• Xariphon@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    How the hell does this work? I get using the drill to drive the belt but what’s making it shoot?

    • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I couldn’t find any details and the picture is way too grainy to tell, but it looks like the piece in front of the drill is probably making a small bolt reciprocate forward and backward, so as the round is lined up with the chamber the bolt would push it forward into battery and strike the primer firing the round, then move the bolt backward again and turn the belt to line up the next round. You’d have to match the space between the rounds on the belt to the timing of the bolt reciprocating for everything to line up correctly.

      The way you’d do that in a normal gun without a drill powering it would be to use the pressure from the gun powder igniting to also push the bolt backward as it pushes the bullet forward, and then a spring would push it back forward to chamber the next round from the magazine and fire it.

      • FireTower@lemmy.worldOPM
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        9 months ago

        Those would be my two guesses. Either a drilled controlled reciprocating bolt or straight blowback with a spring tuned for a certain setting on the drill.

        • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yeah, I was also thinking just regular blowback at first, but it doesn’t look like this system would actually be able to strip the round from the belt to fully chamber it (it looks like spent casings still on the belt in the photo), so I’m guessing the round is being pushed into the chamber with just enough headspace to seal to fire the bullet, and I don’t think that would actually send the bolt backward to cycle it.

          I’m kind of surprised the casing would be able to handle that kind of pressure without just exploding with no barrel around it, if that’s the case. I guess .22lr is either just underpowered enough, or maybe the slots in the belt are reinforced somehow.