Any Idea on how to build a rail gun?

[Lithium381]

We were going over this in physics class today....anyone have any plans drawn up for this or any insight if i have to build from scratch? i just want to do one for the "learning experience"

 

[Adul]

try highly technical.

 

[Kelvrick]

Ehh... Rusty on the subject. I think something about metal plates and electromagnetism? Interesting stuff.

It probably has something to do with postive/negative charges and their attraction and so. If you wanted to konw about a gatling gun, I'd knw off the bat.

 

[AvesPKS]

I know how you can turn the tracks on the 'L' into one...but I'm not telling...

 

[AndyTriboletti]

These guys might know.

From slashdot.

 

[Evadman]

I have made a low powered one that would shoot a nail into a brick. PMme, or ask in HT.

 

[b0mbrman]

<< try highly technical. >>


LOL!

 

[Chooco]

you need lots of money to make a good one:
-strong electronicaly controlled magnets
-lots of electricty
-at least 20 feet of rail

it has to be made so that the projectile hovers above the ground with the use of non electrical magnets on the floor. on both sides of rail there has to be triggers so that when the marbel passes them, it feeds electricity to the magnets to accelerate the projectile.
if you don't know how electrical engineering works then your probably can't make one.

what i want to see is a railgun that launches a bullet at light speed :Q

 

[Cattlegod]

they work exactly the same way an eletric rail train travels. you have your charged object, the first mag charges N to attract, then when it passes, it changes to S to repel it forward while the next changes to N to attract. the process repeats for as long as you want to build speed.

 

[Chooco]

to make it easier he should just stick to 1 way, repell. having it attract then signal then repell could totaly screw up the system if the timing doesn't work on it. 1 direction, simple as she goes

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Duh, Railgun.org

 

[WarCon]

what i want to see is a railgun that launches a bullet at light speed

When you find an infinite source of electricity you might be able to. You will need something that rephases matter so that its motion will be born at the speed of light, then it will go faster with the less energy given (speed of light is the asymptotic point). But it won't do much in the ways of a weapon because it has little interaction with matter that is slower than the speed of light.......

 

[DDad]

Umm, didn't the guys at Hardocp have a link to a very basic one (I believe it involved a ruler, 5 magnets and a fistful of ball bearings) a couple of months ago? Certainly not very powerful (or dangerous), put certainly capable of demoing the concept

Edit- What I get for not reading the whole thread- the Gaussian rifle link mentioned above iss what I was thinking of

 

[bigalt]

my friends and I stole some stuff from the physics labs and tried to build one. basically the problems we found were these:

need way too much power to launch anything heavier than a paper clip
anything as light as a paper clip just flies off of the rail before reaching light speed.

 

[Chooco]

dude, railguns need to be super long. military rail guns are over 200 feet long.

 

[yakko]

You can buy my old one since I built a better model.

 

[Ken g6]

That Gaussian thing is interesting, but it's not a true rail gun. The simplest rail gun I can think of would involve laying a flexible wire across a magnet and applying a battery. (In theory.) To make anything more complex, you'll need sliding contacts.

I'd drop the equation F=IxB here, but I'm sure you're sick of physics.

Edit: I got a better idea. Two rails, magnets, a battery, and two ball bearings. The electrical forces should keep them together, and rolling works better than sliding.

Diagram:

+-----------------------------------
| O
| O
- ----------------------------------

 

[Jittles]

Rail guns use an electric current to create a magnetic force by inductions which then directs the projectile out of the gun.

In real rail guns, the current actually vaporizes a wire/filament into a conducting vapor so there is essentially no resistance, or very very little compared to a wire, then the gas expands upward and continues conducting as the projectile moves.

F = BIL

 

[AvesPKS]

<< strong electronicaly controlled magnets
-lots of electricty
-at least 20 feet of rail
>>



Like I said, find your city's favorite source of above/below ground public transit trains...I would choose the L. Then, get lots of cable and some steel drums, and see if you can split the uprights on the Sears Tower...or the Hancock Building...

 

[kamiam]

<< You can buy my old one since I built a better model. >>

pish-posh...laser is the only way to go....since when did you see a "mobile" rail gun that you can "aim"???

 

[yakko]

<<

<< You can buy my old one since I built a better model. >>

pish-posh...laser is the only way to go....since when did you see a "mobile" rail gun that you can "aim"??? >>

Listen here earthling, before you ask these questions maybe you should have all the facts. Maybe we build things more efficiently where I come from.

 

[Lithium381]

thanks guys! any idea on how much current i'm going to need? these guys claim to need something in the kilivolt range......sounds expensive

 

[ElFenix]

ever use the gauss rifle in mechwarrior? see, you need a giant robot first.

 

[DaiShan]

<< ever use the gauss rifle in mechwarrior? see, you need a giant robot first. >>



hahaha, ok, I got a giant robot for cheap off the russians (thanks to the hot deal forum I got a great deal), now what?

 

[Ameesh]

<< what i want to see is a railgun that launches a bullet at light speed :Q >>



it will never happen, it can get close but not all the way up to the speed of light.