How Does A Co2 Cannon Work [CryoFX®] How Does A Co2 Jet Work

How Does A Co2 Cannon Work?

What’s up guys! Welcome to the CryoFX YouTube channel. My name is Chris. Today’s video is going to be on “how does a Co2 cannon work?” If you’re wondering how it works, you’re in the right place. I want to clarify something before we get into this video here.

Some people call a Co2 jet a Co2 cannon. There’s a whole different video separate just for that. The link is in the description. And that video will discuss “how does a Co2 jet work?” And we go inside; we talk about how it works. Because these are Co2 jets, actual stage-mounted jets.

Now if you want to know how a co2 cannon works and you’re referring to a handheld cannon, something like this. This is the video for you. Without further ado, let’s get in and talk about how a co2 cannon works.

What Is A Co2 Cannon?

This is a Co2 cannon. These are handheld cannons, also called handheld Cryoguns. It’s also called handheld Co2 jets, anything handheld. But this is a Co2 cannon. You have your handle or your main apparatus. You have your nozzle that’s here. And of course, what you don’t see yet is the hose. And of course, the tank, don’t forget the tank. Without the tank, really can’t use the gun.

Getting right into this! Internally, these all operate the same way. All of this is a valve. This is a handheld Co2 valve. Here’s another option from Co2 canon. This is the main apparatus like I said before.

What’s Inside a Co2 Cannon?

When you take the external casing away, what do you have inside? You have this. All this is the internals to this. This is the same thing. The same thing goes in here. The difference between some of these is the seats and seals inside, may be slightly different. But what we’re going to do is, we’re going to open one of these up. And we’re going to show you inside. Before I do that, I want to explain exactly how this works. This is the Co2 cannon’s main part, and how this works is this.

Internal Overall Function and Flow

The liquid Co2 comes in through the bottom. It stops right here as this is the valve. When you press the handle of it, it presses this little pin. The pin presses inward which presses a ball bearing outward. And allows the liquid Co2 to flow up through this top portion and out through the nozzle wherever you want to go.

Close Up Of Internals and Its Parts

Okay, guys! Here’s the close-up of the inside part of the actuator if you will, of how the Co2 cannon works. Now, when I unscrew this back portion here, what we’re going to see on the inside is a ball bearing. This! And of course, ring and then, you have your back. I don’t know what the exact terminology for this is. But you get the point. This screws onto the back, and this seals it but allows you to get access. So, some of the problems we see here are, that this arena may not be able to handle the liquid Co2 or the rings are broken which could create a leak.

How to Fix a Co2 Leak

Also, flipping this spring, if you leak your Co2 cannon, sometimes you want to just open this up like this. And flip the spring around. Then put the ball bearing back on. And then put it back together. Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to show you inside here if you can see that.

All that ball bearing does is block that entire hole that you see on the downside inside of that cylinder. And what happens as I explained earlier in the video is, that we’re going to do this for right now. I don’t have my screwdriver handy.

So I’ll use a pen. You press this piston right here with the handle. The piston pushes in. And it pushes this ball bearing against the spring, allowing flow and allowing this opening on the inside to open up, and liquid the flow from here up through the top.

When you let off on this, that spring pushes that ball bearing back. And the ball bearing seals the entire hole. So what’s happening is this! When it pushes out, flow can go through when it’s in. It blocks the hole. Simple concept, very rudimentary!

Reassembling The Internals

This is how you would go ahead and access this internal part. And when you put it back together, you want to screw it back in. I’m not going to be using pliers on this, but you would use pliers to screw it back in. That is how the inside of a cannon works. Back to the other video! In essence and in very simplistic form, that is how a Co2 cannon works.

Now, what we’re going to do is, we’re going to showcase this cannon. This is a CryoFX cannon. A little bit different build, same internals. A little bit more robust. Here’s the nozzle. You see it. This one is a Co2 cannon. One nozzle’s not on here. But imagine a nozzle being right here, you get the point.

Quick Disconnect Fittings

How this works! At the bottom of these, the hose connects to the bottom. You can either have a quick disconnect, which is a quick disconnect piece as you can see here. Or you can have a direct connection, where the hose screws right into the bottom of it. Or you can have a swivel fitting.

I will be the first to tell you that the quick disconnects are great because they can be disconnected when it’s not under pressure. You don’t ever want to disconnect it when it’s under pressure. But the best part about these is, that you can disconnect it from the hose and put it away. So, you can have this. And you can have the hose completely separate. They can be coiled up together, where you don’t have the hose getting all bent and all jacked up. Well, the downside to it is, that this inhibits the flow of the Co2.

When you get into the nuts and bolts, and if you want the larger stream of the two, or if you don’t want your flow inhibited, or you don’t want problems potentially down the road, then I would not recommend these quick disconnects. These quick disconnects themselves are going to be problematic. The reason is, that they inhibit the flow as you can see here. That’s on a whole other video. That’s right guys!

How a Co2 Cannon Looks Like

For a bonus here, we’re throwing in some live footage of what one of these Co2 cannons looks like. Again, live at a prom as you can see. Just, therefore, we don’t get any comments to say “we didn’t see you use it”, or “we didn’t see it in action”. Again, this is what it looks like when it’s in use regardless of what you call it. A Co2 cannon, a cryo cannon, whatever it is, back to the video.

There you have it guys. We quickly covered it. We quickly covered “how does a Co2 cannon work?” Not “how does the Co2 jet work?” Because like I said earlier, that was another video. But we covered how a Co2 canon works. I hope that you have some more insight into these.

Endnote

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