And I hope you like it Currently rendering some animations of it, but that takes VERY long time on my single 4770K LOL! So here is a few stills. The rest of the album can be found on my facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DesignsByHPS But here is a few of them And the picture I build it from (I also used some ingame screenshots)
The reason a chaingun is called that is that the action is driven by a chain, similar to one found on a bicycle, by an external electric motor. That looks like a standard gas operated machine gun. All of which, of course, is not your fault, but that of someone in the game developer's art department who though the term "chaingun" sounded cool and didn't bother to find out that it actually means something!
Can you find a link that describes in details how this works? I have been searching but have been unable to find anything that explains how the concept works. I actually do not know. I drew it in Autodesk Inventor, so it is all made from solids. Thanks man! Glad you like it Be sure to check out the rest of the pictures Thanks man! Apriciate it I also made a small animation of the thing
Wikipedia describes it as... Global Security has some good pictures of the M230 30mm chain gun used on the AH-64 Apache gunship As for how the mechanism works, think of a normal semi-automatic rifle. When you fire a round the bolt travels backwards, powered by either the recoil or by gas tapped off from the barrel. As it comes back the breech opens and the spent cartridge is ejected. At the end of it's travel it stops momentarily and then goes back forward under the action of a spring, grabs the next round from the belt or magazine and closes, ready to fire again. The problem is that sometimes this process fails for any number of reasons, a condition known as a jam. On a handheld or crew served weapon this is usually cleared by pulling the cocking lever which manually cycles the weapon and spits out the unfired cartridge then loads a fresh one. The problem comes when the weapon is someplace inconvenient to get to, like under a helicopter or on the outside of a tank. For these kinds of situations where reliability is more important than weight, Hughes came up with the chain gun concept back in the early 1970s. Instead of relying on the products of combustion, either gas or recoil, the mechanism is instead powered by an external electric motor which drives the bolt back and forth. If a round fails to feed or doesn't fire the bolt continues moving and ejects it, then loads the next round. The tradeoff is that the electric motor adds additional weight, and has to be fed from an external power source, which makes it impractical for a chain gun to be used away from a vehicle. Most chain guns in service today are larger caliber (20-35mm) mounted on aircraft, vehicles and ships. One small caliber application is The British L94A1 7.62mm coaxial machine gun used in some of their armored vehicles. In this case the chain gun design was chosen not so much for reliability but for the reduced amount of gun gasses released into the vehicle during firing.
Well since this gun is around 2 meters in length, would it not be possible that it just have the motor inside the shaft, or otherwise "hidden"? Or what in it makes it "not" a chaingun?
The biggest thing that indicates to me that it is in fact not a chain gun is the tube under the barrel. On real weapons that is connected to the barrel by a small vertical tube which taps off gas from the cartridge firing in order to operate a piston which works the mechanism. This drawing of an American M-60C, used on helicopter gunships during Vietnam, shows the gas tube clearly. The other feature that is missing, but which a real chain gun would need, is a power supply from the carrying platform to the gun. This could be either an electrical cable, or (theoretically) hydraulic or pneumatic hoses. In the drawing above, the cable you see is for the solenoid that operates the trigger on the M-60, but it would need something like that on a chain gun. While not definitive, the receiver (the section the barrel plugs into) on chain guns is usually wider and fairly boxy due to the chain needing to run it's circuit outside of the bolt. The other thing that looks odd on the model, and again I'm sure this is because whoever did the artwork for the game did it, is the relationship between the size of the rounds being fed in and the size of the muzzle of the weapon. The muzzle looks to be almost twice the diameter of the bullets or shells it's supposed to be firing. I've got no issue with you or the very impressive work you did on this project. I know how challenging it can be to try to re-create plans or models from a series of drawings or photographs and you've done an awesome job with it. My frustration is with game designers who just choose whatever words sound cool without giving any thought to if they make sense. When I first looked at your renders I thought "oh, that's a gas operated belt fed machine gun " (though probably cannon now that I've got an idea of the scale). Edit: looking at the renders, I wonder if the game studio used the M-60 as a basis for their "chain gun". The shape of the rear body and arrangement of the gas tube looks pretty similar. Change the flash hider, move the grip back and wrap the whole thing in a cowling... Second edit: Having watched some gameplay video with this thing the lack of a quick-change barrel would make it a disaster. The barrel would heat up from sustained firing and either warp (yes, that happens) or else the wounds would cook off in the chamber from the heat.
I don't think this matters, miniaturisation is often a good thing: Why would they still use 1950's tech. Most of all, it's all taking place somewhere how ever many light years away.
The space behind where the catridges are loaded would be occupied by the bolt, plus space further behind that for the bolt to recoil to, and a recoil spring to return the bolt to the forward position. You'd need to assume to advanced sci-fi tech to make it fit. You could explain it as a flash hider and it's simply attached to the end of the narrower diameter barrel. However, this part wouldn't be rifled like it is in the render. That's one little change that might be worth making to this awesome model. It's just academic anyway. The world, while fictional, appears to have the same physics as the real world and uses technology similar to the real world. It stands to reason that if they're still using cartridge based firearms in this fictional world that their firearms function similary to ours.
Not quite my point, If it is fiction you can just say whatever you like. The chaingun bolt was replaced by a flanged wooliaztcha in the 2180's.
.. so in hundreds of years time people will be using todays phraseology and naming conventions in different ways? A 20th century 'chain gun' may be the naming inspiration for some super new gun tech? Crazy talk! The use of words never change! Me thinks thou art mistaken. How dost thee see such a possibility coming to pass? PS. Nice render, please don't hijack onomasiology threads and avoid confusing such lexical discussions with your pretty images. PPS. Bonus points by hijacking this linguistic thread within the very first post!
In my days they just called them 'blasters'. Descriptive and to the point. Honestly, kids these days...
