CoilGunRifle.jpg (7453Bytes)
CoilGunRifle_2.jpg (29618Bytes)
I have been making soem good progress on the Coil Gun Rifle:
Larger images in attachments.
The left most picture is the coil gun with the cover on it, and the right image is of the cover removed. You can see the Primary capacitor bank (green), and the 2 secondary coil banks (brownish). The coil gun will be a 3 stage coil gun, consisting of a primary coil followed by 2 acceleration coils. The firing coil will have a power of 302.4 Joules, while Acceleration Coil 1 and 2 will have a much lower output at 60.48 Joules. Why multistage? I am hoping that while the primary firing coil will get the projectile up to speed, each acceleration coil will help the round to accelerate past the inefficencies of friction if only the primary firing coil was present.
This is great, but what is a coil gun?
If you have ever made a electromagnet out of a nail and wire, and connect it up to a battery, then you will experience the awesomeness of magnetivity. A coil gun uses a similar principle, although instead of sending power through the coil constantly, it stores all of the power into a capacitor bank. Once the bank is fully charged, it dumps all the energy into the coil, creating a massive electromagnetic field, pulling the projectile into the coil, and the field destabilizes and "turns off". The projectile continues down the barrel, and out of the gun.