RailGun Project (RG-PL-Rev01) 1000mps

 

The railgun pictured above was purchased from our good friends at Powerlabs in order to continue and further the research in this amazing field of science. The information you will find here will keep you up to date on our current project (minus any proprietary data or sensitive materials) and will not teach you about railgun physics...for that it is advised you research the topic online. This railgun has a theoretical projectile velocity of 1000mps or faster.  There were several problems with the original design which will be addressed and corrected or improved upon as this project advances over time.

 

Picture on the left is a good picture of the Garolite barrel, 20KJ capacitor bank and inductor.  Picture on the right is a good shot of the injector system.  The Majority of the weaknesses lie in the barrel design and power transfer infrastructure.  The minor weaknesses lie in the inductor and injector system.  The key issued will be addressed & improved upon - over the course of time.

 

Above you can see the exit side of the Garolite barrel of the railgun.  You can see the intense wearing of the rails after just a few shots.  Our next barrel will have a precise transition from air propelled projectile to magnetically propelled via exact machining and a new proprietary rail design to alleviate some of the plasma arcing which is eating the rails after just a few shots.  We will also experiment with the use of argon as an injector propellant instead of regular air or nitrogen which tend to be corrosive in the presence of an arc. Below is our progress as of lately, below are the top and bottom sections of the railguns.  We machined enough parts to make 2 railguns and will have 100KJ of capacitors on the way in December.  We are hoping to have a portable version of our 50KJ railgun system made by mid 2008.  It will be the most powerful, portable railgun on Earth.

 

You can see that we switched to a more superior 0.6" Thick Garolite G11 material due to the fact it is rated for high temperatures, extremely hard rated M112 and is Mil Spec.  This material will withstand 14,000psi.

 

Below you can check out the fiber wrapped 20cuft aluminum tank for our revised air injection system.  We removed the valve and tapped the inlet of the tank to 1"NPT.  Next to it is the 11.1CV factor 1500PSI high pressure valve we will be using to dump 420 gallons per minute through the railgun injector.  Formula > (CV factor X √1500).

 

You can see below that the Garolite which is commercially available is not true (level and square) so we had to make it that way by machining off the bumps and waviness. There are still low spots but only on one side, so that will be the outside of the bore.  AND we made enough parts for 2 railguns.  NOW all of our parts are true and we are ready to start the serious machining.

 

Here we are machining the top rails, one at a time.  This is the recessed channel for our copper rails.  There will be a channel in the top and bottom.  The channel is less than 1mm deep and 5/8" wide.  No our copper rails are not going to be 5/8" wide...wait and see

 

Below are the semi-finished channels.  See how clean they are.  Precision is everything.

 

Below is our pile of almost completed Garolite parts.

 

The sides of the railgun with the slots for the copper rails and projectile guide insert.  Notice how we leave the glazed, smooth side of the garolite un-machined on the inward side so the projectile will slide with less resistance and the glazed, smooth surface is less porous to discharge vapors and spatter.

12-17-2007

Tesla Coil Secondary Winder

 

The TCSW1 is our design for wrapping the Secondary Coils for Tesla Coils. It is Fully automatic.  You simply set the stepper motor speed based upon your coil and wire diameter, Push the start button and it wraps the coil for you.  It starts and finished automatically using an optical sensor at the finishing end.  The whole design is based around a wood lathe available at any hardware store.  If you need one call us, they are $250.00 plus shipping.  We removed the internal drive motor and replaced it with a gear reduced motor to provide greater torque at lower speeds which in turn will allow greater accuracy. The wire is on a bearing spindle and is tensioned by a teflon backed, spring loaded arm to reduce slack and keep tension on the wire.  The wire feeds through a network of small pulleys which also have teflon tensioners on them.  Finally the wire ends up at the end of yet another pulley made of teflon.  The arm which feeds the wire onto the coil is spring loaded for tension.  Tension cannot be stressed enough when wrapping secondary coils.  It must be tense or your coil will be crap.

 

The picture above shows detail of the sliding pulley assembly which keeps the wire feed smooth, a simpler design can be used to guide the wire into a single pulley.  It is important to keep tension between the stationary pulley and the linear arm's first pulley because as the distance increases so will slack in the wire. All of the tig welding was done with a RilandUSA (Riland) Brand Super160P welding & plasma cutting machine.

 

This pictures shows more detail of the stepper motor and pulley assembly.  We used surplus belts from various sources.  Stepper motors can be purchased from any surplus electronics store. We installed a microswitch on a magnet which can be moved back and forth along the length of the rail to accommodate various length forms.  The microswitch is connected to a control box which houses the power supply for all electronics and the stepper motor driver. The Stepper Motor driver and stepper motor are standard and can be found anywhere they are sold.  The PWM circuit to adjust the pulse rate of the stepper motor was made using a 555 timer circuit - I love 555 timers.  Our small circuit board we designed for the Ultrahigh plasma generator works great, they are $3.00 plus shipping if you need one. We still need to install a multiturn potentiometer on the PWM circuit for fine tuning it. 12-17-2007

GolfBall Cannon #2

(Updated 12-08-2007) We are building another golfball cannon (or glorified potato gun) using a spare valve we purchased for our railgun project above.  The ratings on this valve are awesome.  It is capable of 430 gallons per minute of flow at 1500psi.  We estimate about 50 shots from one tank with a muzzle velocity of around 900+ feet per second. Below are the parts being used to build this cannon.  It is my theory that this will be the world's most powerful pneumatic golfball cannon.  If you know of a better one email me. The gun will be a bolt action, 1500psi - very heavy rifle.  The barrel is an internally hot glazed, super smooth bore 36" high carbon steel tube with an inside diameter of 1.735" and a wall thickness of 0.125".  A golf ball has an OD of 1.683" and weighs about 1.6oz or roughly 45.4grams.  The small amount of play of only 0.052" is nothing to worry about.

 

Below are pictures of the machining of the slide bolt and channel, since this will be a bolt action cannon.

 

Below are pictures of the barrel being worked on.  We had to cut a hole into the side of the barrel where the golf balls will feed.  The hole saws were destroyed after cutting out the hole.  They had a lifetime warranty so we took them back :)

 

Below are pictures of the bolt slide channel which will allow the bolt to cock like a "real" bolt action gun and will keep the bolt in place while firing the gun.

 

Below is a picture of the gun set up for a test fire.  The SCBA tank was charged to 500psi and tested for leaks around fittings, etc...  It was all good.  We fired it without a golfball and it was awesome.  We fine tuned the Valve On-Pulse using a special circuit designed by ME...see below for the schematic (we don't normally give them away for free :)  We found that the R1 value should be set between 3k-5k for an optimal volume of air so the ball will clear the barrel exit before the valve closes. The small PC boards we made for our plasma generator kits work great for the circuit below.  If you need some boards they are $3.00 each plus shipping.

 

Below is a picture of a microwave oven we stripped for parts, it was reassembled and set up as a target, then shot a few times at 500psi.  NICE:)

Here are some pictures of the painting process to make it look nicer.

 

Here is a picture of the assembled valve, barrel and tank with the control box and wiring installed.  You can see we tapped directly into the 1" NPT elbow with 1/4" NPTF so we could install a fill port.  There is a check valve installed to keep the air in.

Below are pictures of the completed Golf Ball Cannon #2.

 

We have access to several 36" long barrels (identical to ours above) which are high carbon steel 0.125" wall, email us. So far we managed to punch a hole in a pallet (ouch) but destroyed our Chronograph but not until we clocked the balls at 500fps at low pressure.  Sure wish we had a chrono for high pressure testing.  I'm sure it will do 700+fps at 1500psi.  That's a lot of energy at the end of that ball! More to come... Videos and Chrono results once we get another one. 12-07-2007