Inspired by Allan Pan's fire-bending gloves, I decided to create this project with hopes to create fire from my hands. Having little experience with plumbing beforehand, I knew going into this I would have to learn a lot before anything would work.
The basic principle behind the design is simple. Hold pressurized butane in a chamber, then simultaneously use a solenoid to release it and an arc lighter to light it.
First I tested the solenoid to ensure that this part was working properly. I wired it using an Arduino initially, using code and a MOSFET to control its opening and closing. This was wired with a diode and resistor to ensure that it was being controlled in the correct manner.
Next was the process of finding an arc-lighter that was suitable for my application. I had to disassemble the arc lighter find a way to solder the switch so when I attached it to a momentary push button, the lighter would turn on.
Once this was sufficient, I used some spare parts I had lying around. I scrapped the idea of using a microcontroller because I found it to be redundant. Instead, I wired a relay that was connected to a 5V battery pack through push buttons to control the circuit. The pushbuttons would allow the 12 V to flow through the circuit on demand, turning on the lighter and opening the solenoid.
In the references, I mentioned another article (https://www.hackster.io/cicchine_ing/fire-punch-f7d5c9) that uses a solenoid to contain gasses. I used similar pipe fittings to create this chamber that would hold the butane. All of these components together can be seen in Figure 3.
This was all finally mounted onto a modified fire-safe glove in case anything went wrong. The final product is shown below in Figure 4.
Overall the most challenging part of this product was achieving a fireball of notable size. The circuits and technology were not entirely complex after I simplified most of the components. I hope to revisit this project in the future to get that Sozin's comet size fireball!
Thanks for reading!
- PJ
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