You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, Another Coilgun

All we needed to read was 4x 3900uF capacitor bank to know we had yet another decently sized homemade coilgun on our hands. And for the math buffs, that equates out to 1.25kJ of potential energy (efficiency kills it down to 37j of kinetic, but large numbers are more fun) which is more than enough to break skin; of course we recommend you just shoot old electronics rather than friends. On the more technical side, sure its only a single stage for now and we’ve seen some slightly more impressive triple stage guns, but it may just be more beautiful than our previously featured coil pistol. You guys be the judge. Catch a complete video after the jump of the internals and build process, skip ahead to 2:40 for the destruction.

[via TheDailyWh.at]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LjnhhtHojM&feature=player_embedded#!%5D

41 thoughts on “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, Another Coilgun

  1. i have 10 400V 3900UF caps i got off ebay for $5 a peace not doing anything … get my self some SCRs some enameled wire and maybe throw together a 4 stage? (one for injecting) may be fun .. but a can crusher is slightly more appealing to me … maybe a wire vaporizer … or maybe a rail gun or maybe *walks away rambling*

  2. I’m poor so I’ll just have to use about 50 of the low-capacitance 2100V caps I got lying around the shop. I’ll make the charging circuit out of TV components (flybacks on those are bitchin’) and part out some transformers from commercial microwaves; then just use some of the nossler ballistic tip bullets from the gun shed as ammo.

    Not even the trolls could say that wouldn’t be a hack.

  3. @Mike

    What’s the ESR on the caps. Most high farad caps have a high ESR that will limit the output current of the cap.

    @biozz

    Hockeypucks are the way to go. Just need to devise a clamping mechanism for them.

    Also I think fewer turns of heavier wire for the coil might be better. I wonder how long it is actually firing for.

  4. This would be perfect with a mechanical injector; perhaps a pair of spinning wheels that inject the projectile into the coil, and a sensor that triggers the coil at just the right moment.

  5. Torvaun: Have you ever fired a bullpup rifle? The magazine is in the same position as the capacitors (if I have it right; they’re the big blue things in the stock, right?). The magazine on a bullpup isn’t in the way of anything. This setup looks fine to me, and I love the look of the build. Could use it to infiltrate a scifi convention, dressed up like a generic space marine, and off a nerd you don’t like.

  6. Would get a much more potent shot if the projectile was much smaller. So much energy is being expended to make a massive projectile travel relatively slowly. A projectile a third of the size as currently being used would make a dramatic improvement to velocity and impact force.

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