I just wanted to drop off this quick update today and whet everyone’s appetites 
My CNC router was temporarily back up and running (it was assembled to the bare minimum necessary to cut out the cannon parts but has since been disassembled again so I can tidy it all up and reassemble properly) so I got my cannon parts cut out!
I give you the beginnings of the cannon design:
The basic design concept was drawn up by my friend Xeones, and it was then up to me to translate it into a physical design. There is one big problem: it’s not big enough! You see I scaled it around the sizes of styrene tube I had in stock but neglected to print out a 2D paper copy first to ensure it looks correct. It’s a smidge too small 
Actually, at this point I should interject that realistically it’s probably quite an appropriate size as is, but the style I’m going for is that over-the-top sci-fi style we all know and love, where guns are far oversized.
So I’m now tossing up between just making modifications to this design or starting again and making it bigger (I’ll have to buy some larger sizes of styrene tube). The beauty of using the router is that I can just scale up the parts by ~20% and re-cut it out. Also, I’ve got a couple of tweaks that would make it even better so it’s very likely that’s what I’ll do.
I’ll have to hurry up and reassemble the router 