HackadayRailguns: Making Metal Go Fast Using the Lorentz Force
Railguns: Making Metal Go Fast Using the Lorentz Force https://hackaday.com/2026/02/24/railguns-making-metal-go-fast-using-the-lorentz-force/
#Engineering #OriginalArt #Science #WeaponsHacks #CoilGun #Lorentzforce #Railgun
#Engineering #OriginalArt #Science #WeaponsHacks #CoilGun #Lorentzforce #Railgun
PugJesus
Paul Houle🔫 Evaluating a Controlled Electromagnetic Launcher for Safe Remote Drug Delivery
(don’t miss this one: it’s a freaking handheld coil gun!)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7080/12/5/69
#technology #coilgun #electronics #lawenforcement #animalcontrol #drugs #guns
Evaluating a Controlled Electromagnetic Launcher for Safe Remote Drug Delivery
Biologists and veterinarians rely on dart projectors to inject animals with drugs, take biopsies from specimens, or inject tracking chips. Firearms, air guns, and other launchers are limited in their ability to precisely control the kinetic energy of a projectile, which can injure the animal if too high. In order to improve the safety of remote drug delivery, a lidar-modulated electromagnetic launcher and a soft drug delivery dart were prototyped. A single-stage revolver coilgun and soft dart were designed and tested at distances up to 8 m. With a coil efficiency of 2.25%, the launcher could consistently deliver a projectile at a controlled kinetic energy of 1.00 ± 0.006 J and an uncontrolled kinetic energy of 2.66 ± 0.076 J. Although modifications to charging time, sensors, and electronics could improve performance, our launcher performed at the required level at the necessary distances. The precision achieved with commercial components enables many other applications, from law enforcement to manufacturing.
BornachAndreas Spiess reruns a video from 5 years ago in which he destroys or damages several components in an attempt to build some random project he found on Instructables and then connect it to electronics it was never originally designed to be connected to. It is a favourite video that I refer people to whenever they try using a microcontroller, Raspberry Pi, etc to switch inductive loads
https://youtu.be/ReFUr3KuK40
Better than GreatScott's Coil Gun? A true story, how-to not do it
🙃 ɐıunp zsɐɯoʇ 
Not so long ago they tested innovative laser weapons, and now this 🤔 It must be admitted that they are not idle in terms of developing technology in the military sector.
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#Chinese #navy says it’s testing the planet’s most powerful #CoilGun | South #China Morning Post #TDBNews
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3232258/chinese-navy-says-its-testing-planets-most-powerful-coil-gun
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#Chinese #navy says it’s testing the planet’s most powerful #CoilGun | South #China Morning Post #TDBNews
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3232258/chinese-navy-says-its-testing-planets-most-powerful-coil-gun
hackaday unofficial[Electronoobs] built a coil gun and the obvious question is: how fast is the projectile? To answer it, he built a chronograph suitable for timing a bullet. The principle is straightforward. A laser and a light sensor would mark the entry and exit of the projectile over a known distance. As it turns out, there are some issues to resolve.
For one thing, a laser is too narrow and might miss the projectile. The first attempt to rectify this used mirrors, but the loss was too great -- we suspect he was using a second surface mirror. The final answer was to use an array of detectors and removed the laser's collimation lens to cover a wider area.
That worked, so all that was left was a nice mechanical design to allow changing the height of the sensors and the distance between the sensors. After that, an Arduino can take over.
We liked the mechanical design and the way he managed pushbuttons in the 3D printed case. We couldn't help but wonder if a first surface mirror might have worked better. We also thought it would be nice to add some sort of encoder to let the device measure the distance between sensors automatically since it is adjustable. We also thought the response time and wavelength sensitivity of light-sensitive resistors might be a bit off. It seems like a photodiode or transistor would be more accurate and have better sensitivity to the laser or even just a conventional light source. But this does seem to work.
How fast was the coil gun? Well over 100 meters per second. For a point of reference, a .22 caliber round will have a muzzle velocity of well over 300 meters per second, but, still, 120 to 130 meters per second is nothing to sneeze at.
If you need a coilgun, we always liked the looks of this one. Or, you might prefer a more futuristic look.
