A Tabletop Demonstration Railgun
The projectile is injected at less than 25 fps (the approximate lower limit of our
speed-measuring equipment) and it is coming out approximately 200 fps. The speed was attempted
to be measured with an optical timer device intended for measuring the speed of rifle bullets.
The measurements were unsuccessful, we believe due to the flash of light from the firing of the
gun. Only once was a measurement obtained - 231 fps. We were unable to make a current
measurement because we did not have a current monitor with low enough gain to output a low
enough voltage to send through attenuators into an oscilloscope. Overall, however, the project
did demonstrate the principle behind a railgun, and therefore was successful.
NOTE: The AVIs have been removed from this
mirror
Hopefully, someday we will be able to continue this series of experiments. I would like
to build a new gun setup that would be enclosed around the rails, trapping the plasma created
(allowing experimentation with a plasma armature). This setup would have an integrated speed-
measuring system, and we would also find a way to measure the current waveform.
Starting with approximately the same capacitor bank as we have now, I would like to scale
the power back, and experiment with lower power levels, trying for higher efficiency.