Capacitor charging circuit

[calbiterol]

The point is that I want something relatively easy and quick for my first one. Just to play around with. In the end I'll probably convert it into a coil gun - but for now, I just want to play around.

[Lance]

The point is that I want something relatively easy and quick for my first one. Just to play around with. In the end I'll probably convert it into a coil gun - but for now, I just want to play around.

 

But my point is that railgun is to easy as Pluto is to warm and cozy.

 

A coilgun is about 1.63x10^1337 times easier. A coilgun is also about equally more forgiving. Even some of the most efficient and powerful railguns do little more than than shoot bursts of plasma. The ratio of work:gratification is way higher for coilguns. There is also a massive drop in efficiency at lower powers for railguns which is why they don't scale down very well. Keep in mind that the amount of power you're playing with is tiny when speaking of electromagnetic acceleration.

 

The mechanics for a coilgun and railgun are completely different. You cant just convert one to the other.

[calbiterol]

The mechanics for a coilgun and railgun are completely different. You cant just convert one to the other.

 

I know. But the power supply is very similar. What I meant by that was, I'll probably end up moving the power supply (photoflashes) to a coil gun.

 

But my point is that railgun is to easy as Pluto is to warm and cozy.

 

A coilgun is about 1.63x10^1337 times easier.

But that's not the point. I mean easy on a relative scale - eventually, perhaps when I get to college (or find freetime in general), I may experiment with larger, more complex (and expensive) railguns. The idea is that I want to build an actual railgun, and I don't want to have to sell my kidneys to build it. Nor do I want them fried when I wire it up.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm perfectly aware that even 1 photoflash can be incapacitating, much less 15 or 20 of them - the idea is, each individual component is much less lethal. I tend to be very careful when dissecting or toying with electronics, especially those with capacitors. In reality, I'm not going for easy, I'm going for cheap. That's very characteristic of me - it's a lot easier to build a gokart with an old lawnmower engine and some metal tubing than it is to build a hovercraft out of a vaccum, resin, and some scrap plywood, but I don't have a half-finished gokart sitting in my room, do I? Anyways, that's a different topic. The idea is, I don't want the easy way out, I want a practical one that still offers a challenge. I think that (for me, at least) just the satisfaction of having made a working (however badly) railgun would be worth the trouble.