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Make a poweful (green) railgun!

by rp181 on March 19, 2009 Table of Contents Make a poweful (green) railgun! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intro: Make a poweful (green) railgun! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 1: Obtain parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 2: Assemble the enclosure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 3: Make the bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 4: Make the charger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 5: .................................................................................................................. 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 4

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

Intro: Make a poweful (green) railgun!

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for anything that happens. Veiw my project at: http://rp181.110mb.com Under railgun. The goal of this guide is to show you how to make a railgun. Railgun's offer a green method of projectile acceleration, with minimal byproducts and waste. Railguns use electricity to propel a projectile. because of this, they create no waste. In addition, the materials used do not pose a ecohazard, while the materials makes it very long life. Depending on your resources, this project can be free, or up to 1000$. Veiw my project at: http://rp181.110mb.com Under railgun. Do not attempt this unless you have expiereance with high voltage and projectile's, this can be FATAL. You should know how to make one already. Vital information that is easy has been left out, I do not want everone to make oe and kill themselves.This is a guide on the order to do it, or if your skills lie soewhere else, and you do not know about one area. Emai me if you have any questions ([email protected]). Check out my rogowski coil, it was used in this :http://www.instructables.com/id/Make_a_Rogowski_coil/

Step 1: Obtain parts

Here is a parts list: 1)capacitor bank. I used 18 400v 3900uf capacitor's in parallel. This comes out to 5600 joules. Make sure you stay above 300v, and below 600v. These are harmless to the enviornment. They are aluminum based. 2)busbars. I used aluminum. 3)3 120uf 300v capacitors. 4) 60A 600v diodes 5)cable's. I used 00 AWG 6)rails. Copper bars here 7) 2"x.5"x12" aluminum. 8)projectiles. Make it close tolerance. 9) A railgun enclosure. I suggest designing your own. It should have a .5" bore, with strong materials. Mines GREEN! both ways! Email me if you want a design ([email protected]) 10) misc. support equipment. 11)PVC for injector. Use your own design. Look up "spudgun" for ideas. Veiw my project at: http://rp181.110mb.com Under railgun.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

Step 2: Assemble the enclosure

Using your design, put the rails in. put the projectile in, and attach the injector. For the injector decide on a good chamber volume. My injection stage was 1 foot long, so i decided to use 4 feet of .5" PVC. My valve consists of a membrane, which is punctured by a nail when i push it in. If you want to go simple, use a ball valve. The enclosure should use many bolts, as to distribute the force. Make sure you material is strong, mine is made of garolite G-11. A cost effecive material is GP03 fiberglass, check out mcmaster-carr. Your rails should only be after the injection stage. At the front, put "fake rails". This is where the projectile is accelarated by the injector. This should be non conducting, I used teflon. Before construting the bank, fire the injector, to make sure the projecile can slide through. The projectile CAN NOT be too lose, do as close tolerance as you can. Keep in mind the projectile has to be diamagnetic, and conductive. The best that meets the criteria is aluminum, copper, and carbon, NOT GRAPHITE! Test how well the chamber can hold its pressure, test the vavle a couple of times. Do not get carried away with the injctor, you want the main power to come from the railgun. I only use 60 PSI. If you do not wan to pump, add a co2 system, such as a paintball tnk. Make sure you have a regulator, or a chamber capable of the full pressure. http://rp181.110mb.com

Step 3: Make the bank

Now its time to assemble the bank. Depending on the power you plan to use, you need the be carefull about the layout. All positive and negative connections will repel. sometime enough to force them apart. Arange your capacitor's to the desired configuration. Make sure all the terminals are parallel. Lay your bus bar, cut to length, next to one row of terminals. Mark there location on the bus bar, and measure in to te center. Take a nail, and hammer a inprint onto each of these points. Take all you cut to length bus bars, and stack them up. Put some layers of tape around it to hold, with the marked one on top. Drill through the bars STRAIGHT! Untape all of them, and sand the bus bars, as well as the capacitor terminals. This is important, as i discovered, the oxide laer that forms is enough to cause a bad connection, and exploding bus bars. Screw them all on. I used a corrosion (conductive!) inhibitor (kopr-shield) o prevent it from oxdizing again. Now take another bar, and lay it perpindicular to the bus bars. Mark each alternating bar, and drill. Cut some squares to elevate the bar, and connect the bar to alternating bars to connect the rows in parallel. Charge the bank with a 9 volt battery to test if there is any shorts. The main page picture shows this well

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

Step 4: Make the charger

I used a voltage tripler, but this may be too powerful for smaller banks, and cause them to overcharge. The maximum output of this is 500 volts, I stop it when it reaches 400volts. Use this to make it: http://www.coolcircuit.com/circuit/voltage/vt.GIF Make sure your diodes are rated enough, or they will blow. This has a large insrush current, you must be on a house fuse that is rated for 20 amps or higher. Note for 240v users:A voltage doubler will be enough for you guys. Connect the voltage doubler to the bank, and take it to your banks peak voltage. Hold it there overnight, it will help your capacitor's.

Step 5:
fire! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cV10QEGGk Make sure your target is strong enough, mine was better then expected. I suggest a cardboard box to catch ricochet, with metal plates on the inside. Behind the target, put some blankets to make sure. Railgun's are all about innovation. If you have a resonable idea, try it. If you intend to actually do research, some instruments would be nice. I made a rogowski coi (on my site). http://rp181.110mb.com

Related Instructables

How to build a simple Plasma Rifle aka Electrothermal Rifle by geckowil

400 volt RAIL GUN by minisojo

Rail Gun (video) by visstok

How to make a RAILGUN! by AlexTheGreat

Knex FirehawkBanshee transformable fighter-jet! by TigerNod

The Plasma Speaker by Plasmana

Comments
50 comments Add Comment view all 84 comments
Jan 22, 2011. 10:49 PM REPLY

sandito says:
I've been posting a lot but if you are going to go to a link I posted go to this one-->http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200440174628&ssPageName=ADME:X:eRTM:US:1123 It is a 400v 2700uF capacitor and even though the listing says one, I emailed the company and they have hundreds!

sandito says:

Jan 18, 2011. 7:45 PM REPLY I finally found the exact ones that are in this instructables, go to this link ---------> http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/Technologies/Product.aspx?ProductID=ELX401LGN392TEB5MUNITEDCHEMICON7574593

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

hobohitler says:
http://www.sourceesb.com/Distributors/United-Chemi-Con-UCC.asp

Jan 17, 2011. 8:39 PM REPLY

go to this link and you will find all the distributors of these capacitors and I found a few in my city which means I don't have to buy online.

ElectronicsNub says:
Are you really worrying about pollution when firing a projectile of any sort? Just sayin..

Jan 8, 2011. 8:02 PM REPLY

Th3Ob3rst says:

Dec 3, 2010. 3:47 AM REPLY I was actually thinking of making a sort of low-power railgun. Possibly also small caliber. The reasons are many: smaller currents, so smaller capacitors, smaller forces involved. Sure thing i would get much smaller speeds, but i'm not looking for an high speed railgun. My idea would be something the more portable i can make it, and obviously efficient, even if low powered. Any opinion? Is this a wrong approach?. P.S. One of the reasons I want to go with low power is that, although i have some experience with circuits, capacitors and even moderately high voltages, this would be my first rail gun and I don't want to aim high and risk screwing up everything.

MrMadmonkey4 says:
i wounder if this is even leagal. the army hardly uses railguns

Apr 30, 2010. 8:35 PM REPLY

ponolee says:

Nov 27, 2010. 4:09 AM REPLY Yes it is legal, but u should check ur individual state laws for firearm usage. And the navy uses it not the army. Well I mean they dont use it but they are developing it.

jobergy says:

Aug 3, 2010. 10:00 AM REPLY Ok so im a bit new with electronics but i have some ideas to make a rail gun more efficient and what not... my problem is i have no idea what to look for in a capacitor for this type of application, or where to find one of this sort... i was just going to pick up a couple car audio capacitors. but looking through some of these comments made me think otherwise, so am i looking for more farads or for more volts (i saw the not above 600 volts and wondered why)? can you help me out?

ponolee says:
You want high voltage but a quick discharge

Nov 27, 2010. 4:05 AM REPLY

geek10102 says:
WHERE YOU GET THOSE CAPS AT MAN THEY DONT COME CHEAP DO THEY I'VE LOOKED

Aug 6, 2010. 10:32 PM REPLY

ponolee says:
It all depends where u buy them The humongous ones can cost like 50 each

Nov 27, 2010. 4:04 AM REPLY

rp181 says:
I got some of them for 6 dollars each at alltronics.com. The rest were from a sponsor.

Aug 7, 2010. 8:05 AM REPLY

geek10102 says:
thx your a life saver

Aug 12, 2010. 11:17 AM REPLY

Andy1312 says:

Nov 25, 2010. 10:38 AM REPLY Could you please explain the voltage tripler a bit more? I love this instructable, but I don't quite understand the tripler. I've working on building one, and that's sort of a key part.

rp181 says:
Have you had a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_doubler? or here: http://rp181.fortscribe.com/?page_id=31 (my website)

Nov 25, 2010. 3:39 PM REPLY

What a doubler/tripler does is charges the capacitors in 1 phase (60 Hz mains), and in the next phase, the capacitors dump in a series configuration, tripling the voltage. the schematic is very simple (look at my page). Just think through what would happen as 1 lead is positive and 1 is negative, and when they flip.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

sandito says:
but thanks a lot for this tutorial rp181 (imagine the "this" is not in the last post)

Nov 6, 2010. 12:02 AM REPLY

sandito says:
thanks hobo this i don't know why rp181 couldn't just tell us

Nov 5, 2010. 11:57 PM REPLY

Aligaga says:
Hi, great project! Do you know where i can buy these capacitors? Thanks and greets

Oct 22, 2010. 2:02 PM REPLY

hobohitler says:
you can get them at the electrostore.com just type 400V 3900uF

Nov 5, 2010. 11:53 PM REPLY

BOOM5601 says:
I'm thinking about doing a railgun as a launching system for ramjet powered aircraft for my next science project, any tips?

Oct 18, 2010. 5:45 AM REPLY

rp181 says:
Your bigger issue here is the ramjet... Just look at my website

Oct 18, 2010. 3:32 PM REPLY

BOOM5601 says:

Oct 19, 2010. 9:32 AM REPLY I'm going to make a straight pulsejet for the ramjets, which isn't the same as the fancy schmancy ones they have now, but it will serve my purpose.

Speedmite says:

Nov 4, 2010. 8:42 PM REPLY Just remember, Your launching this thing. This was firing ball bearings. How big you makin this? And your running electricity through it. Simpler way to lauch that.

tinkerman92 says:
is it possible to make a railgun with an old tractor ignition coil?

Oct 20, 2010. 9:14 PM REPLY

x0220 says:

Sep 1, 2010. 9:19 PM REPLY would this type of capacitor be of any good? http://theelectrostore.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/capacitor-lk200-104-lk-200-moreInfo.html

GreenD says:

Jan 10, 2010. 4:18 PM REPLY Cool, but it seems like almost all of your energy is going into creating plasma, and not actually accelerating your projectile - it may be better to have a lower voltage, no? I plan to make a smaller hand held one using the small 350 volt, 330 uF capacitors. I like this idea though. Have you experimentedwith lower voltages?

rp181 says:
400 volts is already low, you want as high voltage as possible. Higher voltage, higher peak current

Jan 10, 2010. 5:49 PM REPLY

lucek says:
he dose have a point you are wasting a bit of energy on that flash that's not getting converted to kinetic energy.

Jul 3, 2010. 7:24 AM REPLY

REA says:
just currious, what would happen if you were to use a 9000uf capacitor? =D

Feb 22, 2010. 10:22 AM REPLY

deathly mauler1467 says:

with enough of them, PWNAGE!

Jun 16, 2010. 6:26 PM REPLY

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

REA says:

Jun 16, 2010. 8:15 PM REPLY hmm... only problem is it would take an enormous amount of energy to charge it. but the space/time shattering power would be simply beautiful!

lucek says:
now switch the projectile to a HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8 slug and chill the apparatus with lN2 and you'd watch it fly.

May 9, 2010. 8:20 PM REPLY

deathly mauler1467 says:

whats HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8?

Jun 16, 2010. 11:30 AM REPLY

lucek says:

Jun 16, 2010. 5:31 PM REPLY HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8 is the ceramic that has the highest temperature (at 133k, where liquid nitrogen boils at 77 K) superconductive material known to man.

Peter.Steele says:

May 17, 2010. 5:31 PM REPLY So I've been thinking about railguns lately, and various other assorted electrical discharge toys ... but availability of high voltage, high capacitance capacitors is a bit of a problem for me. I have, however, found some 100 farad (yes, 100 F, not uF) capacitors ... but they're only 16 volt. Now, if I'm doing the calculations right, at 16 volts charge, that'd work out to 12.8kJ ... do the job? I guess the question is, can it dump all of the juice quickly enough to

Also, with all this talk of using air for injection ... has anyone thought about using the .22 rimfire propellant cartridges for heavy duty nailguns? Seems like that might give you a nice boost in speed ...

rp181 says:
Those are not designed for pulses, You will just ruin the caps.

May 20, 2010. 4:35 PM REPLY

Peter.Steele says:
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I guess I'll be searching for a while for a set of big enough HV caps to really do the job.

May 20, 2010. 10:45 PM REPLY

Armchair Pyro says:

What is your cost prediction? Please only answer if you've done this.

Apr 12, 2010. 6:07 PM REPLY

rp181 says:
By the way, website changed to rp181.wordpress.com

Jan 10, 2010. 1:18 PM REPLY

nighthawkx123 says:
Could your charging circuit be used for a coilgun as well? Or is only intended for a railgun?

Jan 10, 2010. 12:32 PM REPLY

rp181 says:
It is intended for capacitors, so yes :)

Jan 10, 2010. 1:18 PM REPLY

Shoeler says:

Nov 2, 2009. 5:44 PM REPLY so is it the current or the voltage that is the main factor here? i saw u said that that power creates erosion, so does that mean you get more force out of that? if its about power, couldnt you lower the voltage and up the amps?

rp181 says:

Nov 2, 2009. 7:56 PM REPLY It's Current that matters. However, to get more amps through you need a higher voltage (search ohms law). To lower the voltage and get higher amperes, you would have to decrease the resistance substantially. Erosion is completley different. Erosion is the vaporization that occurs when the power is initially connected. The massive power vaporizes the metal due to resistance (contact resistance = alot of heat). Erosion is BAD, but unavoidable

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/

lemonie says:
This isn't very clear - why the tubing and 'gas' references? L

Mar 20, 2009. 3:27 PM REPLY

rp181 says:

Mar 20, 2009. 4:30 PM REPLY Not sure to what your refrencing to, but its probably the injector. Injectors are not needed...if you have ALOT of money for a solid state switch. All it is is a gas source (i use air) simply pressurized in a chamber, and quickly release to shove the projectile into the rails. Basically, a capacitor equivalent of air.

lemonie says:
I'm not sure whether this is driven by gas or electricity or both? L

Mar 20, 2009. 4:41 PM REPLY

rp181 says:

Mar 20, 2009. 6:57 PM REPLY Both. The gas pushes the conductive projectile between the rails, and with that momentum, all the capacitor's energy dumps through it. Lorentz force ADDS more kinetic energy to the aluminum. So while the injection does drive it, the end result is mostly from the capacitors.

lemonie says:
Right, I get it - thanks for the detail L

Mar 21, 2009. 2:04 AM REPLY

BeanahVulgaris says:

Aug 24, 2009. 2:05 PM REPLY I believe the US Navy used a similar setup, except they used a directed explosion to inject the projectile onto the rails.... very cool picture of this too. Question.... if a smaller railgun were made to fire a mercury droplette(hypothetical as experimenting with this may be very hazardous) i wonder if the electrical surge through it would help keep its 'hydrostatic pressure' (just keep it clinging to itself) and once it comes out of the nozzel, would it fillament (i would probably hold some residual charge, and moving as a charged liquid object would fillament or constrict due to the magnetic field produced. Basically you get a thin column of mercury that gets thinner with the distance (so less air resistance) but doesnt loose any kinetic energy (infact it should reduce the area of impact, making it more penetrating....) .... i think i have a mad scientist gene somewhere....... anyways, im more interested in the idea rather than constructing such an evil device. (evil is relative i know.... its just a tool.. its the intent behind the tool... swords to ploughshears and all that.).

WhiteTigerTails says:

Sep 26, 2009. 8:50 PM REPLY It could be very possible, Vulgaris. It all depends on how you run it. Personally, I'd use an aluminum shell, that splits upon exit, and hope that the force is enough to drive the Mercury into that column you're so seeking to achieve. I, myself, as an insane scientific mind, (One step above mad), have often thought of ways to take the ordinary (Like a railgun is ordinary) and make it something of military value, or just plain fun.

view all 84 comments

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-poweful-a-green-railgun/