Barry's Coilgun Design Site

http://www.coilgun.info/about/home.htm

by nkurz • 11 years ago

31 6 11 years ago

FrankenPC• 11 years ago

The super high power wedge shaped power transfer switch reminded me of my dad (high energy PhD) explaining how the super-colliders were experimenting with laser switched solid state relays capable of transferring enormous amounts of current with very little transition resistance. Unfortunately my father passed away so I can't get details from him. Maybe someone knows more about that technology. Or it never saw the light of day.

batbomb• 11 years ago

You make be actually be talking about plasma Wakefield acceleration

fernly• 11 years ago

The site is obviously a labor of love by a dedicated & clever experimenter. However it is frustrating for the casual visitor because (as far as I could see in 10 minutes browsing) there's no way to tell if any of these coilguns are ever fired. No videos, no photos of projectiles smushed into powder or annihilated targets.

ahelwer• 11 years ago

The average hobby coilgun is unlikely to annihilate targets. The ones we had lying around the physics department at my university could pretty much just fling a metal ring ten feet in the air, and could only fire once per minute to avoid overheating.

penprogg• 11 years ago

You might find this to be really cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWeJsaCiGQ0

it's a reall full auto gauss cannon. The obvious flaw is that there is no spin added to the projectiles so they flip all over the place.

joshuapants• 11 years ago

I wonder if this could be fixed with better projectile design. A lot of modern tanks have smoothbore barrels because they use rounds with sabots; once the sabot comes apart the actual projectile is self stabilizing.

I guess the other obvious flaw is that getting a coil gun to produce usable velocity takes a hell of a lot of power.

Barry's Coilgun Design Site

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