i had a cool idea... it involves railguns.
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ok. heres my idea. i suppose i would describe it as sort of a "poor man's rail gun", but it probably wont be at all dangerous. which i guess is good.
picture two parallel rails made out of, say, 1/8" wooden dowel. the ammunition would be ball bearings maybe 2cm in diameter. they rails as i will call them would be about 1.7 cm apart, and would form a track that the ball followed and could not easily leave.
one of these rails would be conductive (wrapped in aluminum foil, perhaps), and connected to say, ground (it would work with vdd as well, just need different mosfets. but ill get to that).
the other rail would have small, evenly spaced conductive spots that were maybe 1.5cm in run and .5cm apart.
so youd need to make U shaped electromagnets, that had maybe a 2.3cm inner diameter, so that you could get the rail into the U part, where i'd assume you would be getting the maximum field strength (the shape of the magnets could be experimented with). the magnets would also be about 1.5cm wide, so that their spacing lines up with the conductive parts of the second rail.
the main circuitry would be deviously simple. you would need a step-up converter that can step about 3V up to 350v or so. you might think that this would be impossible, or hard, but disposeable cameras have a circuit that do exactly this. (the PSone screen does as well). if nessecary i could make my own (or basically copy the circuit we use in the solarcar). this high voltage would be used to charge some seriously hefty high voltage capacitors, one for each magnet. (im thinking like 1F. *tim allen noise*) but even like 1000uF or something like that would probably be pretty impressive (or not, i really dont know)
the battery gets stepped up and charges these huge capacitors. the capacitors are connected directly to the magnets, with a mosfet switching them on and off (youd need a pretty hefty mosfet), and the gate of the mosfets is connected to the little conductive stretches of rail.
so you drop the ball on the rail, and bring it into contact with the first metal strip. the mosfet opens, and the magnet fires. the magnet itself is an inductor, which will spread the current spike out a bit. hopefully not too much. the mosfets (assuming we're dealing with a ground rail) would be pulled up on the gate pin, so that as soon as the ball leaves the switch mechanism, the magnet would shut off, preventing it from ending up pulling the ball backwards as the capacitor/inductor finishes draining.
...
maybe i will attempt this sometime on christams break. its kidna of a pain in the ass to get it all working together though...
picture two parallel rails made out of, say, 1/8" wooden dowel. the ammunition would be ball bearings maybe 2cm in diameter. they rails as i will call them would be about 1.7 cm apart, and would form a track that the ball followed and could not easily leave.
one of these rails would be conductive (wrapped in aluminum foil, perhaps), and connected to say, ground (it would work with vdd as well, just need different mosfets. but ill get to that).
the other rail would have small, evenly spaced conductive spots that were maybe 1.5cm in run and .5cm apart.
so youd need to make U shaped electromagnets, that had maybe a 2.3cm inner diameter, so that you could get the rail into the U part, where i'd assume you would be getting the maximum field strength (the shape of the magnets could be experimented with). the magnets would also be about 1.5cm wide, so that their spacing lines up with the conductive parts of the second rail.
the main circuitry would be deviously simple. you would need a step-up converter that can step about 3V up to 350v or so. you might think that this would be impossible, or hard, but disposeable cameras have a circuit that do exactly this. (the PSone screen does as well). if nessecary i could make my own (or basically copy the circuit we use in the solarcar). this high voltage would be used to charge some seriously hefty high voltage capacitors, one for each magnet. (im thinking like 1F. *tim allen noise*) but even like 1000uF or something like that would probably be pretty impressive (or not, i really dont know)
the battery gets stepped up and charges these huge capacitors. the capacitors are connected directly to the magnets, with a mosfet switching them on and off (youd need a pretty hefty mosfet), and the gate of the mosfets is connected to the little conductive stretches of rail.
so you drop the ball on the rail, and bring it into contact with the first metal strip. the mosfet opens, and the magnet fires. the magnet itself is an inductor, which will spread the current spike out a bit. hopefully not too much. the mosfets (assuming we're dealing with a ground rail) would be pulled up on the gate pin, so that as soon as the ball leaves the switch mechanism, the magnet would shut off, preventing it from ending up pulling the ball backwards as the capacitor/inductor finishes draining.
...
maybe i will attempt this sometime on christams break. its kidna of a pain in the ass to get it all working together though...
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- Reploid Ayla
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lol. if someone can actaully go through with building this, they deserve to shoot things with it.
and besides, i highly doubt youre going to get any sort of deady velocity. especially if youre building it all by hand. im piacturing some poorly made thing thats only like a foot long
and besides, i highly doubt youre going to get any sort of deady velocity. especially if youre building it all by hand. im piacturing some poorly made thing thats only like a foot long
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- Triton
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thats not really how a normal railgun works anyway, sounds off to me. most railguns consist of a bank of capacitors with a HUGE SCR to act as the firing mechanism. the rails have to be highly conductive and solid metal/ uses the lorentz force to accelerate the projectile. yours is a railgun but different i guess
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Ya, most railguns use a bank of capasitors from eather a bunch of cameras or from something biger. About 3 camera banks can fire a sliver of tin foil out of a 2 inch berrel at about 25 mph. The bigger ones that use charged plazma and have 25-30 cm berrals can fire ball berings at anywhere from 300 mph-1500 mph depending on how hard you change them (aka certin death).
- blabmouth02
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portable gaming......railguns;
portable gaming......railguns;
oh okay I see the connection
portable gaming......railguns;
oh okay I see the connection
The only reason I bought an XBOX instead of a gamecube was because of the crappy zelda graphics. Now getting a rev because of Zelda graphics with no HD...irony: I think so!
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- Triton
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sam barrow rocks chech out his powerlabs site! but the mose awe inspiring railgun i have heard of is the maxwell labs gun, a 2.2kg projectile movine at mach 24.5 is insane! or the sandia national labs gun, a .1g projectile at appx mach 1200!
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Hand held railguns won't be very powerfull. Newtons law states that for ever acction there is an equal and oposite reaction. If someone were to fire one they would be shot back at mach 1200 (aka death).
The US government have created a Phazer tho. It is a handheld gun that fires a lazer burst out of the end, the UN Law states that no country can use lazers because they can permenently blind people but the US Phazer has an onboard computer that calculates the distance to the target and ajusts the lazer's power to compisate, makeing the people blind for only a couple days to hours.
The US government have created a Phazer tho. It is a handheld gun that fires a lazer burst out of the end, the UN Law states that no country can use lazers because they can permenently blind people but the US Phazer has an onboard computer that calculates the distance to the target and ajusts the lazer's power to compisate, makeing the people blind for only a couple days to hours.
you are right about the reaction force thing, but it is also directly proportional to the mass. if a 90kg person fires a .1 kg projectile out of a gun at, say 2700m/s (thats 2.7 km/s), the person would only go backwards at 3m/s, assuming no friction anywhere yadda yadda.
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Railguns and other dangerous crap: http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun.htm