an arc to maximize space.

      --trb

  • I saw one of these ten years ago... (Score:5, Funny)

    by p4ul13 (560810) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:21PM (#9628769) Homepage
    Information is right here [klov.com].

    =)

  • They don't exactly fly like a Frisbee [about.com] at all. If you're looking to throw one far, you might try looking at a potato cannon [google.com] and use pipe sufficently large enough to fit a CD. I wouldn't expect much luck though.
    • Parent post is spot on.... If you have ever tried to throw a CD you know that the discs are extremely understable, and will corkscrew and flop to the ground if you put much effort into the throw. I can't imagine that a disc will be able to fly any appreciable distance out of a launcher unless the aerodynamics of the disc are changed to make it stable, or maybe slightly overstable.

      Perhaps you can do what some others have done and make a set of groovy coasters by putting the cd in a microwave for 3-4 second

      • I've had no problems throwing cds 75m, when there wasn't a lot of wind. I was throwing like a hammer [purdue.edu] frisbee throw.
      • Well sure it won't fly very well if you don't throw it right. If you just try to throw it with no rotation it will do that. To get distance on it, it has to spin. If you throw it like a frisbee with a lot of spin or throwing overhand holding by the edge, it will get plenty of speed. It would be pretty hard for a disc launcher gun to shoot it with spin though.

  • SCUD (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator (522640) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:54PM (#9628941) Homepage Journal
    "Has anyone ever built a device for shooting CDs in a horizontal or vertical fashion?"

    Sort of. I used to fling bad CDs into my friend's cubicle. Written on each one was "SCUD... Don't worry, you probably weren't the intended target."

  • Combo Railgun and Dremel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by R2.0 (532027) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @10:55PM (#9628948)
    I'm thinking the following:

    1) Magazine feeds a CD to a dremel motor which spins the CD in place to about 5000 rpm. As it is spinning up, the...

    2) capacitors in the railgun are charging. Since the disk has an aluminum layer, it should be able to be ejected from a railgun. So when the capacitors are charged...

    3) a switch kills the dremel motor, which drops the disk into the railgun receiver. CD shoots off, rack another one into the spinner-upper.

    4) Repeat.

    Alternately, hack an old CD drive to spin and release the cd.
      • As an unofficial PETA activist I must ask you to stop planning to use ferrets as amunition for your sick weasel-guns.

        Any attempt to use ferrets as weapons will be considered an act of murder and we will return the favor on behalf of our long slinkylike furry friends. ...Shooting ferrets from a railgun, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Sadistic bastards.

  • 1977 Ford F-100 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Piquan (49943) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @11:06PM (#9628999)
    Stuck it under my tire and peeled out.

    • Re:1977 Ford F-100 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Piquan (49943)

      Y'know, come to think, you may be able to rig up an old baseball auto-pitcher (the kind with the two tires). Make it one tire, vertically mounted, with a tiny gap above a steel plate.

      Disclaimer: This is just a hypothetical device. I assume no responsibility for safety or liability if you actually build it.

  • Ballista (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bishop (4500) on Tuesday July 06 2004, @11:43PM (#9629177)
    Build a balista [mangonel.com]. You will need to build a specific "cup" to hold the CD.

    An advantage to a balista is that once you tire of shooting CDs you can switch to other fun projectiles >:->

  • Since when is 33 CD's a "very large amount"? I used to get that many AOL discs in the mail each week.
  • The Survival Research Labratories [srl.org] developed a pitching machine [srl.org] which pitches 2x4's at 200 mph at a target up to 800 feet away.

    An engine, two car wheels and a loading mechanism. You could use a similar mechanism for your CD 'tosser'.

    But please, always remember to wear your safety goggles. And safety gloves. And a safety shirt...

  • Easy (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kj0n (245572) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @12:15AM (#9629281) Homepage
    Just rewrite the firmware for your CD-ROM player: let it spin up to its maximum speed and then open the tray.

    • Re:Easy (Score:2, Interesting)

      by denis-The-menace (471988)
      This DOES work!
      I had a CD-ROM burner do this to me 6-7 years ago.
      I has 12" away from the drive and it nearly got me.
      The tray openned and the disk was spinning and bumping inside the tray like it was about to explode. It eventually hit one of the disc stoppers on the tray and that made it fly up and away. The wall behind me stop it, otherwise the 5 1/4" spinning ginsu would have done a lot of damage.

  • only 33 CD's?!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zcat_NZ (267672)
    I managed to collect just over a thousand CD's a few years back, well over 800 of them AOL CD's. This is quite an achievement given that AOL has no point of presence in New Zealand, so I have no idea why those CD's were here in the first place. I was planning to make a CD launcher using a pair of small rubber wheels, but in the end I gave the whole lot to a friend for part of an art project.

  • Rotational speed and linear velocity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tmack (593755) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @12:27AM (#9629330) Homepage Journal
    are what you need for a good CD launch. Without the CD spinning, it will just flop around and go nowhere. With a good spin on it, it will fly somewhat straight, with a slight curve to its flight path depending on launch angle. High linear speed will at least stretch that out if not eleminate it while on its way to the target.

    My vision is of a CD spindle looking clip that loads the "ammo" from the top (gravity fed), with a bolt like thin sliding arm with a center spindle, to push the discs forward one at a time while holding the rest of the stack out of the way. When the trigger is pulled, the arm slides forward to launch a disc, and releases the next disc in the stack onto the top of the chamber. As the trigger is released the disc falls into the chamber where rotors on the sides of it, or the spindle on the arm spin the disc up to speed. When ready, the trigger is pulled, pushing the arm and spindle forward to the launching wheels. When the disc gets to the launching wheels, the spindle drops out of the way. The wheels themselves are rubber, touching each other, and spinning in opposite directions, such that when a disc is pushed into them, they spit it out rather quickly. They should be near the center of the disc on top and bottom of the track the disc slides on, offsetslighly to maintain the rotation on the disc itself, but keep the path of the disc somewhat straight out the end.

    just a thought, dont look at me if you try to actually build somthing from this and hurtyourself.

    tm

  • All you need is two things - something to spin up the CD before shooting it, that would provide for much greater stability - a CD-ROM drive would be a nice place to start, and a mechanism to disconnect a spinning disk from the clamp and give it a solid shove forward along some track or rail.

    Once you have something that shoots, you can go the extra mile, evolve it into something along the lines of a CD gatling and make yourself one of these [gameamp.com] and post us some pictures of the result. (Yes, I know, the projecti

  • DON'T DO IT (Score:2, Funny)

    by nusratt (751548)
    didn't your mother ever tell you?
    "You could put someone's eye out with that!" ;-)

  • Think spinning tops, not frisbees. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sakusha (441986) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @02:28AM (#9629670)
    I can easily think of a mechanism to make this gadget work. Let me give you a few hints and you can work out the rest.

    Think about tops, not disks. You guys are all thinking about spinning a CD down a slot. Instead, think of it as a spinning top revolving on its axis, like a CD is designed to do. Nothing says you can't modify the CD slightly. You could glue a small spindle into the center of the CD, or just cut a small slot in the edge of the center hole, so you can make a removable spindle with a keyed rod that goes in the slot to keep the CD from slipping.

    So if you've understood what I'm getting at, you now have a CD with a little wooden spindle sticking up from the top and bottom. Essentially you now have a very thin, wide top. It used to be fairly common to have wooden top "launchers" or "brackets" with notches that held the top and bottom spindle on a top. In this case, you'd need a piece of wood about an inch thick and about 1 foot long. Cut a slot down the center of the wood to allow the CD to pass through. Cut a V shaped notch across the end of the stick, perpendicular to the slot.

    Now you can set the spindle of the "CD top" in the notch. Wrap some string around the spindle, pull, and you've got the CD spinning at high RPM. flick the rod and your CD is flying.

    I looked around the web and this page is about as close as I came to finding a top bracket.

    http://www.turnertoys.com/tops4_toddlers.htm

    You can kind of see what I'm getting at, but this version just drops the top down, it's not intended for tossing, and the plane of the top isn't centered in the bracket, it's below. But I think you'll get the idea. Now go build it..
    • I was thinking something more like the baseball pitching machines we used in high school. Two rubber wheels spinning with a slightly less-than-baseball-sized gap between them. Something like this [rawlings.com], but ours were slightly off of horizontal, not vertical like in the picture.

      Those wheels turned in opposite directions though, to shoot the ball forward. To put spin on a CD you'd have to make them spin in the same direction, possibly one faster than the other to control which direction the CD shot out. Or mayb
      • The problem is, CDs aren't designed to be driven by the edge, they're designed to be driven from the center spindle. Your design would probably compress the CD and crack it. I think my spinning top idea, to spin up the CD and then flick it, would work best.

  • CD's are for sissies... (Score:5, Funny)

    by I(rispee_I(reme (310391) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @02:39AM (#9629691) Journal
    real men make hard drive platter launchers.

  • CDRoms shatter and 'explode' - be careful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wimbor (302967) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @02:45AM (#9629709)
    As you can read in this slashdot article [slashdot.org] CDroms break up when they are spun to fast. When a CD launched from a cannon hits a wall, you can bet that the flying debris can seriously injure you... I would be VERY careful...

  • Hammerhead (Score:3, Informative)

    by sunoke (691531) <sfjlittel@yahoo.com> on Wednesday July 07 2004, @03:47AM (#9629898)
    Someone tried to do something like that with technic lego (and succeded). Take a look at his page [philohome.com].

  • Old skewl (Score:5, Interesting)

    by billcopc (196330) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Wednesday July 07 2004, @04:10AM (#9629996) Homepage
    Call me hardcore, I remember a little Ninja Turtles toy that did just this, but with smaller, pizza-colored hard plastic discs that hurt like @*#^$. I think it used small motors to spin and launch the discs because the pizza thingies would fly everywhere, bouncing off walls/expensive vases/my forehead. Now those things were about 2" wide, and 1/8" thick, so they were relatively "dull". If you did this with CDs, I think it would be a safety risk because CDs are thinner, thus "sharper" and lighter so they fly faster and farther and dig deeper into your victim's skin if properly aimed.

  • One possibility (Score:4, Informative)

    by Daniel Rutter (126873) <dan@dansdata.com> on Wednesday July 07 2004, @04:21AM (#9630039) Homepage
    Disc guns that actually shoot straight are a tricky engineering challenge, but the "Shot-Blade" pretty much solves it; I reviewed it [dansdata.com] a while ago. The Shot-Blade has a lot more spring power than it needs to shoot its little lightweight projectiles; I could see it being reworked into a CD launcher of some kind.
  • I was putzing around with an old vendor CD the other day, when i came up with a low budget model of what you're looking to achieve. I stuck the CD onto magic marker, and flung it forward while spinning the disk backward with my left hand.

    It worked rather well - but i guess it depends on your point of view. The person whome I hit in the neck, making a red line across his throat probably wouldn't have thought it was so successful.

    With great CD power comes great CD responsibility.
  • http://www.unrealtournament.com/utgoty/weapon_prof ile.php?weapon=ripper
  • I don't think you'll be able to copy the "foam disk launcher" design as it uses a spring, and you have to pull the trigger to reset the spring for firing. Since a CD weighs much more than the little foam discs, you're going to need a spring you won't be able to set with your fingers.

    Like everyone else, I'd recommend the use of an electric motor. The simplest design would be two rubber cylinders placed vertically, one powered, the other spinning only because it's touching the other. But the trajectory wi

  • Ouch! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Wookie Athos (75570) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @09:28AM (#9631705)

    My first reaction was along the lines of "Man, that's asking for trouble". It'd be a fun toy to make, but once you fire a few disks you'll get an understanding of how dangerous this is. I know I'm not the only one to comment on this, but what the hey...

    My experience is only with hand-thrown CDs (at a distance of 15m or so) but:

    • If one hits you and it "only hurts" you were probably lucky.
    • CDs can easily embed themselves in plasterboard walls.
    • They shatter easily on impact, and yes those shards are SHARP.
    • They're REALLY hard to aim. They're not as stable as a frisbee, and can wobble and twist in mid-air. It's not a nice feeling when you see one drifting off-target and towards an innocent target (e.g. a child or your boss's boss).

    Sure, you can have fun designing a machine, but it's a downright dangerous result you're looking for. Can't you exercise your brain with a safer problem?

    Like nuclear fission... ;-)

  • Spinning CD could take someones head off (Score:4, Funny)

    by CokeBear (16811) on Wednesday July 07 2004, @11:30AM (#9633001) Journal
    If that thing got up enough speed, could slice clear through the neck, and head would roll. Probably not such a good idea. (Although if anyone builds it, please post video ;-)

  • 70's Toy Disk Shooter (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JoeCommodore (567479) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Thursday July 08 2004, @11:43PM (#9649752) Homepage
    There was an old toy I had when I was a kid (70s), it held a stack of yellow plastic disks (about 3" diamter) in a drop load cylindar. You pull back a rubber band lever which dropped the bottom disk into a disk sized rectangular barrel under the cylindar, releasing the lever snaps it back - the disk pushing part of the lever mechanism was curved in a way so as it went back it spun the disc as it forced the disk out the barrel. Could probably de done with CDs with a bit more percision design work.

    Another cool feature was at the top of the ammo cylindar was a rectangular funnel so you could theoretically catch disks shot at you and they would be back ready to be shot back.

    I looked for a picture but I couldn't find one on-line, though I am sure I've seen smaller versions in the cheap-toy section of places like Target or Wal-Mart.

    • You could take the potato cannon method a step further (and dangerouser) Use propane instead of compressed air, create a decent launch tube for a cd with a small rubber seal, add an igniter at the end of the barrel...and weeee flaming cds. One solenoid valve, some 300psi tubing, a 12 volt battery, a few wires and a momentary switch.

      I wonder if wrapping a few turns of gauze over the cd would get you both the surface area and seal you need for a compressed air release? It is amazing what 200 psi will get you

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