coil guns

I've done a bit of reasearch into coil guns, which use electromagnets to accelerate the ball down and out of the barrel. In all attempts, this has seemed to be a rathe large system, that eats alot of power. Although I've head that it can be done, has anyone else heard of it or even attemped it. input would be appreaceated

 

I believe the US navy has an prototype railgun, but it is very large and power hungry, and has a long recharge time. Saw it on television a while back.

At the time I thought "what happens if salt water gets near that huge bank of capacitors?"

 

I don't see why any one would want to buy one. every thing I read on coil/rail guns seems to say they will be expensive. stuff all ready cost an arm & a leg why a more expensive gun??

 

I can understand the attraction to coilguns because they free you from CO2. No need for a big bulky CO2 bottle in the middle of the ship, and no need to check a whole rat's nest of plumbing for that one annoying little leak that drains your system halfway through the battle.

of course, air compressors also free you from CO2 bottles...

 

Of course transport ships also free you from Co2[]

 

For a CO2 free cannon small enough and cheap enough for our hobby, maybe something like airsoft guns would work nicely. It's basically a spring actuated plunger that is cocked by a geared electric motor. It's something I am going to look into after getting settled into place after moving last week.

 

It's aneat idea but without improved batteries its nearly useless. Mike do you know of anyone testing the spring and plunger method? And Kotori87, why is ther five people who understand binary, the ones that do and the ones that don't?

 

Coilguns and railguns are fundamentally mechanically simple in concept but very different in practice. A coilgun can be made reasonably compact as it's possible to use a fiberglass tube, some wire, a capacitor, some metal window screen, an optical sensor, pic, a solid state relay, a couple capacitors, a couple batteries, and a handful of small resistors, a couple small tantalum capacitors ,and one or two stand-alone transistors (okay, it's a bit longer of a list now that I've actually typed it out) to make an efficiently functioning example. Building a railgun is a different story. The projectiles have a nasty tendency to vaporize from the arcing that tends to occur between the armature (projectile) and the rails, atop which there's no bigger folly than trying to use a railgun to accelerate a projectile from a standstill exclusively with electricity (attempting to build one makes you learn very fast). If we were to try to use railguns, we'd still need a supply of CO2 or compressed air, or a spring-gun mechanism to accelerate the projectile to a velocity sufficient to prevent it from welding fast to the rails...to the point that we could simply use that preliminary mechanism sans railgun. I played around with an airsoft-style concept a while back and while promising, between work (real life) and the other projects I'm working on, I don't foresee having enough time to work on spring-powered, electrically-cocked, reloading cannons anytime soon.

 

CPT. Jr, you forgot about the 101st type of people, "those who just can't count". I think you would fall under that 101st type, because in all my wisdom I simply cannot conceive how you came up with the number 5 from the number 101.
I think I fall under the 111th category, thoze hoo juz' carnt spill
And if you believe that, you'd better hurry to ebay, because I just put the Golden Gate Bridge up for auction with a starting bid of $0.99

 

it wass simply because i took your number 101, as being bianary, starting with the number 1 on the right symbolizing one lot of one, the 0 in the middle symbolizing no lots of two, and the 1 on the far left side symboloizin one lot of four. A lot of four plus a lot of one equals five

PS. the golden gate bridge can't be up on ebay cuz I gots the deed for it