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Has anyone experimented with or thought about some kind of a qiuck inflate/deflate system? I would like to incorporate it into my sync'd program.
I have thought compressed air stored with a diaphgram high volume low pressure discharge to inflate, and several vent holes to deflate. In effect giving the airblown a "momentary pesence". It would be sorta like an airbag in a car. Enough discharge to overcome the vents initially, and then deflate.
Any thoughts?
Paul
____________________ I know I didn't put those extension cords away in that condition! And, there's no excuse for the way I'm about to behave.
Point well taken Tim. I hadn't thought about the noise. I don't think there would be a problem with the debris thing because of the distances involved in my display though.
The noise would be a problem.
Still would like to find a way to do something to annimate though.
____________________ I know I didn't put those extension cords away in that condition! And, there's no excuse for the way I'm about to behave.
I have a big pneumatic cannon that would sure fill it in a hurry. Problem is I think it would look funny bursting at all the seams
On a side note I was thinking about making my Santa and snowman bow at the end of each song. I think it would be pretty simple with a gearmotor, an arm and some fishing line attached at the right spot... This happened by accident when I had a computer glitch and all my static stuff shutoff momentarily. It looked just like the airblows were taking a bow!
****ChuckHutchings****
....A.T.A.B.M Airblowns taking a bow mechanism "Patent pending"
Last edited on Thursday December 20th, 2007 04:27 pm by Toymakr000
Would it be better to just turn on and off the lights inside than have to explosively inflate the airblowns?
That bowing sounds really neat. I bet the suppliers might even want to try their hand at that too! You'll have to put up an animation of it once you get it figured out!
____________________ Builder, Rio Grande Southern R.R. of N.C.
I agree with Robert about just turning off the light inside. My inflatable mattress says NOT to use compressed air, due to bursting danger. I imagine an inflatable wouldn't be much different. Bursting danger. Not too dangerous to visitors standing a distance away, but a loss of your investment.
Last edited on Saturday December 22nd, 2007 01:13 am by EdBarnett
I was blowing the leaves off my display and drying ome of the water offr some of my lights today when i realised. If you get an electric leaf blower and some tubing (like the black drainage tubes) and run it to a blowr located off the front yard hidden so you dont hear the noise. it could turn on when you needed and would inflate an inflateable within seconds! Took mine about 4 seconds to inflate the blowup santa i have just messing around! you could also leave the zipper in the back of inflates opened with this and itl lowup about jjust as fast and deflate fairly quickly.
EdBarnett wrote: I agree with Robert about just turning off the light inside. My inflatable mattress says NOT to use compressed air, due to bursting danger. I imagine an inflatable wouldn't be much different. Bursting danger. Not too dangerous to visitors standing a distance away, but a loss of your investment.
Yeah but my ladders all say to hang on with both hands too...and work with what my teeth?
Going to do some dynamic pressure testing. Will report back.
____________________ I know I didn't put those extension cords away in that condition! And, there's no excuse for the way I'm about to behave.
pnewcomb1 wrote: EdBarnett wrote: I agree with Robert about just turning off the light inside. My inflatable mattress says NOT to use compressed air, due to bursting danger. I imagine an inflatable wouldn't be much different. Bursting danger. Not too dangerous to visitors standing a distance away, but a loss of your investment.
Yeah but my ladders all say to hang on with both hands too...and work with what my teeth?
Going to do some dynamic pressure testing. Will report back.
that would be a good idea. much easier to ru an air line from outback to the front yard and have little to no sound but a small "ssssssssssssssssssssssssssss" . Cant wait to hear about your findings.
Edit: You could also get one of those big giant waving stick figure guys.
or make something close to it wear you have a very strong fan and the very top of the inflateable is opened up. that would inflate and deflate him extremely fast!
Last edited on Wednesday December 26th, 2007 02:39 pm by Jdwagner888
Jdwagner888 wrote: that would be a good idea. much easier to ru an air line from outback to the front yard and have little to no sound but a small "ssssssssssssssssssssssssssss" . Cant wait to hear about your findings.
Or maybe a rather loud 'SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHH" combined with a "BANG" of the nylon snapping to attention...
I'm remembering a carnival ride from my youth that had 5 or 6 little "spaceships" spinning around a tall central column. The thing ran off of large gas-powered compressor and the air caused them to fly up and down, with a very loud CRASSSSSSSSSSH! sound on every lift. Air isn't necessarily silent...
Compressed air is not quiet, but low pressure high volume air isn't to bad. Frankly, with 41 snowmen in my yard, the fan noise is pretty bad too.
Anyway...I have taken one of my duplicates scored for $14.99 yesterday, and opened three flap holes in it. The flap holes are 4" diameter circle cuts with the top 1/3 of the hole not cut through. Used some Fray Check to seal the cut edges. One flap hole is in the top of the head and one in each of the mittens.
With a leaf blower supplying pressure through a 3" pvc pipe, and using a ball valve, I get a 3 or 4 second inflation on the 6' snowman, and about 6 second deflation.
I suspect that there would have to be quite a fan unit to keep enough air available to do too many of them in rapid succession.
I don't see anything that makes me concerned about catastrophic seam failure while doing it. And I don't see anything that looks dangerous...though my dog doesn't like it!
More testing to come. If I could get this picture posting to the forum down, I would send some pictures...
____________________ I know I didn't put those extension cords away in that condition! And, there's no excuse for the way I'm about to behave.
very cool! pictures are a must please! go to http://www.imageshack.us and host them there and then copy the link near the bottom to the picture that says "link for forums (1)" and paste it here to put a picture up if the site wont let you put a large enough attachment in.
pnewcomb1 wrote: If I could get this picture posting to the forum down, I would send some pictures...
1. Use a program such as as Microsoft picture editor (comes with windows) or Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com) to reduce the size of the picture to 600 x xxx (xxx = let the software choose so the scale is correct).
2. Click the browse button below the area where you type in the text of your post.
3. Select the file from step 1.
4. Click the button labeled "open" (or double click the file name in step 3).
5. Post your message as you normally do by clicking the "send" button.
TED
Last edited on Saturday December 29th, 2007 08:44 am by TED
TED wrote: pnewcomb1 wrote: If I could get this picture posting to the forum down, I would send some pictures...
1. Use a program such as as Microsoft picture editor (comes with windows) or Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com) to reduce the size of the picture to 600 x xxx (xxx = let the software choose so the scale is correct).
2. Click the browse button below the area where you type in the text of your post.
3. Select the file from step 1.
4. Click the button labeled "open" (or double click the file name in step 3).
5. Post your message as you normally do by clicking the "send" button.
TED
TED you do not even have to do that. http://www.imageshack.us has an image resizer on there site right there when you upload it.
i dont know if you have thought of this or not, but i have had several of the lights in my infatables burn out and have replaced them with an independent string of c-9's, which i only have come on at night with my house lights
i am thinking about removing the lights altogether and placing spots inside each so i can sync the lights
i leave my inflatables on 24/7 during the season- i am not sure how the synching of the spots will work, but i am going to try it.
One advantage about internal lighting is when the display is "dark" for the night, you can still see them in case someone is trying to mess with it.
An idea would be to place low wattage (3 to 5 w) bulbs in them for "ambient lighting."
If I had a display like this, I would actually seperate the as-built lights from the motor so that the internal lights can be used as part of a sequence. I'd could either add another c-7 socket on a seperate string or switch out the bulbs inside to lower wattage. This low-wattage bulb can be used after the display is done for the night to give the air blowns some illumnination. Heck, you could leave them on during the show since the spots and other animation would overpower them...
I probably would not use spots so much unless I want the affect of lighting a whole area around the air blowns. However, you could use lights as if it was a stage - down lights, side lights, back lights, foot lights. And using different color spots would add some interesting detail. But I would leave the lights inside because you can always use them some time.
Just my $0.02 (after taxes = $0.00)
-Rob
____________________ Builder, Rio Grande Southern R.R. of N.C.
