Introduction: Dry-Ice Smoke Ring Cannon! (No Fog Machine Necessary)
Well......... Typical Smoke ring shooters (like Kip-Kay's and other people's) require a fog machine in order to create the smoke needed for the rings. When fog machine's can cost in excess of $100 where I live, many may resort to dry ice. At first I tried just dumping some dry ice in the bottom and pouring some water in. Since the co2 is heavier than air, it just stayed at the bottom and I epicly failed. Luckily the solution is supper simple and cheap...
Materials:
Dry ice
Hot glue
Some garbage bin or large bucket of some sort
A good sized container with a lid. (like a lemonade pitcher with a lid)
2 feet of garden hose
Garbage bag
Ping pong ball or something similar
Some string
tape tape tape tape :D
Step 1: Choose Your Size
You're going to want to decide what size you're system will be. Will it be a big garbage bin or a large bucket? I went for the large bucket. If you want to upsize you're system you will have to upsize everything. The picture displayed is the container I used. I'll explain more on this subject later...
Step 2: Cut You're Hole
You're going to need to use some of you're judgment skillz here depending on the size of you're bin. Generally you want to cut a 4 to 6" hole.
Step 3: Making the Skirt (or Whatever You Call It)
Wrap the ping-pong ball in the skirt and tie a loop of string at the bottom so it stays in place. Cut the bag to size and tape it to the bin with a bit of slack so the skirt can actually move. btw, I didn't use a ping pong ball but instead some hollow ball I had laying around.
Step 4: Smoke Feed
Cut a hole just smaller than the outer diameter of you garden hose into the bin. Now insert the garden hose into the hole.
Step 5: Glue It!
Glue the other end of you're garden hose into the lid of the container using LOTS OF HOT GLUE :D... but seriously, be sparing with you're hot glue.
Step 6: Shoot It!
Fill you're dry ice torus cannon with a large chunk of dry ice and some warm water an shoot the darn thing!
Step 7: Improvements
Their are several things you can do to improve this project which I didn't do because I deemed them unnecessary and I had to complete this project in under an hour.
The first thing that you could do is to keep the water from cooling down to such a low temperature that the dry ice creates an insufficient amount of co2. The way that I would go about this would be to use a metal container and having a small flame constantly burning under the container to keep the water from getting to cold.
Secondly, you could attach a bungee cord or something similar to the skirt and run it through the inside so that you only need to pull back and release.
Video coming soon!
Participated in the
Halloween Decorations Challenge
