Charles Builds Stuff |
As Cage The Elephant said, there ain't no rest for the wicked.
I had been working on a new coilgun design on my spare time from about January 2020 onwards. Time passed, nations plunged into dissarray, and I wound up working at Hacksmith again for my final co-op.
Spoiler: The new version keeps catching fire. I'm working on it.
Apparently, I was running my mouth about this cool new project a bit too much, since I was asked by Ian to prepare a budget for construcing this device as a work project.
With the warning that I was out on a fishing trip for one of the four remaining weeks of the term, I agreed to get the thing built.
So, it should come as no surprise that, then, I wrote a report on this one too.
The only real constraint on the project was the same as round 4: Don't get arrested for building it. As for performance constraints, I had a few things:
On top of that, I decided that the gun had to be
than the last one (HackSmith CoilGun M.2020, or HSCG20).
I also wanted to keep to battery operation, rather than using capacitors for energy storage[1]. The performance seen on HSCG20 did not suggest that batteries were a problem, and better batteries were available.
I started the design on my own budget and time. So, clearly, I wanted to design this thing to have the cheapest super high power supply that I could get my hands on. I looked about, and found that Turnigy had relased a new series of battery that lays claim to an incredible amps! Three of these 4S packs could provide, according to their manufacturer's claims, 77,000W. That ought to be plenty.
[1]: Since getting most of the design work dealt with, I've been thinking about other ways to drive a railgun or coilgun. My current favourite idea is a hydraulically or pneumatically accelerated flywheel on an alternator. Could allow for some very interesting sounding arrangements - we don't need boost converter whine, we've got a die grinder! That, and the power density on, say, a truck starter motor is pretty darn good.