Sunday, February 14, 2010

All coiled up and ready to go.

Seen at Borepatch's place:



Yup. That's a working Gauss pistol. More or less.

Do want!
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7 comments:

Blast Hardcheese said...

The lightbulb is a nice touch.

I hope the terminals on those caps are well-shielded...

10:27 AM, February 14, 2010
Stranger said...

Nice. The limiting factor is available energy storage in Joules. (A Joule is essentially a Watt-second)

A few dozen farads of capacitor at a few hundred volts sequentially discharged through the inductors a dangerous weapon would make. Especially with that ounce and a half projectile. Which would make it bite on both ends.

Increasing the rate of fire would require a lower limiting resistance between the storage bank and the power source. HMM.

Feasible - only needs better capacitors to give 9MM energies, with a lot more potential damage.

Stranger

10:30 AM, February 14, 2010
Gewehr98 said...

Good thing he goes through a lot of energy drinks in that R&D lab. Makes for a lot of ready targets.

1:24 PM, February 14, 2010
Anonymous said...

2 shots in min. Does a bell come on warning people of impending shot, kind of like a level crossing?

1:59 PM, February 14, 2010
PeaceableGuy said...

No warning bell, but the lightbulb dims!

:D

What you're seeing is the tail end of the very first generation of electric weaponry. This guy and his project are super-cool in my book!

3:57 PM, February 14, 2010
Anonymous said...

This is Wonderful!

First prototype built in a week! And it Works!!

Now to refine the design and engineering from a firarms and ergonomics view, maybe using pointed bullet...
This has potential.

Bruce
crankyoldmanwithgun@yahoo.com

6:39 PM, February 14, 2010
Neutrino Cannon said...

Knock yourself out.


AIUI these things are tricky to build. You need an absolutely huge capacitor bank, and capacitors store enough electricity that they're actually explosive, so there are some safety issues. Then there's designing the actual solenoids so that you don't get suckback and that the timing is right, compensating for hysteresis...

IIRC these things end up being 1% or so efficient, compared to electric motors which are like, 80% efficient or better. Considering they're just a linear electric motor, more or less, you can see how difficult flinging things with magnets can be.

Now, rail guns, those you can get to gunpowder type power levels fairly easily, but they have their own set of problems, like tearing themselves to pieces in a flash of incandescent metal vapor.

7:30 AM, February 15, 2010

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