Maggy, Locked And Loaded

maggy

Some readers may remember [Paul] from his project Jak, the blackjack robot; but his interests have moved toward coil gun creation. Maggy, his latest weapon, may not be the prettiest of coil gun we’ve seen, or the most environmentally friendly, but does look to be promising. Featuring a triple stage, logic based accelerator instead of the typical single stage, it can fire a 10 gram projectile (theoretically) up to 85 km/h! Check out how he’s gone from a single pistol to his current monster on his site, and a video of his work in progress after the jump.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U5D0d7d8NY&feature=player_embedded%5D

18 thoughts on “Maggy, Locked And Loaded

  1. It looks like the only part that is functional right now is the optical triggering, which currently only blinks LEDs anyway. It will be awhile before this is shooting anything…

    At the end of the video he mentions the capacitor charging system isn’t even finished yet.

  2. 85km/h? That’s not that fast at all, only 77fps. To put that in perspective, one can easily attain 150fps with a blowgun…

    With a 3.5g dart you’ll get roughly 3.8j with the blowgun, with the theoretical 10g projectile you’ll get 2.8j with the coil gun.

    It’s very nicely done and a neat project, but I can see how this is still a fledgling technology.

  3. The projectile is equivalent in weight to about 2 or 3 bullets for a .22LR. 10 grams is about 150 grains and a regular .22LR bullet runs around 40-60 grains. However the velocity on this gun has something to be desired, as stated in the first post its only doing around 77fps where many toy Nerf guns, more serious .177 BB rifles and I am pretty sure my hand can outpace easily.

    Also for those of you that aren’t firearms enthusiasts please note that I referred to the actual .22LR Projectile weight and not the whole thing so I did my math correctly.

  4. Exactly bigalexe,

    The weight of the projectile is 10 grams. Compare that to a 1 gram bb or pellet’s weight and there is a big difference :)

    As for the functionality, Its a work in progress. I update everything weekly and am planning on getting the Arduino control of the boost converter working soon. (I actually have the boost converter working already)

    The biggest hurdle atm is getting the capacitor banks to charge individually and discharge individually :/

    anyhow, thanks hackaday :D

  5. Nice project … wouldn’t mind seeing it in action though.

    Also the still shot of the massive gun at the start and end of the vid isn’t a coil gun it’s a rail gun owned by the US Navy (i think…)

  6. hey Abbott,

    thanks for the suggestion. I thought of that too, but another way is to use a ladder of diodes to isolate each bank, allowing charge in, but not out of each bank.

    I need to figure ut the size of the diodes needed tho.

  7. Seriously I don’t know what to say about coilguns / magnetic projectile guns. Maybe the correct scale for these things is artillery-size, firing a several-pound projectile or larger.

    But the more I look at these little proofs-of-concept, the less impressed I am with the whole idea: a bullet weighs more than ten grams, goes much (much) faster than 85 km/h, costs nothing, and can be accurately fired from a weapon small enough to toss in a pocket and cheap enough to put them in everyone’s hand who wants one.

    plus at this size, you’re never going to get past the loss due to extra energy conversions.

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