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Lo these many years ago, when I was a youth, I
constructed a device in our front yard consisting of a 3lb
coffee can, a candle, and a length of garden hose.
I punched a hole at the base of the can to allow the hose to
enter the can. The can was filled to a depth of about an
inch with flour,
and a lighted candle was placed in the
center of the can.
Blowing on the hose sent a cloud of flour aloft, and the
candle lit the aerosol, generating a brief but wonderful
flame.
The idea is to update this technique using the dryer vent
which happens to vent into my front yard, adapt a
microprocessor to control the vent, and have the exit
aperture form the mouth of a dragon.
A bit late for this year, maybe next!
Wusses
http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/ [not_morrison_rm, Nov 04 2013]
[link]
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I have a propane-heated dryer...and suddenly this seems so
obvious. |
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[bigsleep] Thanks for your comment. |
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The invention is a novel combination of conventional
techniques / processes. Not one of my finest, but
possibly worthy of half-bakedness. |
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Incidentally, the coffee can before recycling was
empty! |
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One could use a pumpkin instead of a coffee can.
The problem with the dragon is that what dragon
belches flame straight up? Is it at a concert or
something? Pumpkins, however, routinely have
gouts of flame coming out of their heads. |
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The question: how to make repeating? I am not
sure sending loads of flour / nondairy creamer or
the like down the tube would produce adequate
airborne density to make a gout of flame. |
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Flaming pumpkins is a good variant! |
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I think the airflow could work at angles close to
horizontal, as long as the flour stays within the
container until blown out. |
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The tube serves only to pass air into the reservoir of
flour in the can. If memory serves, 250mL of flour is
good for over 50 puffs of air. YMMV |
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merely a matter of time before the NMRM orbital gatling pumpkin flour flaming device ends up on a stand in some defence industry showcase.... |
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All profits to go into making advanced robots to go moon at members of the stop killer robots.org, which I had no idea actually existed until today. No sense of humour some people. Right, that's getting its own post. |
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[+] good one! You were a halfbaker then and even
better now! |
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Yep. Mix some metallic salts in there for effect. |
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