I am preparing some articles on building a Gauss rifle, and I have noticed the confusion that exists between two terms, coilgun (gauss rifle) y railgun (rail weapon).
Although the two refer to magnetic accelerators, the physical working principle is different.
When I imagined a gauss rifle or an accelerator, the same image of geomax magnets and steel balls always came to mind, and I thought that the YouTube videos were the same but big. Anyway here is a mini explanation.
The Gauss rifle or coilgunIs a linear magnetic accelerator consisting of a succession of electromagnets to accelerate the metal part. The main advantage of coilgun is that you can do as long as you want and in this way the energy required per turn is less, but the counterpart the longer the barrel is made it is much more difficult to synchronize.
In return the railgun, consists of a magnetic acceleration from two parallel rails. The image shows how the two rails act, the magnetic field created and the sense of the force obtained. To use a Railgun it takes a lot more power instantly, which means a good capacitor bank, but the results are spectacular.
Well, having this clear, surely we will all understand its construction much better.
And by the way, what I’ve always wanted to build was a railgun, and not a gauss cannon 😉
Demonstration MV CoilMaster Mark1 Coil Gun
Daniel Einhoven has shown his latest creation, which I found on Hacked Gadgets. This is an impressive coilgun, far from it.The prototypes that we have shown on other occasions in Ikkar.
This looks like a weapon of mass destruction of the future, exjee
Some characteristics of the coilgun gun.
- Semi-automatic, can make 14 shots
- It can send 42-gram projectiles at 110 km / h, with about 18 J of energy.
- Uses a 8800uF (4x 2200uF) capacitor bank with a max of 400V
- The gun charge for 300V when connected is i seconds and 90 when using internal batteries.
- It has a digital display to see the voltage.
- Total Weight of 5Kg
- Approximate total cost € 100
- Construction time around 40 hours.
I leave you some more images to give you an idea of its appearance.
And of course a video with a demonstration of its operation