http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caseless_ammunitionSeems it has some obstacles to overcome.

 

Issues would include measuring (volume), pressures, propellant mixes, transportation, effect of heat and cold on combustion, etc.

Gas/Diesel/Propane are fairly consistent (comparably) and don't have too much variation compared to other explosive gasses and are low power (in comparison) in most respects to other possible gaseous propellants.

Gasses are some of the highest power propellants possible, but looking at the simplest gaseous engine, (outside of propane) the hydrogen engine, we can't even get that right yet.

 

For one thing, you'd need an air-tight chamber. If you have this, how would you get a new round in the chamber?

 

The issue is density. Solid is more dense than a gas, and holds more molecules in the same volume. When you bust the nitrogen out of it suddenly, there is more available from the solid than there is from the gas. Liquid propellants would seem to offer some good points, but a caseless round like the Voere, or the stuff we built in this country back in the 1960s has most of the bugs worked out. The H&K G.11 round works very well too.

We aren't there yet because the capital to put such an arm into production is just not there, and on the automated battlefield, the service rifle is as efficient as it needs to be to do the job it is intended to do. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it...."

For one thing, you'd need an air-tight chamber. If you have this, how would you get a new round in the chamber?[/QUOTE

The big guns that use bagged charges solved this problem before 1900, with a mushroom-shaped breechpiece that uses a gas ring to seal the chamber.

 

One of the first firearms brought to America was a large caliber Air Rifle constructed by the French called the "Girandoni". I have attached a video of the story. Really interesting.

 

One of the first firearms brought to America was a large caliber Air Rifle constructed by the French called the "Girandoni". I have attached a video of the story. Really interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pqFyKh-rUI

That is amazing!!! :thumb:

 

I have seen plans for a small version of a centrifigal force weapon along with an old article about a larger version that was tested back in like 1915. I also talked with a buddy of mine that was at fort sill back in the 80s who told me that they were testing cannons fired using water/steam for propellant. Seems like a measured amount of water was put into combustion chamber and then hit with an electrical arc that nearly instantaniously turned the water to steam sending the projectile out of the barrel.

 

Gunpowder is more energy dense than gas. You would actually be giving up power by using a combustable gas as opposed to a solid explosive.

 

We have a winner. :thumb:

 

There was a rocket pistol made back in the sixtie's ,can't remember the name.

 

Gyrojet. It didn't work very well.

 

My thought, is that in order to use a gass, you need some way to meter the correct amount, and compress it. The metering would require some sort of carburetor, or fuel injections system like on a car...which is far too bulky to make any sense. In addition, you would need some sort of piston/chamber set up to give it the compression needed to have sufficient power. That would probably need to be encased in some sort of cylinder block.

Going back to the automotive example, the weight, and bulkiness would be astronomical at this point, so it would hardly be practical.

 

The Paslode impulse cordless nailer operates with a fuel cell. I'm sure the same principle could work for a firearm.

 

Artillery is the only weapon that I know of, that has ever used explosive gas mixtures to fire. They have the advantage of cleaner firing, but at a cost of many disadvantages.

I assume you are talking about hand held weapons, would be possible, but why would you want to.

One thing to keep in mind using explosive gas, you to have mix an explosive gas with oxygen, this can be dangerous in a hot gun. You also have to consider, how much expansion that gas has compared to a solid that becomes a gas. Gasses do not create nearly as much expansion as do solids, due to the difference in the amount of actual material, ie there are a lot more molecules in one cubic inch of gunpowder than there are in one cubic inch of air.

To get the same amount of expansion with explosive gasses as compared to gunpowder you will need a much larger chamber volume. You also then as I said have to deal with an explosive mixture being added to a hot chamber.

 

...Artillery is the only weapon that I know of, that has ever used explosive gas mixtures to fire. They have the advantage of cleaner firing, but at a cost of many disadvantages....

Major advantage for training is that the propane/oxygen system is cheap, and easy to meter. It was used at Sill for training as early as the 1960s. The ability to get a flat trajectory out of a system like this is lacking, but most artillery doesn't operate on flat trajectories and high velocities. Any of us who have ever used a propane-powered truck know that the system is easily portable, and it can be built to a lot lighter standard of construction than can conventional powder artillery. However, your propellant tank is a big, fat burnable target that does not react at all well to small arms fire....

 

Caseless ammo is still encapsulated in an explosive compound, but it's not confined to a shell casing, hence "caseless". The advantage being the ability to carry more rounds. By being caseless, they would be lighter and the overall length would only need to be the length of the projectile.

HK made a prototype rifle, cant remember the name... but they had all kinds of catastrophic problems including rounds cooking off... also the compound that encapsulated the projectile would break, crumble and chip causing a multitude of malfunctions... everything from underpowered charges to failure to go into battery.

I think the next leap forward in small arms will be laser based... thats right I said it... PEW PEW laser guns.:space

 

HK made a prototype rifle, cant remember the name... but they had all kinds of catastrophic problems including rounds cooking off... also the compound that encapsulated the projectile would break, crumble and chip causing a multitude of malfunctions... everything from underpowered charges to failure to go into battery.

Yes H&K did make a caseless ammo rifle called the G11 and the probles associated with caseless ammo were not as bad as you have posted. In the end they took care of all the issues and although it worked quite well, it was never adopted as a service rifle.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_G11

 

Makes sense to hear that solid holds more molecules than gas I guess that is going to be the ultimate shortcoming.

 

Gasses are not nearly as powerful as the more energetic and compacted gunpowders. Plus gunpowder contains it's own oxygen. A gas would have to have it added somehow, further diluting it's energy potential. People have been making potato guns for a long time and have tried all sorts of fuels for them. None are very powerful.

The rocket pistols used rocket fuel, a slower burning chemical similar to gunpowder.

The gas we burn in our cars is a liquid. When you convert them to run on hydrogen or propane or other gas, you lose power. But even if you consider the power they have running on gas, it's really not very much if you scale it down to the size of a round of firearm ammunition.

 

SeekHer, Gyrojet was an ingenious system, but it failed of practical usefulness in the real world based on its faults. The Voere, and the H&K caseless systems failed on the lack of capital and interest. Both methods are quite practical within their venues, with the Gyrojet being a sheet metal device, very inexpensive to build, rather along the lines of a smoothbore metal cap pistol. I thought they were really neat when I saw my first pictures of one in True (or was it Argosy?).

The Voere and G.11 systems are good iron, and I suspect something like that will come out as the next step in firearms evolution.

 

I wasn’t clear enough...Separated, the paragraph of the caseless rounds by anyone and everyone was being referred to as having potential not the Gyrojet specifically...Corrected abive..

Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) a division of AAI Corporation is working, under license, on a light [squad] machine gun variation of the H&H G11 as reported in Defense Review

I had fired a few rounds from the Gyrojet rifle once back then and was enamoured by the H&K G11's bullpup system being from the same time frame but isn't the Voere VED21 a much (like 20+ years-1990s) later system especially with the electronic firing system/pin or did they also have a previous version of one at the same time as Gyrojet and H&K? The lines of their gun was no different then any of their other bolt action rifles looked like...They were a very conventional--conservative even--design--they weren't as radical a design like the Gyrojet (futuristic) and the H&K G11 (Modernistic).

There was also at that time (1968) the ill fated--by BATF(u)E--Daisy VL rifle with powder disc powered ammo...Daisy needed to become an actual firearms manufacturer instead of just a maker of air guns...The system was supposed to have worked quite well

Argosy Magazine, which I had a subscription to, had the noted writer and gun collector Pete Kuhlhoff so I'd almost guarantee they had the coverage over True Magazine...I have a hardcover and pocket book version of his book "Kuhlhoff on Guns"--primarily the monthly Best of Argosy reviews but damn good read—if you can find one and used ones abound, get it…Sure the stuff is dated prices, models discontinued, improvements in glass, bullets and powder but the shooting, reloading etc. info is timeless! I wish I still had those and other magazines that were destroyed in the house fire--not only for the financial value but they were great reads.

 

Interesting. I had never seen one before.

 

Police employ paintball guns with pepper balls for non-lethal riot control. But paintball guns have a very limited range and their compressed air tanks are extremely bulky and unwieldy, so it's significantly less effective than a gunpowder-powered firearm.

 

What do you think happens in a cartridge? The gunpowder turns from a solid into a gas (deflageration, ?spelling?)

 

Logan’s run sandman pistol.

 

air rifle ? or maybe co2 powered ? potatoe cannon ? punkin chunker ?

 

Here, in WW2, they experimented with steam powered guns. Remember that many places had steam power in place. they not only developed but put into production and issued steam powered weapons that were fitted to small ships, trawlers etc. They were not hugely effective, mainly being used to pelt rival ships with potatoes.
If interested, look up the Holman Projector, fired pattern 38 mills bombs... for anti aircraft defence!!!!!! Really wierd!!

 

There was a guy many years ago at Aberdeen PG who has this marvelous idea of making a bomb launcher using compressed air to enable a predictable place for the bomb to impact.
Engineer that told me witnessed the first test firing. They had compressors to hell and gone building up pressure and finally all was ready. Thing looked like a big mortar.

Well they released the air pressure under the bomb (safety boys demanded a dummy be used and it worked just fine. The bomb got launched, cleared the muzzle about five feet and fell on the ground.

A number of witnesses developed hernias from suppressing laughter and they all immediately went back to work where they could laugh out loud.

 

The award-winning maker of Tickle Me Elmo dips his hand into weapons innovations with a unique gun that kills only when the shooter wants it to.

The VVWS can fire the same ammunition as the FN303 but is designed to be effective at 100 yards


The application was an ideal fit for Lund's combustion technology, which can measure out the appropriate amount of gas for each shot. Hydrogen is not a standard military fuel, so Lund's Variable Velocity Weapon System (VVWS) uses cans of methylacetylene propadiene gas, the kind that fuels blowtorches and nail guns, sold at hardware stores. "You might view the VVWS as a repurposed nail gun," Lund says

Read more: TMX Elmo Toymaker Turns to Weapons With "The Big Hurt" VVWS - Popular Mechanics

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/toymaker-turned-weaponmaker

 

The Daisy V/L caseless .22.
Daisy the BB gun guys tried to market .22 cal caseless gun & Rnds.
XR750

 

Anyone remember seeing the HK G11 in Demolition Man?