Between yesterday and today, I've made some small but important additions to my steampunk power armour. I'm still not quite done, but today's component deserves its own post. This is the main weapon of a sartorius trooper, an arm-mounted rotary cannon (commonly known as a Gatling Gun).
There aren't many differences between this weapon and an actual Gatling Gun. The only substantial difference is that it is driven by a tiny steam engine instead of a hand crank. The engine is powered by a steam line off the backpack boiler of sartorius armour. Steam flow is controlled by means of a "trigger" sticking up in the front, allowing the wielder to control the rate of fire with how hard they squeeze.
The little brass bit at the lower right is the steam port. The piece immediately to its left is the shell ejection port.
Unlike actual Gatling Guns, which are loaded from the top by means of a simple box magazine (colloquially known as a "clip," despite how inaccurate that is), this rotary cannon is loaded by means of a pan magazine. Pan magazines, although cylindrical, are very different from drum magazines. This particular magazine functions in a similar manner to that of the Lewis Machine Gun. Unlike in the case of the Lewis Gun, the pan magazine on the sartorius gun has no direct connection to the gun's action, therefore it must be rotated by means of a shaft, connected by gears to the rotating barrels, so that it can continuously drop cartridges down the loading chute into the gun's chambers. With its current dimensions, the pan magazine can hold 72 rounds. I had originally intended to give this gun a chain feed like I did with a larger rotary cannon that I made earlier, but as it so happens, Hero Forge gave me the idea for a pan magazine with its own rotary cannon model:
This is a good approximation of how a coggle mechanic (about five of whom would be required to efficiently outfit a sartorius trooper) would compare to the size of the weapon that I designed. Granted, not only did I have to place the magazine in an offset location, but I also changed the proportions, based on measurements of my own .45-70 lever-action rifle. The actual caliber of the sartorius rotary cannon is 11,5mm, or 0,453 inch. This is how it looks when installed:
I haven't added any additional details to the boiler, much less any new steam lines, but I have added the gauntlets (which could be a lot better), tassets, and scapulae (the plates hanging down the front) since my last update.
Tomorrow, I will move on to the melee weapons, i.e. pneumatic sabre and derivative designs. Depending on how far I get (contingent on how much time I spend in the woods), I may have something worth sharing.
