20 replies to this topic

[novacat14]

I was making some small 3" arial shells today and got to thinking of how bored i was with the standard different color stars i used when the shells detonate. I was wondering if there is anything else i could use in my shell's to make them more interesting. I thought whistling arials would be cool, or maybe some smoke arials with different color smoke. I have no idea where i would begin thought or if this was even possible. Does anyone here have some proven ideas for livening up arial shots?

Many thanks

[ProfHawking]

Its not a proven idea as such, in that im still working on it, but im planning on making a shell that ejects smaller fountains that each eject spinning sparks.
Here is a little doodle:

Ive seen ones at pro dispays that do white sparks, but many people dont like loud fireworks and this if it had quite a few of the fountains, as well as stars, all different coulours it could look good i recon without being too loud. Personally tho, i like the loud ones

Edited by ProfHawking, 07 August 2004 - 12:43 AM.

[alany]

They are usually called tourbillion inserts.

Typically they use titanium and blackpowder, or barium nitrate based composition with Aluminium for the silver sparks. You can make them quite small and still be quite effective, 5 - 8 mm ID tourbillions about 40mm long work and don't need fantastically fast composition because there is little friction in mid-air and you want them to spin up somewhat slowly anyway.

Medium mesh metal is a good idea, too large and it won't get through the small nozzle (BANG!), too small and it burns out before giving a good long tail and they look kinda pathetic. Up 100 feet or more things look a lot smaller so a good long lived tail looks better IMO.

Fill the entire shell with break, don't worry about wadding. Depending on the size of the shell you can put some stars in there too and use BP on hulls, or hull diluted flash or whistle. Hell I often just full the shell with 20 mesh pulverone and improve the containment.

I dunno if anyone else here subscribes to AFN? But they sent out a Brothers 2005 catalogue with a VCD of device demonstrations. There were lots of silver fish b**bettes in the cakes (and *way* too much crackle IMO), a few had more traditional tourbillion inserts, some even had whistle spoulettes that spun up the entire b**bette, but I suspect that a short length of machine-made fish fuse is a whole lot more cost effective than getting a bunch of children to ram, fuse and prime 1/4" tourbillion inserts.

Off topic, but there was an interesting microstar in many of the ground devices. Kinda like crackle but very quiet, it broke into a spray of gold sparks in a popcorn fasion. Love to know how they make them? Some kind of slower crackle composition, but still basically a termitic reaction?

[The_Djinn]

novacat14,
your idea of using coloured smoke is typical in a daylight shell (as in used during the day and not night). Lancasters book has some formulas for coloured smoke.
Basically the smoke mix is turned to a dough then pushed through a sieve to form 2mm granules which are dried then loaded into thin wall tubes to be placed inside the shell in a simular way to the drawing above by ProfHawking. Lancasters formulas use potassium chlorate but potassium Perchlorate may be able to be used to make the formula less sensitive.


Mark

[neo]

I have also thougt about smoke shells but when I look at the fomulas and there are chemicals I never herd of like this:

green smoke
Potassium chlorate................................33
Milk sugar........................................27
Oil yellow (Butter yellow)........................20 ????
Phthalocyanine blue...............................20 ????
Soluble glutinous rice starch.....................+3%

where do I get these chems????

edit:
Why dont make a super loud shel like fill an 4inch with this fomula:
Potassium perchlorate 64%
Aluminium 23%
Sulphur 13%

it says that it makes the loudest report able whit Potassium perchlorate. could be quite cool... I like the bangs to

Edited by neo, 07 August 2004 - 09:16 AM.

[adamw]

First thing... dont say Detonate. Say 'burst' or 'explode' etc. Unless you burst your shell with C4, it didn't detonate.

Why not use a cannister shell? Inserts are notoriously tricky to place in a ball shell.

[italteen3]

Neo Phthalocyanine blue is a dye used to achieve blue smoke.

And for Butter Yellow I found this 4-Dimethylaminoazobenzene or, C6H5NNC6H4N(CH3)2. Not sure if it is a common industry chemical used or just one for that smoke formula and other rare formulas.

Hope that helps some bit.

If you dont care much about noise i have always liked the Spanish shells which are fired in small volleys together. I believe they are slightly long tubes one part filled with flash and the beginning part filled with a bright probably slow burning comp. When a few of those shells are fired together it looks almost like a regular star shell only that the stars fall a bit faster and have a nice little surprise at the end.

[pyrotechnist]

Hi i am making virtual fireworks at the moment using 3ds max 6 and if anyone of ya want some diagrams of 3d fireworks for your web sites pleas tell me pm me. I am currently making a firework making animation for my site when i finish it i am going to buy my tools and chems soon for making real fireworks lol.

Edited by pyrotechnist, 07 August 2004 - 08:54 PM.

[neo]

a litle bit of tropic dut anyway. your using s max 6? thats rather funny, im using that to, thats my second hobby. when you make fireworks in max do you use pflow? incase not pleace send me an pm and tell me.

[alany]

Somewhat unrelated, but I've been toying with a particle system simulation for pyro for a few months now:

http://nexus.cable.nu/test/pyrosim/

It is very much work in progress, the renderer is very primitive, but the basic physics engine is coming along. I am having problems with solid rotations and complex rigid particle systems, i probably need to extend the grammar to allow easier specification of compound devices.

[The_Djinn]

Alan,

All I get is a grey box but no animation.. any ideas ?.. have checket all my system settings etc but can not find anything out of the ordinary.

Mark

[alany]

All I get is a grey box but no animation.. any ideas ?.. have checket all my system settings etc but can not find anything out of the ordinary.

You need Java installed, specifically Sun's JRE. There is a link on the introduction page of the documentation to the site to download the JRE.

[adamw]

OK, back to the topic in hand please.

[ProfHawking]

Why are the admins on this board always seem so discontented? Cant conversations flow? Whats wrong with lightening up a bit guys

[The_Djinn]

ProfHawking,
It is not a case of Admins being discontented. More a case of wanting people to use the correct areas of the forum for the posts. As Alany pointed out in his original post, it was off the topic.
If it had been in the general area it would have been no problem.
If everyone was to post whatever where ever, you would never find anything and we may as well have one area for all posts.

I can assure you the admin on this board are light hearted if compaired to some of the other forums. In general Admin can get a bit hot under the collar on any forum due to the amount of house keeping created by users not making use off the boards as intended.

Mark