springer Gatling gun

[FMA321]

  My idea is to build a springer Gatling gun. Six barrels; each with its own compression chamber, piston, and spring. They would be mounted on a carousel. The carousel would rotate around an Archimedes screw. The screw, shaped like a section of an auger blade would take the place of the cocking arm. As the carousel rotates around the screw, the pistons would ride along the blade, compressing their springs. Approaching 360 degrees of revolution the piston will disengaging the screw blade, firing that barrel.
  I figure the operation would be a geared hand crank with a ratcheting catch to prevent it from spinning in the opposite direction due to the built up energy.
  At this most basic design stage, I see two problems to address. A way to load the ammunition and a way to remove the spring pressure for storage that doesn't require completely disassembling the gun. I don't want to keep the springs in any stage of compression other than perhaps a pre-load.
  I would enjoy to hear your ideas. I know the people on this forum have an amazing amount of experience and you are all a wealth of knowledge.

[Roadworthy]

Sounds like a lot of trouble, but potential fun.  As far as leaving the gun cocked, if you put a lever on the ratcheting mechanism allowing it to be disengaged you could manually control reversal of the crank and decock the gun.

Loading pellets - other than a clip like the Marauder uses I haven't a clue.

[condor22]

 My thought on this would be to replace the auger with a with a stationary cam slot and a cam follower on the piston with the spring-pistons/barrels assembly rotating around the cam.  As each barrel passes over the cam, it will compress the spring by the cam follower on that piston and release the spring piston at the end of the cycle. (fire)  and all springs could be uncompressed when the cam followers are not engaged in the stationary cam assembly.  Rate of fire would be regulated by pellet feed assembly and the breech loading assembly.  This is somewhat close to the way modern Gatling's work. Feeding this gat would be a night mare, someone else's engineering is needed as I have no idea, but am giving it some thought.  It's too easy to rotate the barrels faster, then the feed rate, thus grinding up the pellets, rather than firing 'em! 

GAU-8 30mm (depleted uranium projectile) Gatling Cannon, 7 rotating barrels of up 3,900 rounds per minute. Turns a tank into swiss cheese in the time it takes you to bat an eyelid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger

This is a Navy 20mm Gatling system that I'm not familiar with: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-15.htm
 
Good luck 

[FMA321]

that is a great idea, i know that this is probably sacrilegious to say on here, but the easiest way to feed it would be to use BB's in a hopper. Please don't hate me for saying it, I just can't figure how to get the pellets to load in a simple, reliable method.

[condor22]

 That would solve the feeding problem, but that would cause a spring gun problem! Steel BB's require non rifled barrels, thus, causing a dry fire type issue in a spring gun.  This wouldn't work. 

.22 Lead round ball (lead bb's) https://www.pyramydair.com/product/gamo-round-22-cal-15-43-grains-lead-balls-250ct?p=610

 Round Lead ball ammo would be better, but would require at least two loaded in each barrel per shot to prevent and dry fire type event each shot, creating another feed problem.  This would create water hose type spay and pray gun. It could work 


  Found a .22lr rimfire gatling gun, caisson mounted : http://gatlingguntheultimate.com/PRODUCTS.html

[fragalot]

a taploader system might work well for this application.

[Bryan Heimann]

I think lead balls is what you'll need to shoot, in some sort of spring-loaded tube magazine

[FMA321]

a taploader system might work well for this application.

I am not sure what that is

[fragalot]

It used to be a system used for vintage underlever air rifles.

Essentially, you cocked the rifle, flipped a small lever upward, dropped the pellet in, facing downward, then rotated the lever to align the pellet with the barrel by twisting it 90°

fairly neat system

Webley tracker:

[FMA321]

 Ok, I see. That is an interesting concept. Something similar could be incorporated into the firing cycle. Perhaps a lobe cam to activate a taploader on each barrel.
 Lots of good ideas, thanks a lot and keep them coming.