When Airsoft Gets Boring, Build A Coil Gun!

August 24, 2011 by 30 Comments

airsoft_coilgun

Here at Hackaday, we’re all about repurposing old items you no longer use. Reader [Liquider] wrote in to share his latest creation, a coil gun built from an old Airsoft pistol.

He removed a handful of components from the pistol and installed a 800 uF/300V capacitor inside the grip. A small storage compartment was added under the barrel, which houses the AA battery he uses to drive the circuit. A modified reloading mechanism makes it easy to drop a metal projectile right in front of the coil before firing.

Once the pistol is charged up, a switch installed behind the trigger discharges the cap, creating a magnetic pulse that accelerates the metal projectile forward. [Liquider] estimates that the kinetic energy produced by the coil is 0.1 Joules, which fires of the slug at a reasonable speed.

Continue reading to see a quick video demo of the pistol in action.

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Final Projects: WiFi Coil Gun Turret

May 17, 2010 by 14 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU3QB3ScnGQ]

[Chris Farnell] and [Michael Helms] are the brains behind this scary looking piece of machinery. It is a Coil gun, mounted on a turret, that is controlled over WiFi. If that wasn’t scary enough, they have rigged it to their iphone/ipad for remote shooting. Though it looks bulky, you can see that it is surprisingly responsive in action.

Coil Gun Speed Meter

October 1, 2009 by 28 Comments

_DIY_bullet_speed_meter (Custom)

One of the best parts of building a coil gun is seeing just how fast you can get that slug to move through the air. [Daniel] built this speed meter to be able to see exactly that. It is comprised of two optical sensors, one at each end of a barrel. As the projectile passes them, its speed is calculated using an Atmega16. Since the distance between the sensors is pre determined, its only some simple math to figure out the speed of an object passing between them. The result is then displayed on a nice looking blue LCD.

If the blue accent lighting and acrylic stylings look familiar, that’s because we’ve seen [Daniel] before. He’s the one that built the portable coil pistol.

[via HackedGadgets]

Bolt-action Coil Gun

June 18, 2009 by 24 Comments

bolt_action_coil_gun

TechEBlog has posted a few pictures of a student constructed coil gun. It’s bolt-action and includes a six round magazine. The gun only has a single stage to accelerate the projectile. While not as impressive as the portable coil pistol, it’s still more fun than most shop projects we’ve seen. You can find a video of the device below.

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Wiimote Controlled Coil Gun

January 14, 2009 by 24 Comments

iocoil1

[thecapacity] sent us his iobridge project where he controls a coil gun with a Wiimote. To make the coil gun, he took apart an office golf putter that had a ball return.  The mechanism to return the ball is a metal cylinder that is moved magnetically. He simply replaced the cylinder with a smaller diameter piece of metal to create the gun.   His computer monitors the Wiimote axis changes and sends them to the ioBridge. The unit could be located anywhere, but without a camera on it, he’ll have a hard time aiming. There’s a video of it working after the break.

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Low Voltage Coil Gun

March 18, 2008 by 20 Comments


[Andrew] sent in his low voltage coil gun. He used some control hardware that most hardware hackers probably don’t have on their shelf, bit it’s still a good proof of concept. Each coil is driven by a dedicated relay, and a PC power supply feeds the system juice, while a programmable logic controller does the work. Since it’s just a matter of triggering the coils in order, the PLC could be easily replaced by a micro controller.

Electromagnetic Coil Gun

February 17, 2005 by 7 Comments

coil gun
remember greg the high voltage hacker that brought us the homemade night vision scope?  one reader commented:

Greg is a great guy with a ton of ingenuity. He is an inspiration for all high-voltage enthusiasts, and is the only person i know to have constructed a working Tesla coil out of nothing but junk. He is a Class-A hacker!

with a comment like that, and a few other tips i’ve recieved, i figured i should take a closer look at the other articles on his site.  his electromagnetic coil gun howtos are of particular interest.  on his site, they come in two sizes, small and large.

The total peak energy storage for this system is 1874 Joules, the same amount of caloric (not mass) energy found in 4.7 tablespoons of SKIPPY peanut butter. For reference, my other coil gun’s peak energy was 55 Joules or 0.14 tablespoons of peanut butter