16g CO2 Pneumatics Test

First up - let me say what a great group this is - after a few months of watching from the sidelines and reading many great and really helpful posts, I haven't seen one nasty comment - I wish all forums were so positive!

Anyway...as a total noob I had a lot to learn - thanks to the folk who took the time to post about all sorts of stuff and I thought I'd share something I had tried. I knew nothing about pneumatics but after seeing Team Apollo at ComiCon I thought I had to learn so did a bit of research. I then got a Vex Robotics single acting cylinder kit for Christmas - I wanted a complete kit so that I could be sure any problems were down to me and not the hardware. the kit was ace and worked straight off, but you could only pressurize the cylinder to ~ 150psi with a bike pump and as the volume is fairly small you could only get ~ 20 - 30 strokes.

I wondered if you could hook up a 16g CO2 cylinder instead and after dredging up my school physics on liquefying gases, Boyle's law etc and copious googling to find a regulator for these small cylinders and then learning about all the different male/female pneumatic fittings...I finally managed to hook it all together in a test bed.

I've attached what I accept is a rubbish video, but as a terminal procrastinator if I didn't upload what I had I never would. Hope it's of interest.

My goal is to build a fighting robot - I'd like to go for a Beetleweight flipper but the pneumatic bit is too heavy at the moment so that needs more work and maybe I'll go for Featherweight first and refine my skills...so far just got a test platform with Argos motor/gearbox responding to remote control and that in itself is a real buzz!

Cheers

Rob

https://youtu.be/y_7BOcgb5mg

Just watched again and it really is a shocking video - I'll see if I can get it better but it's a start