hackedgadgets.com— “At last!! A functioning example of the combined wants in a coilgun pistol. You always see posts for this and that, read how if it could do such and such and the inevitable plans on doing whatever."
Jun 15, 2006View in Crawl 4
So is there anyway you could use a rifled barrel and make a coil rifle. Just put a series of coils down the length of the gun that fire in succession. Couldn't that accelerate the projectile much faster, as well as putting a spin on it to give it stability? The only problem would be, of course, the power supply.
"then why are new naval ships getting railguns instead of using explosives to shoot their shells?"Because they are better than chemical guns when made well (with high energy and when they last)When was the last time you saw a gun fire at 20+ KM/s?
I built a "ghetto" version a few years ago when I was in high school. My goal was to do it mostly for free with parts from the junk bin and some office supplies, so the end result looks ugly and isn't terribly efficient, but it does work. Nevertheless, it is the easiest kind to build. Like the one on the site, it uses camera flash caps and stores about the same amount of energy, although it only has a single stage (all energy is put into one pulse). It's mostly effective for shooting paper clips across the room.I also wrote a mini-howto which is posted here:<a class="user" href="http://ldwp.com/projects/minicoilgun/">http://ldwp.com/projects/minicoilgun/</a>Ignore the time dependent specifications, they are probably incorrect. For some reason, I left inductance out of the article. I didn't know much about AC related things at the time. I may get the thing out again and measure it with a rogowski coil and my DSO sometime for an accurate measurement, although I'm now working on a much bigger shoulder mounted bazooka/rifle style version.If you decide to build one yourself, all you need is a soldering iron, the aforementioned junk (save those disposable cameras!), and some basic electronics skills. Since you are presumably taking apart several disposable cameras, and you only need one board, it doesn't matter if you fry the first one or two you try.The biggest safety issue is that the caps charge to about 320V, so they can give you a bit of a shock if you touch them (so don't).Also, FWIW, most of the video on that site was of a substantially larger coil gun. You can see the cap bank along the bench at one point.
what your describing is more of a railgun than a coilgun, but mayby if you used a thin 'barrel' made from a matirial that is non-magnetic, and non-em field interfering(some kind of plastic?), you could rifle the inside of that.
THAT WAS COOL! In a completely childish sense of course :-) The best bit was when the coil broke of it's mountings near the end!! I'm really pissed now that I never took up electronics at college, if I knew I could make cool s**t like that I'd have gone for it straight away!
monkeyfitJun 16, 2006
So is there anyway you could use a rifled barrel and make a coil rifle. Just put a series of coils down the length of the gun that fire in succession. Couldn't that accelerate the projectile much faster, as well as putting a spin on it to give it stability? The only problem would be, of course, the power supply.
Closed AccountJun 16, 2006
"then why are new naval ships getting railguns instead of using explosives to shoot their shells?"Because they are better than chemical guns when made well (with high energy and when they last)When was the last time you saw a gun fire at 20+ KM/s?
galacticrootJun 16, 2006
I built a "ghetto" version a few years ago when I was in high school. My goal was to do it mostly for free with parts from the junk bin and some office supplies, so the end result looks ugly and isn't terribly efficient, but it does work. Nevertheless, it is the easiest kind to build. Like the one on the site, it uses camera flash caps and stores about the same amount of energy, although it only has a single stage (all energy is put into one pulse). It's mostly effective for shooting paper clips across the room.I also wrote a mini-howto which is posted here:<a class="user" href="http://ldwp.com/projects/minicoilgun/">http://ldwp.com/projects/minicoilgun/</a>Ignore the time dependent specifications, they are probably incorrect. For some reason, I left inductance out of the article. I didn't know much about AC related things at the time. I may get the thing out again and measure it with a rogowski coil and my DSO sometime for an accurate measurement, although I'm now working on a much bigger shoulder mounted bazooka/rifle style version.If you decide to build one yourself, all you need is a soldering iron, the aforementioned junk (save those disposable cameras!), and some basic electronics skills. Since you are presumably taking apart several disposable cameras, and you only need one board, it doesn't matter if you fry the first one or two you try.The biggest safety issue is that the caps charge to about 320V, so they can give you a bit of a shock if you touch them (so don't).Also, FWIW, most of the video on that site was of a substantially larger coil gun. You can see the cap bank along the bench at one point.
baronvonroloJun 16, 2006
Ahh great! A new way to kill people. Just what the world needs.
dwatchJun 16, 2006
/deleted
sageoflightningJun 16, 2006
what your describing is more of a railgun than a coilgun, but mayby if you used a thin 'barrel' made from a matirial that is non-magnetic, and non-em field interfering(some kind of plastic?), you could rifle the inside of that.
bassjunkieJun 17, 2006
THAT WAS COOL! In a completely childish sense of course :-) The best bit was when the coil broke of it's mountings near the end!! I'm really pissed now that I never took up electronics at college, if I knew I could make cool s**t like that I'd have gone for it straight away!