WaterWar.net

I had some free time and was bored so I made this chart because I wanted to visualize how pump force changes with pump shaft ID. I would post a image preview but the image seems to get scaled down.

Link:

https://i.imgur.com/HrqiGRm.png

Nice work. Should be useful for folks designing water guns.

That's pretty awesome. Unfortunately those numbers don't mean a whole lot all by themselves. Does any body know how much pressure is typically built up in a soaker? Not really sure how many pounds of force is considered a lot either. I'm assuming anything over 40 lbs (going by the numbers in red)? I wonder how much force is needed to pump a CPS gun?

I've always considered 3/4" to be a good size for a pump, or 1" on larger weapons. Bigger pumps could make use of some kind of mechanical assist, like the lever mechanism on the Soakzooka (wow, I'm actually referencing a Hasbro gun). However there'd also be the problem of size and weight. Even if you were strong enough to use a 3" pump, such a gun would be freaking enormous.

I didn't know they made 16" PVC. Although where I work there is a very large tube of PVC that looks about 12". I think it's used as some kind of housing for a prototype product. But anyway, I don't think it's pressure rated or anything. The only water war-related use for pipe that big that I can think of would be a reservoir for some kind of stationary turret cannon. Nobody really builds anything like that though.

We have some information on pressures reported on Super Soaker boxes here:

http://www.sscentral.org/physics/man_pumps.html

Drenchenator figured out the forces for various water guns based on the reported information.

It would be simpler to use a smaller pump diameter than to use a lever. The net effect is the same as the pump volume needs to decrease in either case, but a lever would have more parts and be harder to build.

Yep, I made anything over 40 lbs red. The coloring is arbitrarily chosen, but I think that once the force gets around or over 30 lbs, it starts to become unrealistic in combat, possibly even before 30 lbs. What do you guys think?

Thank you for making this. This is really useful.